When young Jewish playwright Max Elton was looking for a way to satirise Hitler he turned to our increasing thirst for reality television.

Politicians seem unable to resist the lure of the cameras with George Galloway cavorting in an animal costume, Edwina Currie, Lembit Öpik and Nadine Corries taking on the horrors of the jungle and Anne Widdecombe and Vince Cable flailing around in Strictly, to name just a few.

But now it has swung the other way with reality television star Donald Trump trying to leverage his fame from The Apprentice in order to becoming president of the United States.

The lines between entertainment and politics are more blurred than ever says Max who’s show Big Brother Blitzkrieg opens at The King’s Head on Thursday (Jan 14).

“Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson have both used platforms like Have I Got News For You where people laugh and then look at you more favourably. There’s a real danger in that.

“If you can make people laugh it’s an incredible good way of disarming them to your ideas.”

The play sees Adolf Hilter wake up in a reality show, following a botched suicide attempt, confused, surrounded by loathsome housemates but armed with the ability to charm and disarm us, the viewers.

Max wrote the first version of the show in 2013 when he was a media studies student at Newcastle University, inspired by the comedy of the trivial and the idea of Hitler ranting about teabags, but says it’s themes have become much more relevant since its sell-out run at Edinburgh Festival.

“Boris Johnson has had unparalleled success in London where the Conservatives haven’t and we have seen that snowball in a much more general way to the extent we have full blown anti-politics with Trump in America.

“Everyone had been predicting he would be out by now but you are starting to see some senior analysts now say it is a possibility he could be president. So all predictions seem to be dealt some sort of blow and you can’t really rule anything out and that ties in with this idea of ‘never again which I think we are in danger of taking for granted.

“Not necessarily with Jews because I think that is now ingrained but you have a growing Islamophobia all over the West, France is a perfect example, and I think Hitler within the Big Brother house is allegorical of that.”

The 23-year-old who grew up in Hampstead teamed up with Hew Rous Eyre to completely re-imagine the show for the London stage with Trump at the forefront of their minds.

“This version feels more urgent. The original was a much more playful look at what could happen if Hitler was in the Big Brother house and how he could charm an audience with his charisma. But when we rewrote it felt slightly less hypothetical.”

The show is performed in the round, giving the audience a voyeuristic view of the six housemates and their petty squabbles. Max took inspiration from Big Brother clips such as the Jade Goody, Shilpa Sheety furore over stock cubes to look at at ‘how you could move the mundane into the sinister’ and the decline of the show.

“It’s in its death throws now and that became quite crucial to the play. Everything that happens in the house is meant to resemble what happened in Weimar Germany in the 20s and 30s and Hitler’s rise to power which was sort of linked to the Great Depression, which he used to gain more support.

“In this we have viewing figures dwindling and the idea of a desperate producer keeping Hitler on the screen for viewing figures.”

The former associate producer of Tabard Theatre who lives in Barnes says it was a ‘fun but odd’ process creating the character of Hitler.

“I’m Jewish and I have a family tree that shows a lot of dead ends from 1940 to 1945 so my view of him is not positive. I think that in some ways he has been an alluring figure for many to study and fictionalise because he has become the face of evil in a sort of undisputed sense.

“We found the cruelness within him but also the melodrama and a way of mocking how seriously he takes everything and trivialising him.”

While he wants to amuse and entertain his audience his message is a serious one.

“The thing I want people to leave with is ‘don’t be fooled’. It’s too easy to be entertained by someone and not see what they are saying. You need to be able to separate someone’s manner, humour and charisma from their rhetoric.”

King’s Head Theatre, Upper Street, Islington, Jan 14 to 30. Details: 020 7226 8561, kingsheadtheatre.com