Still Fast
As has been previously documented, when I lived in a shared house it was far more ‘The Young Ones’ (at least in terms of squalor) than ‘This Life’ (although fair to say I did manage to have a relationship with one of my house mates, before she worked out that beneath the façade that I had erected (yuk yuk) to try and pass myself off as a fascinating adult was somebody with the emotional dept of an Arabian puddle – all I can say is thank fuck this happened during the years Doctor Who was off our screens, or she would have drawn her own, quite correct, conclusions from the number of sonic screwdriver replicas on display in my room and the relationship would have ended with the emotional equivalent of her blinking twice when asked if everything was alright, rather than in the pleasingly traditional manner of her finding somebody with more, i.e. any, muscle tone and dumping me like nuclear waste in a national park). There was, however, a period where we had a mix of people in the house who shared the same interests; coming home and sitting quietly in front of the telly.
In retrospect, we should all have recognised that in terms of relationships, we were never going to do any better, formed a commune, bought i) the house and ii) an enormous telly and lived out the rest of our days wearing DVT stockings.
We didn’t. I went on to convince somebody else that I was a fully functioning adult by not revealing the extent of my comic collection, hidden at my mother’s house, or indeed my mother, also hidden there, until it was too late. As for the rest, I think they are all essentially following the example set by the actors from ‘This Life’; you never hear from them but you sort of know they are doing well.
I think the secret to our all getting on well together (two blokes, two girls and one bloke who was never, ever, there) was that we never discussed anything personal, or if we did, we only did it drunk and so everything could be denied or diplomatically forgotten the next day.
So how did we communicate? Not, I am pleased to say, through the traditional housemate method of increasingly aggressive post-it-notes left on bedroom doors, fridges, loo handles, plates stacked awaiting washing up and so on. Rather, it would appear, through catch phrases.
This became apparent when I watched the two part ‘Fast Show’ special this week.
When it comes to comedy, reviving a show that has been off air is usually about as effective as passing electricity through a corpse and hoping for a reproduction of the original features, and about as funny as passing electricity through a corpse and having it reanimate and start throttling bunnies. Not so here, this was hysterical. In being so, it was in defiance of ‘Trotter’s Law’ - that a revived show is exactly as terrible as the original was beloved.
As the familiar characters and catchphrases rolled out, I recalled not sitting in front of the telly, but standing in the kitchen holding a packet of unlucky cod announcing ‘Tonight, I shall mostly be eating…fish fingers’. I recall the watching the climax of a particularly bitter episode of University Challenge and, as the buzzer goes for the last question, my housemate piping up ‘Sorry, I’ve just come’. And whenever any of us encountered another when wearing a dressing gown, one, the other, or both, would simply begin ‘Me? The thirteenth Duke of Winbourne? Here?’ and go on to describe something utterly filthy involving penguins.
The revival was spectacular, and funny. And most important of all (J.J. Abrams please note) it did not take a cherished memory and Yewtree it.
In retrospect, we should all have recognised that in terms of relationships, we were never going to do any better, formed a commune, bought i) the house and ii) an enormous telly and lived out the rest of our days wearing DVT stockings.
We didn’t. I went on to convince somebody else that I was a fully functioning adult by not revealing the extent of my comic collection, hidden at my mother’s house, or indeed my mother, also hidden there, until it was too late. As for the rest, I think they are all essentially following the example set by the actors from ‘This Life’; you never hear from them but you sort of know they are doing well.
I think the secret to our all getting on well together (two blokes, two girls and one bloke who was never, ever, there) was that we never discussed anything personal, or if we did, we only did it drunk and so everything could be denied or diplomatically forgotten the next day.
So how did we communicate? Not, I am pleased to say, through the traditional housemate method of increasingly aggressive post-it-notes left on bedroom doors, fridges, loo handles, plates stacked awaiting washing up and so on. Rather, it would appear, through catch phrases.
This became apparent when I watched the two part ‘Fast Show’ special this week.
When it comes to comedy, reviving a show that has been off air is usually about as effective as passing electricity through a corpse and hoping for a reproduction of the original features, and about as funny as passing electricity through a corpse and having it reanimate and start throttling bunnies. Not so here, this was hysterical. In being so, it was in defiance of ‘Trotter’s Law’ - that a revived show is exactly as terrible as the original was beloved.
As the familiar characters and catchphrases rolled out, I recalled not sitting in front of the telly, but standing in the kitchen holding a packet of unlucky cod announcing ‘Tonight, I shall mostly be eating…fish fingers’. I recall the watching the climax of a particularly bitter episode of University Challenge and, as the buzzer goes for the last question, my housemate piping up ‘Sorry, I’ve just come’. And whenever any of us encountered another when wearing a dressing gown, one, the other, or both, would simply begin ‘Me? The thirteenth Duke of Winbourne? Here?’ and go on to describe something utterly filthy involving penguins.
The revival was spectacular, and funny. And most important of all (J.J. Abrams please note) it did not take a cherished memory and Yewtree it.
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