Watch as a young Michael Gove fails as a stand-up comedian

Tory leadership irritant hosted Channel 4 sketch show with David Baddiel

Footage has emerged of Conservative Party leadership hopeful Michael Gove doing stand-up comedy on Channel 4.

Then aged 23, Gove was one of the presenters on short-lived satire series A Stab In The Dark on Channel 4 in 1992.

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Gove was one of the series’ regular hosts, alongside David Baddiel, Richard Herring and Tracey MacLeod.

Baddiel posted a link to Gove’s trailer for the show today (July 1), commenting: “I met Michael Gove when he was 23. He looked the same then – like a precocious child impersonating a big important grown-up. We were never mates. My memory of him is unfailingly polite and well-mannered. But not matey.”

Answering a tweet, Baddiel added: “Please don’t air it again, Channel 4. It was terrible. Although a clip show…”

At the time, Gove had recently graduated from Oxford University, where he was President of the Oxford Union. He had worked as journalist for The Aberdeen Press & Journal and went on from A Stab In The Dark to play a chaplain in the comedy film A Feast At Midnight starring Christopher Lee and Robert Hardy in 1995.

Gove’s comedy career ended when he joined The Times as a journalist in 1996 before becoming an MP in 2005.

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Baddiel has recently finished touring a new stand-up show about his parents’ relationship, My Family: Not The Sitcom, which has a West End run at London’s Vaudeville Theatre from September 13-October 15. It is considerably better than A Stab In The Dark.

Gove is standing to be Prime Minister. Other candidates are Theresa May, who has spoken out against the Human Rights Act; Stephen Crabb, who has stated gay people can be ‘cured’; Andrea Leadsom, who has said the living wage should be abolished because it ‘encourages migrants’ and Liam Fox, who resigned as Defence Secretary in 2011 after being found guilty of breaking ministerial codes of conduct.

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