FOLLOWING a sell-out UK tour of his 2018 live show Back To The Studio, the frustrated news reporter Jonathan Pie is back - with The Fake News Tour, which will stop off at The Hexagon in Reading on October 16.

Here, Tom Walker, the creator and actor responsible for Jonathan Pie, discusses Pie’s 2018 highlights, the upcoming year and a glimpse of what audiences across the UK can expect from The Fake News Tour…

What can audiences expect? With such a rapidly changing political climate, do you have to keep re-writing the show while out on the road to keep the material fresh?

They can expect first and foremost to have a laugh. Probably at Pie’s expense. Pie’s first live show back in 2016 was a nightmare. It was all about David Cameron and George Osborne. Brexit was a foregone conclusion and Trump was still just a joke candidate.

By the end of that run we’d voted leave, Cameron and Osborne were gone and Trump had won The White House. From the first show in the tour to the last show of the tour we rewrote probably 60 per cent of the show. I almost had a nervous breakdown.

Do you ever have trouble working out what Pie would think about a certain subject?

Ultimately, Pie is a character so I can make him say or think anything I want. He can be right. He can be wrong. He can be articulate, and he can be crass. He can agree with a pro-remain argument one week and agree with a pro-leave argument the next. Which means Pie has the unique ability of annoying absolutely everybody. But he’s a complex character politically. He’s left wing but is often found to be berating the excesses of the liberal elite. He hates Trump but understands his supporters’ reasons for voting the way they did.

Your online videos regularly spark a lot of debate and discussion across social media. Had that always been part of your intention when creating the character?

Pie is all about debate, but I have never courted controversy. Not for one moment. Unfortunately debate and Twitter are rarely easy bedfellows. No one could ever really be prepared for how vicious social media can be and Pie is on the receiving end of a lot of abuse.

Tickets at www.readingarts.com/hexagon.