The Comedy Knights have said that permission to rehearse at the PN headquarters was given by the old administration as well as the new one.

The drama group sent a right of reply in reaction to an article on The Malta Independent on Sundayen titled “Comedy Knights practised lines ‘bashing Adrian Delia’ at PN HQ”.

“Firstly, we are flattered that a national publication saw fit to publish a story about us on page 3. It is indeed an honour to be targeted by the second most popular newspaper on a Sunday. However, the actors have been losing sleep over the inaccuracies within the article, and we feel they should be pointed out.

“Permission to hold rehearsals at the PN headquarters was granted by the previous party administration”. This is both true and untrue. The previous administration gave us permission to rehearse at the PN headquarters, and so did this administration. Permission was granted in November 2017.

“Although we’re quite happy to rehearse anywhere central and affordable and under the same conditions would have just as happily rehearsed at another HQ up the road from Dar Centrali, the PN gave us the rehearsal space in the belief that satire is an important mechanism in a democracy and because they believe in freedom of speech. This was always done without any conditions on what the content of the show would be.

“Incidentally, Media.link communications, owned by the PN, also owe us a sum of money for a TV show that we had produced, and for which we were never paid in full. We never brought this up publicly because we're not out to embarrass anyone for our own gain, but the article has forced our hand.

“Another inaccuracy is that "no other politician has been hit so viciously" by us or that Simon Busuttil was let off gently by comparison when he was party leader. Unlike the Malta Independent On Sunday’s unnamed sources or unnamed “people who have regularly attended” the show, we have scripts and video evidence to show otherwise. Simon Busuttil was heavily satirised in our shows over the past four years and he was a good sport about it. We even dragged him on stage to accept a “pastizz of the year award”. Our “bashing” of Delia reported by the unnamed writer in your article doesn’t come close.

“In fact, we would like to clarify that only 0.05% of the show involved Dr Delia but some audiences laughed so much it might have felt like more (incidentally that fact is completely made up, but we doubt the The Malta Independent on Sunday have an issue with that).

“As for the claim that other politicians are barely criticised, perhaps the Malta Independent on Sunday missed the entire scenes and videos dedicated to all the politicians and people in public office on both sides of the political spectrum in this year’s and in previous editions of the show. Again, we have videos to share to prove our point and make you laugh (that is, if you have a sense of humour).

“The Comedy Knights do not have an agenda other than that of making people laugh through satire and social commentary. We are disappointed that The Malta Independent on Sunday would publish such under researched material.

“Perhaps the unnamed writer of the article, editor, or even Mr Calleja who wrote the original blog post could have spoken to us first before writing anything. We would have been happy to set the record straight so that his tens of readers would not be given such a scare. On the plus side, we're on Page 3!”