CAIRO: Egypt’s top satirist returned to television on Friday for the first airing of his show since it was pulled three months ago, and he skewed the public and media for lionizing the army chief widely expected to be the country’s next president.

In taking aim at the frenzy of support for Field Marshal Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, Bassem Youssef went further in his criticism of the army-backed political order than anyone else currently allowed on the airwaves.

Pledging not to discuss political issues that got his wildly popular show “The Program” yanked by private broadcaster CBC in November, Youssef showed that all topics in the country lead back to Sisi, who overthrew Islamist President Mohamed Mursi last year.