Prince William? David Cameron? JD Vance? Celebrities brace – and Staines celebrates – ahead of new Ali G film

‘If u iz at dis borin wimbledore final lookin 2 get grand slammed, I iz here wif de hookup’ … Sacha Baron Cohen dressed as Ali G departs the Wimbledon tennis tournament where he attended the men’s singles final earlier this month. Photograph: Eleventh Hour Photography/AlamyView image in fullscreen‘If u iz at dis borin wimbledore final lookin 2 get grand slammed, I iz here wif de hookup’ …

Sacha Baron Cohen dressed as Ali G departs the Wimbledon tennis tournament where he attended the men’s singles final earlier this month. Photograph: Eleventh Hour Photography/AlamyPrince William? David Cameron?

JD Vance? Celebrities brace – and Staines celebrates – ahead of new Ali G filmSacha Baron Cohen’s doofus voice-of-yoof has been making fresh mischief with new film Who Iz I? But who will he catch out this time?

And what does his fictional hometown make of his return?The Wimbledon lawn tennis championships are not generally a hotbed of crime. Yet this year, unprecedented infringements ocurred.

Eleven players were fined a total of £34,000 for “audible obscenities” and “racquet abuse”. Meanwhile, a spectator at the men’s singles final called a heckler a “bumbaclat” before inviting them to fight, badgered Prince William to repay a drugs debt of £1,400 allegedly owed to him by Prince Harry from his days at Eton, and attempted to sell illegal substances to those seated near him – and beyond. “If u iz at dis borin wimbledore final lookin 2 get grand slammed,” he posted on Instagram, touting for business, “I iz here wif de hookup.”

The culprit was Ali G, real name Alistair Leslie Graham, AKA the malapropism-dropping home counties wide boy played by Sacha Baron Cohen, kitted out for the occasion in trademark skullcap and gold chain, plus custom Wimbledon jacket, traditional crossed rackets replaced with cannabis leaves. Security released him without penalty, but the reprimand was captured on scores of smartphones – including one held by Cohen himself.View image in fullscreenAli G at the tournament.

Photograph: Karwai Tang/WireImageSuch footage is likely to find its way into a movie that will be released worldwide on 23 October and whose existence was only revealed four days before the Wimbledon incident. This week, a title was announced – Ali G: Who Iz I? – as well as the fact the film is to be the directorial debut of its star: a new development in the career of one of the UK’s most audacious, ambitious – and powerful – comedy actors, apparently taking greater agency over his projects as his own political engagement intensifies.

(The appalled reaction to his recent Netflix comedy Ladies First, which he neither wrote nor directed, suggests this is a sage move.)It also makes sense logistically: Ali G is a character who would energetically embrace selfie-mode shooting, which presumably streamlines a film crew considerably. Meanwhile the absence of a US theatrical release for the first Ali G film, 2002’s Indahouse, means targets in America would be easier to hoodwink.

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To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'.Allow and continueCohen first rose to fame as the tracksuit-wearing naïf and committed cultural appropriator in 1998, when Ali G was introduced as the “voice of the yoof” on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show. His own show followed in the early 2000s, constructed around interviews with unsuspecting subjects including Buzz Aldrin (whom he called Buzz Lightyear and asked if he was “ever jealous of Louis Armstrong”), Naomi Wolf (whom he complimented by telling her she’s attractive enough to be a sex worker) and Tony Benn.

The late MP was outraged by the character’s dismissal of striking workers in 1984 as lazy skivers; Cohen later told Benn he was the only interviewee who had “dealt seriously with his loud, sexist, materialist image of youth”. (Benn’s letter of reply ended with the words: “You’re my main man.”)Although Cohen declared both Ali G and Borat – his Kazakh TV presenter and the star of a 2006 film that was a commercial and critical hit – retired in 2007, both have since returned.

Borat was resurrected in 2020, for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, intended by Baron Cohen as an intervention in the impending US presidential election. As with his 2018 series Who is America?, it secured a number of high-profile and highly-embarrassing scalps – most notably Rudy Giuliani, who was caught with his hand down his trousers in a hotel room with an actor pretending to be Borat’s 15-year-old daughter.

Before his recent reappearance, Ali G was last seen presenting an award at the 2016 Oscars: a surprise even to the show’s producers, who understood Cohen would appear as himself. The ruse involved the star feigning food poisoning then locking himself and then-wife Isla Fisher in a disabled loo for 40 minutes to change into his costume.View image in fullscr