Do we like them?

Do we like Michael Fenton Stevens?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful or nasty turned up, but little reporting was readable, so this is a cautious yes, not a glowing one.

Michael Fenton Stevens is a London-born comic actor and singer who has been around British comedy since the 1980s. He was a founder member of the Hee Bee Gee Bees and a performer on the Radio 4 comedy that became KYTV. For most people he's the voice behind a song they've never quite shaken.

That song is The Chicken Song, the 1986 Spitting Image number one that started life as The Holiday Song. It was a deliberate send-up of mindless summer hits. The Guardian's 2023 oral history has him looking back on it with good humour, not wincing at it.

On the harm test, I went looking for anything he'd said or done about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, health or the planet, and for any slide into conspiracy theories. Nothing turned up. There were no campaigns, no culture-war posts and no stints with dodgy studios in the results I could read. Because most pages wouldn't open, that's an absence of evidence, not a deep vetting.

On the good-person test, searches for court cases, lawsuits and accusations found nothing about him. His public record looks like a working comic's: radio, telly, panto dames, a podcast and some songs. That's honestly the whole list.

Nothing new has surfaced on him lately, so there's no fresh stoush to report. What exists is a long, steady career in British comedy with no stain I could find.

So, a lean yes. He passes both tests on what I could find, but a thin file isn't a glowing reference. If something turns up later, this card should be redone.