You may remember Jón Gnarr, the greatest accident in politics. He’s the Icelandic comedian who invented a “joke party” after the financial meltdown of 2008 and won the Reykjavik council elections in 2010. The Best Party – which had no policies to speak of – succeeded the centre-right Independence Party. Gnarr became mayor and the face of Iceland. He’s just finished four years in the job and his time in a suit is done.
I meet him at the Charlotte Street Hotel in London expecting to find an Icelandic Boris or Screaming Lord Sutch. He looks exhausted and speaks slower than any politician I’ve ever heard, pausing for ten seconds to think of his answers. As he orders a ginger beer, I look at the red rims of his eyes and think of a line from his new book, written while in office, recounting his strange story:
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