Hey, Kids! What do you get if you cross Who’s Line Is It Anyway with Mock The Week? That’s right! Ball cancer. Or if you’re very cack-handed at crossing two TV programmes that have already ripped off other TV programmes then you get Argumental, Dave first ever home-made fuck up. “Thanks to global warming there are more toxins in the air than there are in Pete Doherty’s whole body”. That’s the opening line in a TV show going out for the first time in November 2008. Has Pete Doherty even left his fucking house this year? Fuck it. “Thanks to global warming the whole planet’s now hotter than a bakery in Pudding Lane”. I mean, if you’re not going to bother then don’t bother big. The thing is, Argumental isn’t THAT bad, in fact it could be quite a good programme given time, but it looks like it’s still at the pilot stage and, God, does it look cheap. Basically, there are four excellent comedians suckered into playing embarrassing parlour games while anyone with half a fucking brain cell squints themselves into a coma trying to fathom how comics this good come out like this in the “edit”. I mean, I get it. They stand up, John Sergeant farts out a topic to talk about and the chosen performer talks passionately about it and the audience (who were continually looking at the over head monitors instead of what was going on in front of them, maybe the monitors were showing else?) votes for who they thought won the argument. Simple enough but way too loose, because no-one looked like they knew when things should be starting or ending. But it’s not like it was all awful because all the comics got laughs and Jimmy Carr’s stuff about Amy Winehouse was great. But it’s the format, it’s just way too random. This kind of improvisation works on Just A Minute but here it’s just too smug. And it’s filmed on the same set as Give Us A Clue, by the looks of things. Mind, hats off to them considering they were all making it up off the top of their heads (I wonder what the eight writers involved did?) plus it was worth it when the camera panned the audience and you could see Andre Vincent hiding behind his voting colour. Marcus used to let him on his telly shows proper.
It pissed me off all the more that I realised while I was watching Argumental that, on BBC2 at the same time, Tom Baker was hosting Have I Got News For You. Balls! I’m very jealous of Chris Addison. He got to sit near The Doctor. FUCKING BRILLIANT. Basically, that’s all I did last night. Watch telly. Loads of it. Again. Some Kind of Monster, the Metallica documentary was on. That was funny. And improvised. So it can be done.
I’m still spaced out from getting a flu jab yesterday. I didn’t know that a flu jab made you drowsy but, holy shit, the nurse took great delight in letting me know just as the needle went in. She then constantly went good cop/bad cop on me. “Do you need some ventolin for your asthma, Mr. Legge?” Yes, Please. “Oh. And who told you that you’re asthmatic?” Er…my doctor. “Very good. Glad you got that checked out. What’s your Doctor’s name?” Dr. Groves. “There is no Doctor Groves” Not here, in Belfast. “Belfast have some of the best medical facilities in the UK”. Really? “NO”. All that really happened. And now I’ll NEVER have a flu and I’m VERY scared of nurses.
I’m grumpy and spaced out. That’s what happens when I’ve had a whole day on my own. Even though I felt I needed a night in on my own I’m now a bit starved for company. That will change. Johnny Candon is coming to stay in my house today. Champagne, cocaine, women! We’ll have none of that. Lager, Chips and K-9 is a very strong possibility. Oh, and good luck to John McCain today. Satire is in a bad enough state without a good candidate becoming President.
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