The Week on the Telly: August 12 2011 by shoutingatco.ws

Clowns, BBC2

‘This is the ultimate insurance.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a cricket box. ‘Cos I tell youwhat, the one thing young boys find funny is to come up and kick you in the nuts.’

Tommy Tickle is a clown. He bought his round off a guy called Timmy Tickle, who moved to Essex to be Silly Billy Blue Hat. If you imagine Psychoville’s Mr Jelly, you have a rough idea of Tommy Tickle’s attitude to entertaining children. It is, apparently, a very stressful job, ’I do seven parties a week,’ he puffs as he forms a balloon animal for a room full of screaming children, ‘on vodka, gin and Prozac.’

A universal problem for all children’s entertainers is children. Waving his box of magic tricks, the ever upbeat Tommy enters his latest gig. The children gather chaotically around him, ’You’ve got a big fat bum,’ yells one of them.

Somewhat understandably, at the end of the day, Tommy likes to seek solace in fags and booze. He stands propped up outside a pub, in full clown outfit, simultaneously drinking two pints and smoking. Tommy’s demanding job affects his relationship with his own children, ’You know, I’ve been dealing with kids all day, the last thing I want to do is come home to my own,’ he declares, leering over his tiny son in his terrifying clown make up. He howls until he is taken away by his mother.

Lazy-town escapee Potty the Pirate lives alone, and is shy of women. His Mother despairs of him ever meeting the right woman. She sits stony faced at the back of the room as he performs a gig at the local Children’s Hospital.

‘I have told him,’ she sighs at the end, ‘that I’m not interested in magic.’

I watch Potty roller blade around the city centre, and talk about his father’s raging alcoholism, and his desire to meet a truly romantic woman. I share his mother’s despair. Things, however, appear to be looking up. Potty has a date with a Hungarian accountant who is taking him to a burlesque night. Could she be the one, or will he spend the whole night talking about his new routine, and ruin everything?We hear the tragic tale of The Great Velcro, a children’s entertainer for thirty years. The other entertainers speak of him in hushed tones, as one who fell. The Great Velcro did a show in a park; a child started annoying him…so he decked him. It only takes one mistake to end a career. Now he is reduced to entertaining dazed looking pensioners,

‘Well, it’s an audience,’ he sighs, as he surveys the silent room.

Snog, Marry, Avoid? BBC3

Watching Snog, Marry, Avoid is the television equivalent of staying up all night, staring into space and letting your brain entertain you with nonsensical gibberish at 3am. Or at least that’s how I imagine the concept was born. This week the team (by which I mean Jenny Frost and a fake computer) tackle Geisha, a performance artist who likes to paint her face white and wear a Barbie’s dress as a headpiece.

‘This is the most drastic transformation we’ve ever attempted,’ gushes Jenny, ‘will Geisha have kept the look?’

The camera cuts to Geisha, slouched nonchalantly in a chair, dressed as a ghostly Charlie Chaplin.
I’m guessing that’s a no then.

Eggheads, BBC2

In these current troubled times, I feel that the country needs something to unite behind, a cause we can all relate to. Something, for example, like finally, once and for all, taking down the Eggheads. Why have we, as a nation, let them continue for so long? Why do we tolerate CJ’s quizzically raised eyebrows, or Daphne’s smug face? And why does Kevin know everything?

People of Britain, we need to assemble our population of 60 million, and find the best quiz teams. Hundreds of amazing quiz teams, so that the Eggheads are beaten not once every three months, but every episode. I want to see them so thoroughly beaten that Chris is left staring blankly into space, struggling to remember his own name, dribbling a little. And CJ’s hair falls out.

Come on people, we outnumber them a million to one, we can do this!

*switches on training montage music from Rocky IV*

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