June 21st 2005

For a few brief, terrible weeks I worked on The Eleven O'Clock Show. It was essentially a drop in centre for socially retarded comics who didn't know any better and had nowhere else to go. Granted, it launched Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais into the stratosphere of excellent comic achievement. My contributions, however, fell more often into The Eleven O'Clock Show specialty of running down to the Elephant and Castle and shouting "Quick, old man, say wank before we lose the light". He'd look politely back at the camera crew, wondering how to leave without causing offence, so we'd have to squeeze it out of him. "You see, old man, the producer and I have spent the afternoon thinking of ways to make you look stupid - the whole afternoon, in fact, so being as English is your second language I'll ask you a lame, half-arsed, loosely euphemistic question, then you look confused while the camera lunges towards your face and then say, "I don't really know" in your funny accent. When you've gone I'll look smugly into the camera to show how much cleverer I am than you, because I have a producer and you don't."

Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci could never have known when they made The Day Today that thousands of devotees would so carelessly, crappily copy their model and so many nice old people would be left wondering what the hell just happened as four big men and a camera strode away giggling. All of that was a long time ago though, and of course producers and Channel 4 have moved on in leaps and bounds since then. I mean, now the gags are as sophisticated as squirting Tom Cruise in the face with a water pistol microphone. That is literally thigh-slappingly funny, isn't it? Take the week off, whichever genius thought up that "prank". In fact, take the month off, or better still the life. I don't much care about Tom Cruise - he was a good prop for Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, he was a great advertisement for warmongery in Top Gun and was, of course, the reason Rebecca De Mornay got her kit off in Risky Business making my teenage years a happier place than it might otherwise have been. Beyond that he is pretty good at what he does, he might be an acting genius appreciated by generations to come, he might not be/he might be gay, he might not be - who knows or cares? My problem is that it's just so bloody easy to squirt Tom Cruise in the face with a water pistol shaped microphone so why bother? Perhaps it was a protest against the dominance of the Hollywood studio system and the vanity of celebrity culture, perhaps a strange, watery satire on the transparent tasteless nature of a red carpet plug for a tiresome remake of an already tiresome film.

Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just shit. Happily the Steve Penk wannabe and his crew were arrested and the microphone confiscated so with any luck we will never know. Paul Kaye, aka Dennis Pennis, did all this years ago, didn't he? No wonder happy slapping is all the rage when people are paid to make TV like this, (and in case anyone is wondering - I know the ice upon which I skate is perilously thin). But how long will it be before some barrel-scraping TV production company is asking kids to email in their wackiest hate crimes caught on mobile video. "This week on Mobile Maulings and Muggery we see this zany gang of hooded thugs terrify a junior school pupil - "just look at her face as they pull out a big knife - classic."

Whatever hot-shot, peroxide-headed producer is reading this with pen in hand and finger poised over the speed dial button to Endemol, I was only kidding. Please just stop.