THE BAD REPEAT FAIRY
Nicholas Lezard keeps seeing the same episodes of his fave shows – but they’re never the good ones
Children born in fairy stories are often visited by either wicked or benign spirits at the moment of their christening. It is a notion I had considered of pure academic sociocultural import until I found myself watching, for what seemed like the hundredth time, a repeat of the “Trucking Song” sketch performed by the Not the Nine O’clock News team.
How to explain the vileness of this sketch to those who have not seen it? Rowan Atkinson and Pamela Stephenson, at the nadir of their talent, pretending to be in a lorry cab, sing to an inane tune the words “I like trucking, I like trucking, I like trucking and I like to truck, I like trucking, I like trucking, if you don’t like trucking tough luck.” Someone thinks this is worth repeating on terrestrial TV every so often. Fine. There is a market for all sorts of unspeakable shite. Let it be satisfied, I can always switch off and do something else. Yet I have seen every single repeat of this dismal little routine. Always at a time when I am so incapacitated with exhaustion or drink that I am unable to change the channel.
And yet I have not seen that Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock are beamed to the alternative universe Enterprise, where the Federation are pirates and they have to pretend to be bloodthirsty space pirates. I think I did see it when I was seven but for obvious reasons the details are hazy. I add that I have seen every other episode of Star Trek about eight times, and their appeal has waned almost to invisibility. But I want to see that, not badly enough to do anything proactive about it, it would just be nice to run across it. I’ve run across every other bloody episode.
Elsewhere in the TV universe, I only see the episodes of Father Ted I have already seen, the episodes of Black Books I have already seen, the episodes of Friends I have ever seen. And I know that even when I see new episodes in new series of these shows, and miss out others – for I retain the vestiges of a social life, and do not tie myself to the TV – these episodes will be the only ones I ever see, until eternity. The ones I miss first time round will remain forever invisible to me.
Who did this to me? I blame the Bad Repeat Fairy, who leaned over my cot at Saint Michael’s in London, NW8, in 1964, and planted a smacker on my puss which ensured that I would never fill certain gaps in my TV experience, which to someone of mine and subsequent generations means an incomplete education. Other fairies, I have to say, jostled around my crib on that auspicious day, and I hope to mention them in future issues. Doing so will help explain much that has gone both wrong and right with my life, and, I suspect, with yours. For how often have various probabilities broken down in your life, which only this hypothesis can explain?
As for the hapless individual responsible for showing the Simpsons on the BBC, where shows are repeated on a virtually weekly basis, without the slightest apology, this person wasn’t just kissed by the Bad Repeat Fairy, he or she was sodomized with a fucking nine-inch Bad Fairy strap-on until the arse bled, and while this is unfortunate for the individual concerned, it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer.
Taken from Idler 30
Nicholas Lezard keeps seeing the same episodes of his fave shows – but they’re never the good ones
Children born in fairy stories are often visited by either wicked or benign spirits at the moment of their christening. It is a notion I had considered of pure academic sociocultural import until I found myself watching, for what seemed like the hundredth time, a repeat of the “Trucking Song” sketch performed by the Not the Nine O’clock News team.
How to explain the vileness of this sketch to those who have not seen it? Rowan Atkinson and Pamela Stephenson, at the nadir of their talent, pretending to be in a lorry cab, sing to an inane tune the words “I like trucking, I like trucking, I like trucking and I like to truck, I like trucking, I like trucking, if you don’t like trucking tough luck.” Someone thinks this is worth repeating on terrestrial TV every so often. Fine. There is a market for all sorts of unspeakable shite. Let it be satisfied, I can always switch off and do something else. Yet I have seen every single repeat of this dismal little routine. Always at a time when I am so incapacitated with exhaustion or drink that I am unable to change the channel.
And yet I have not seen that Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock are beamed to the alternative universe Enterprise, where the Federation are pirates and they have to pretend to be bloodthirsty space pirates. I think I did see it when I was seven but for obvious reasons the details are hazy. I add that I have seen every other episode of Star Trek about eight times, and their appeal has waned almost to invisibility. But I want to see that, not badly enough to do anything proactive about it, it would just be nice to run across it. I’ve run across every other bloody episode.
Elsewhere in the TV universe, I only see the episodes of Father Ted I have already seen, the episodes of Black Books I have already seen, the episodes of Friends I have ever seen. And I know that even when I see new episodes in new series of these shows, and miss out others – for I retain the vestiges of a social life, and do not tie myself to the TV – these episodes will be the only ones I ever see, until eternity. The ones I miss first time round will remain forever invisible to me.
Who did this to me? I blame the Bad Repeat Fairy, who leaned over my cot at Saint Michael’s in London, NW8, in 1964, and planted a smacker on my puss which ensured that I would never fill certain gaps in my TV experience, which to someone of mine and subsequent generations means an incomplete education. Other fairies, I have to say, jostled around my crib on that auspicious day, and I hope to mention them in future issues. Doing so will help explain much that has gone both wrong and right with my life, and, I suspect, with yours. For how often have various probabilities broken down in your life, which only this hypothesis can explain?
As for the hapless individual responsible for showing the Simpsons on the BBC, where shows are repeated on a virtually weekly basis, without the slightest apology, this person wasn’t just kissed by the Bad Repeat Fairy, he or she was sodomized with a fucking nine-inch Bad Fairy strap-on until the arse bled, and while this is unfortunate for the individual concerned, it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer.
Taken from Idler 30
"For Jerome, idleness had little in common with laziness. His notion of idleness in the world beyond his fiction was one of contemplative productivity with the minimum of fuss."