Dick Cheney signs waterboard kit in trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's Channel 4 show Who Is America

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney has been duped by Ali G creator Sacha Baron Cohen.

In the first clip from the Borat star's new TV series Who is America?, the satirist remains offscreen speaking with a heavy accent as he asks Cheney to sign an empty plastic water jug, which Cohen claims is a "waterboard kit". 

Cheney, 77, is happy to go along with his request."That's a first! That's the first time I've ever signed a waterboard," he says.

The politician regularly endorsed the use of waterboarding as a technique for engaging terrorism suspects while he served as George W Bush's Vice-President from 2001-2009.

He recently defended waterboarding and other illegal torture methods in an interview with Fox News. “If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs,” he told the US station in May. “I’d have them active and ready to go."

The new teaser says Cohen has "been undercover secretly filming a new show for a year." 

The series' will premiere on Showtime in the US on July 15, and on Channel 4 in the UK on July 16. Its broadcast date was confirmed in an enigmatic teaser released by Showtime last month, which announced that the network was planning to air what it called "perhaps the most dangerous show in the history of television". 

The teaser did not name Cohen or the programme, however. "The lawyers won't let us tell you the name of the star, and we can't even reveal the show's title or we'd be breaking our non-disclosure agreement," it claimed.

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Who is America? will be the English comedian's first new TV prank show since The Ali G Show came to an end in 2004.  Another recent teaser for Who is America? featured a clip from The Ali G Show of his mocking interview with Donald Trump, alongside footage of Trump calling him a "third-rate character" who deserves to be "punched in the face".

Alongside Who is America?, Cohen is also understood to be working on a TV miniseries for Netflix about the life of Israeli spy Eli Cohen, who died in 1965.

The first episode of Who is America? is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Monday July 16