When I saw Sacha Baron Cohen tracksuited up at Wimbledon in character as his famed creation Ali G, I was immediately put out.
His Ali G persona, first launched in 1998, has always worn thin for me, with only a select few skits in which he ridiculed genuinely powerful political figures standing the test of time among a sea of satirical tripe.
My first interaction with Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy was aged around 9 or 10 when Borat was whacked on at a family gathering but, at the time, most of the humour (or lack thereof) went over my head.
Nevertheless, after that I was aware of the comic and his various personas and my first introduction to Ali G himself was during a reboot of his satire, Ali G: Rezurection, in 2014.
I have a distinct memory of being completely underwhelmed by the crass humour.
Most of my interaction with the character, however, was in the natural ways it seeped into pop culture from viral clips to Ali G references.
I didn’t have to actively seek out and sit down and watch the original Channel 4 series for it to reach my eyes and the older I got, the more uncomfortable I got with the entire schtick of Ali G and other characters from the same universe like Bruno and Borat.
His most recent reprisal of the now insufferable Ali G at Wimbledon, ahead of what is reported to be a newly completed movie featuring the character, only makes my disdain all the more clear.
Seeing a 54-year-old man sweating in a tracksuit (which was at least Wimbledon-white rather than his properly tragic original yellow version) trying to reclaim the glory days of his comedy career with a tired persona that screams outdated is truly a wince-inducing sight.
I’m not alone, with some calling it ‘out of touch’ and ‘bleak’ as Baron Cohen declared: ‘I iz back’. A fair assessment since he first retired this alter ego in 2007, and it is now almost two decades later.
While some have found issue with Ali G over the years for Sacha’s overindulgence in satirising ‘gangsta’ culture, it was always seen as making fun of try-hards and bigots, not necessarily being guilty of either.
But no matter how you feel about Ali G, Baron Cohen’s subsequent creations have proven far more harmful.
At the time, the ‘poser’ character was meant to make a mockery of upper-middle-class white kids trying to mimic street culture.
In the meantime, he managed to get into some high places to needle high-profile people into making fools of themselves, with the British version of the series even featuring a young Jacob Rees-Mogg offering sincere tips to Ali on how to join the aristocracy.
The success saw Ali move stateside, where, most notably (and perhaps Baron Cohen’s crowning glory), a 2003 interview with now-US President Donald Trump, in which he pitched his drip-proof ice cream gloves to the bemused businessman.
Two years later, the horrendous spin off movie Ali G In Da House came out (another one I’ve watched through clips that have cropped up over the years), which stepped away from the usual prank format, and seemed to revel in bigotry, rather than exposing it.
Instead, the absurdist political satire was used as a playground to lean into full-on offensive humour rife with homophobic panic (like the weird meeting between Ali G and Borat where he immediately recoils from his cheek kisses and multiple extended sequences about gay sex) and 2D female characters who exist just to be ogled.
The film’s premiere faced protests over racial discrimination, no surprise since it featured several poor taste moments, and a movie whose soundtrack features a novelty rap with Shaggy is never going to be groundbreaking.
Some might think the jokes are simply of their time, but decades after Baron Cohen first debuted his comedy characters, he’s stuck with a sense of humour stuck in 2006 – you need only watch his new Netflix movie Ladies First, which, while not written by the Ali G creator, is still undeniably cringeworthy tosh.
Critics (who to be fair often laud his more serious roles – he doesn’t have three Oscar nods for nothing) think that too much of his non-Ali G creations punch down.
They have a point.
Characters like Khazak ‘reporter’ Borat and ‘The Dictator’s’ Aladeen felt to me like a reflection of the anti-Muslim hate in the 00s and early 2010s during an era that made things already incredibly difficult for my community in the aftermath of 9/11.
Let’s start with Borat, a highly controversial movie, which has beenheavily protested in Kazakhstan (a population of almost 70% Muslim) for caricaturing their culture as misogynistic and antisemitic, among other harmful tropes.
I guarantee, ask anyone what their cultural reference to Kazakhstan is in today’s age and almost exclusively, it’s Borat. Although the film sought to expose the ignorance of Americans, it became a double-edged sword, characteristic of the three-time Oscar nominee’s whole career.
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Not to mention The Dictator, Baron Cohen’s 2012 movie, where he played Admiral General Aladeen – and used ‘comedy’ as a guise to run riot with every stereotype of North Africa in the media with the Libya-esque fictional Republic of Wadiya.
His other character, Bruno, in which he plays a flamboyant gay fashion reporter, speaks for itself.
A joke that worked in the homophobic landscape of the early 00s but not so much now. Where his humour thrives when punching up, it has always left a bad taste in my mouth when he’s punched down.
In fact, his work exposing the hypocrisy of right-wingers on Who Is America remains one of his better works, even if it didn’t necessarily shed light on anything new.
Ali G may not be Baron Cohen’s most offensive character, but as spin-offs like Indahouse, Borat and Bruno prove, those late 90s comic creations should stay in the past.
In 2026, I simply don’t see a place for Ali G, a new movie featuring the character or Sacha’s apparent relishing of punching down humour.
Pretending to be a streetwise ‘chav’ selling weed at Wimbledon off the back of a new film featuring a character that peaked in 2005 is a serious double fault from a man old enough to know better.
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