The Onion

The Onion was founded in 1988. Since its move online in the late 1990s it has become very popular indeed. The Onion has its own very enjoyable Onion Radio News, but it's the inspired Onion News Network, a spoof of the likes of CNN, that really hits the mark. 

Like The Day Today, the Onion News Network apes the form of serious broadcasting organisations and delivers barbed and silly content straight: 'First openly gay racehorse to compete Sunday' the anchorman declares in classic portentous tones, before introducing a correspondent who will take us 'beyond the facts.' 

As well as spoof articles on local, national and international news, politics, sport and culture, The Onion also produces the AV Club. Rather than a rest home for depressed electoral reform campaigners, this is a review website and paper. It takes things less satirically but still has a light and amusing tone. 

The Onion is the kind of thing, like the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Tom Lehrer, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, The Simpsons and Christopher Guest, which gives the lie to that complacent, smug and self-congratulatory belief many Brits have that the Americans do not understand irony. How can they not? They dropped the atom bombs in the name of peace.