The world seems determined to laugh at itself at the moment. Co-producer Simon Cowell is sending himself up rotten in I Can’t Sing! while the BBC is ensuring that it is the butt of the joke in W1A on BBC2. This kind of post-modern self-mocking mode has existed for a long time, but it suddenly seems much more pervasive.

Celebrities that have appeared on shows such as Extras and Shooting Stars have been part of this too. Sometimes, albeit by accident, it can be a pretty canny move. If you show you have a sense of humour and are prepared to mock public perceptions of yourself then you can’t be all bad can you? 

There is a sense that showing you have a sense of humour about yourself is a way of taking the sting out of the way you behave. So the BBC can metaphorically point to W1A and say “look at us, look at the ridiculous levels of red tape and marketing bollocks we have succumbed to” and then while viewers are distracted by laughing at them laughing at themselves they make a few more people redundant.

There is something uncomfortable about subjects of the joke being in on the joke. Comedians are supposed to be outside society holding up a mirror to it, but it is a bit too close for comfort when those picking up the tab are the subjects themselves. Having said that, I Can’t Sing!’s portrayal of puppet master Simon Cowell has a certain Bond villain style about it. When I saw the show I kept thinking his character was going to be lovely then turn to the side and do that Armstrong and Miller payoff of “kill him…”

I guess subjects of satire maybe think that being in on the joke and showing that they have a sense of humour will make them more like good sports. How could Tony Blair be such a bad PM when he has appeared in a Comic Relief sketch with Catherine Tate? Obama must be a pretty cool guy, he let himself be interviewed for the Funny or Die website.

But I’m not sure if that always works. There’s a famous story about Peter Cook’s performance in Beyond The Fringe during the original early sixties satire boom. Cook was one of the first comedians to impersonate a living Prime Minister. His doddery, posh Macmillan was considered very daring. Then one night during the London run he was told that Macmillan himself was in the audience. Cook embarked on his usual impression then broke away from the script to add: “There's nothing I like better than to wander over to a theatre and sit there listening to a group of sappy, urgent, vibrant young satirists with a stupid great grin spread all over my silly face”.

I’m not saying Peter Cook brought down the Macmillan Government, but politicians and celebrities should be wary of getting too close to comedians. A lot of the time it might look like good clean fun, but sometimes they can bite back.