Borat On Borat

It's one of the funniest, most offensive and subversive films in years, but where is Sacha Baron Cohen, and for how long will the press be prepared to go along with the joke?

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A room full of jaded hacks from all corners of the globe isn't exactly a comedian's dream audience. Add to this the fact that the press conference is actually scripted, all questions having been submitted in advance, making the assembled journos little more than unpaid background artistes for the filming of a DVD extra. Worse still, they've been kept waiting in a hot room in London's Dorchester Hotel for over an hour with no food except for biscuits, and no booze; there are only so many cups of coffee one can drink. And yet, when Borat, aka Sacha Baron Cohen, finally deigns to appear, he has people falling off their chairs laughing.

Preceded on stage by Azamat Bagatov (played by Californian-born character actor Ken Davitian), Borat's overweight producer whose eyebrows are, alarmingly, even bigger today than in the film, Borat bounds into the room, glad-handing those sitting on the aisle and, in the case of one lucky man, giving out an enthusiastic kiss.

"Jagshemash!" he booms from behind a podium, in front of which stand auto-cue screens; so much for Baron Cohen the master improviser. Much of his resolutely un-PC material has been heard before at other press conferences available online, as have some of his put-downs to members of the press asking questions.

"Hello, little boy," he addresses a diminutive woman with short hair, or, on hearing a Scottish accent, he remarks, "You are Scottish, like Braveheart? Like anti-Jew warrior Melvin Gibson."

To a room full of people for whom this is a job of work, it does feel slightly pointless, especially when he keeps to Borat's persona by refusing to answer questions from a woman. The journo in question, wearily and reluctantly, plays along with the pantomime of getting a male colleague to pass on the message. Even so, there's no doubting that, recycled though his material is, it's hilarious.

"Very popular in Kazakhstan is singing transvestite Madonna. He really looks like a womans! Only thing that give him away is his huge hands."

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