Jonathan Pie Takes YouTube Act Live in Post-Truth Era
The character was never meant to become a serious political commentator—but it happened anyway.
Updated | The Brexit vote. President Trump. The upending of political norms. “Seismic events; for some it must’ve been really exciting,” Tom Walker says. “I’ve just had to try to find a way [through].” Walker—38, light-haired, baggy-eyed and British—is an actor. He is also Jonathan Pie: embittered, embattled TV news reporter and internet phenomenon, who is about to embark on a live event, a 22-date, sold-out tour around the U.K. It’s all happened very fast.
Jonathan Pie first appeared online in September 2015, in a handful of monologues that Walker wrote, recorded and uploaded on YouTube. Each weekly clip began with the reporter delivering the end of a straitlaced piece to camera, the kind of thing we all see on
