200: Jeremy Thorpe 18

by Michael Heath
in “Punch” 29 November 1978

This is not quite as appallingly homophobic as it at first seems. In the course of giving evidence, Bessell claimed that Thorpe said of killing Norman Scott, “It is no worse than shooting a sick dog”, which has a certain dramatic irony when you think what happened to Rinka. So Heath is simply reversing it, although the resulting sentiment is callously shocking, which is rather the point of the joke.