The Gerd Show

Die Gerd-Show (en: The Gerd Show) was a German satirical radio show broadcast by Eins Live (WDR). Reaching over nine million listeners at its peak, it generated several Top 20 hits in the music charts in Germany, thanks to the impressionist talents of its creator, Elmar Brandt, as well as enough controversy over the show's good taste for it to receive newspaper coverage around the globe, despite the limited international appeal of German political humour.

The programme began in 1999, and was broadcast as a short daily comedy on various radio programmes. The most famous segments of these programmes were Elmar Brandt's rewrites of well-known tunes with new, satirical lyrics, which he sang in an imitation of the voice of Gerhard Schröder, who at that time was Chancellor of Germany. These parodies generated six hits in the Top 20 in Germany, and were also popular in Switzerland and Austria.

The most successful of these was Der Steuersong (en: The Tax Song), which reached the number one spot in Germany and Austria in 2002, and went double platinum in 2004, having sold over an million copies. Based on Las Ketchup's summer dance hit Aserejé, the song lampooned Schröder's tax policy, listing a number of perceived absurd indirect taxes (such as an tax on dogs) and suggesting new ones on breathing and bad weather, and depicting the Chancellor as a cheat and an promise breaker. The song was accompanied by a video, in which an unflattering Spitting Image style puppet of Schröder stole coins from a charity collection tin, and medicine from the sick.

The song generated political controversy. Reports suggested that Schröder might take legal action, as he notoriously did—successfully—to stop a news agency printing claims that he dyed his hair, with a spokesman for Schröder's Social Democrats saying "There are limits even to political satire... We will take a look at the video, and the chancellor will have to examine what steps to take."

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