'Why did Elizabeth I happen?': Philomena Cunk's 10 funniest moments

Philomena Cunk is back on television, effing the ineffable as she ponders the great questions. Questions such as "What is clocks?", "Who was Churchill?" and "Why did Elizabeth I happen?"

Diane Morgan's comic alter ego doesn't just skewer dimwitted documentary presenters and TV talking heads – she also occasionally stumbles upon universal truths.

The character was first introduced alongside "Barry S--tpeas" (Al Campbell) on Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe, with on-screen captions listing her shifting occupations: "crowd member", "showbiz liker," "instant theorist" and even "flesh  emoji".

Since then, Cunk has moved into the upper echelons of the media, and now fronts her very own BBC Two series – Cunk on Britain. To celebrate this stratospheric ascent, here are 10 of her finest moments – some of which feature strong language:

1. Being Bruce Willis's biggest fan

In 2013, an unhappy-looking Bruce Willis gave a car-crash interview on The One Show to promote his umpteenth action movie, A Good Day to Die Hard. While he took plenty of flack from other commentators, Willis found a die-hard defender in Philomena Cunk.

"He's managed to make the same film five times without dying on the inside!" she burbles, admiringly. As Cunk repeats ad nauseum how the new film "looks really, really brilliant", the skit moves from being merely silly into something oddly poignant. Poor Bruce.

2. Auditioning to be the new Jeremy Vine

As the 2015 General Election loomed, Cunk proved she was a dab hand at high-tech presenting: "I'm in a sort of PlayStation House of Commons – which you can see but I can't, because it's all green where I am." In underlined just how absurd our habit of asking presenters to hop up and down on 3D infographics really is. That said, she still comes across as more of a credible journalist than Jeremy Vine, who spent the election waving at pop-up Prime Ministers in a digital Westminster lobby.

3. Exploring 'femininism'

The weightier the subject, the dafter Cunk's commentary becomes. For one of her "Moments of Wonder", she explored gender inequality. Thanks to the suffragette movement, we learn, women were finally "given a vote – and not just a vote, but a vote each, which was fairer."

The highlight is an interview with "femininist" scholar Prof Mary Evans, in which she slowly veers off topic. "You see yourself back to front, don't you, in a mirror? But not upside down. Why's that?" she asks. "What powers a mirror?" Evans somehow manages to keep a straight face.

4. Shakespeare: the Les Dennis of his day?

Cunk's first solo TV outing came in 2016, with the one-off special Cunk on Shakespeare, which took swipes at both Lucy Worsley's dressing-up-box approach to pop history, and celebrity rent-a-presenters (Mary Berry's Country House Secrets, anyone?). Cunk proudly boasted of her academic credentials: "I've been studying Shakespeare ever since I was asked to do this programme."

Despite her studies, she still had a few burning questions about the Bard. "Why do we still talk about Shakespeare?" she mused. "We don't talk about Les Dennis any more, even though he's still alive and hasn't done anything wrong." 

5. The 'Pocalpyse'

In her Moments of Wonder skit for Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe, Cunk grilled pop physicist (and former D:Ream keyboardist) Brian Cox about the end of the world – the Pocalypse. After learning about the earth's eventual destruction, Cunk confronts him with his old band's lyrics. "You said, Things Can Only Get Better. So why should we trust anything you ever say now?"

Cox caves in after this Paxman-esque line of questioning. "It's one of the most misleading and scientifically inaccurate pop songs ever written," he admits.

6. Brian Cox's sad, trippy holiday

It wasn't the first time Cunk had brought Cox down a peg or two. In a 2013 Weekly Wipe episode, Philomena and Barry shared their sympathetic response to his TV series Wonders of Life, here cunningly edited to give the impression that Cox was going through a mental breakdown.

"It's sad, 'cos he really wants you to understand what he's on about," Cunk pouts. "He doesn't know it's all pointless." Still, she's keen to learn "about how science did all the life," particularly when it's coming from no less a luminary than Mark Owen from Take That.

7. Becoming part of a Twitter mob

Reviewing the not-at-all-exploitative TV documentary Benefits Street for Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe, Cunk learnt an uplifting message about community – by becoming part of an internet hate mob, punching death threats into her keyboard. Dark even for Charlie Brooker, this skit had the feel of one of his Black Mirror episodes – and was made all the more wickedly funny by Morgan's perky delivery.

8. Sympathy for the 'swarm'

Another unexpectedly hard-hitting moment came when 2015 Wipe tackled the refugee crisis. Cunk was puzzled to learn about the "swarm" of creatures making their "nest" in Calais. "They couldn't have been real humans, because people were writing things about them that would be utterly unforgivable if they were." 

9. Christmas

"I'm going on a journey right up Christmas," Cunk warned us – and she did. The character's second full-length special featured some of her funniest interviews including with a bunch of exasperated schoolchildren, patiently explaining simple concepts to her. The highlight was a bizarre encounter in which Cunk somehow gets the Queen's chaplain, the Rev Canon Ann Easter, to admit that Jesus "would have been more interesting" if he had been "built like R2-D2".

10. Cunk on crime, and Cunk on the causes of crime

In just three minutes, Cunk traces our legal framework all the way back to the 10 commandments, noting that awe that "many of those laws – killing, gravity, and the one about interfering with oxes – are still used today." Brilliantly, asking whether a policeman can "arrest himself" prompts an intensely detailed and well-thought-out explanation from Open University lecturer Chris Williams. It's almost educational. Almost.