My Favourite Moments in this Season of Mock the Week so far.

I honestly think that this year’s Mock the Week is the best so far and, because I’m a bit depressed because my iPod is broken upon irretrievable limits, here’s to listing them!

01. Russell Howard’s monologue about newspapers. The Sun hollering, “Are you a paedo?! Are you a paedo? Are you a paedo?” incessantly, The Daily Express still lamenting Diana, The independent’s shock tactics to getting readers to care about the environment, The Daily Mail’s bigotry and The Guardian’s penchant for wallcharts… classic. “YOU JUST KILLED A POLAR BEAR!”

02. Hugh Denis envisioning what it’d be like for John Cain, who can only lift his arms up to shoulder level, to feed himself.

03. Michael McIntyre’s anecdote about “Slow Arab”.

04. All the Josef Fritzl jokes… “Welcome to meet our families. Mr Fritzl, where’s yours?” “It’s not the Von Trapp family, but it’s the Trapped family!” “Ignore the banging, she’s been in there for 24 years!”

05. “What’s that joker? You’ll be back? Somehow, I don’t think so.” – Frankie Boyle. So, so harsh, but my brother and I were in stitches with cruel laughter.


06. “There is a vegetarian option… you can fuck off!”

07. The spoof of M&S. “This isn’t just a gimp. This is an S&M gimp”

08. Just the general weird voice that Russell Howard uses that goes quite deep and bizarre.

09. "Marks & Spencers Potatoes, They're just fucking potatoes"

10. “Hello, I’m back from my canoeing trip!”

11. The discussion about laptops and porn.


Also, I reckon Mock the Week is rather good value for the pretty. Russell Howard’s Peter Crouch-lookalike is my no.1, but Ed Byrne’s Irish accent completely makes me swoon, and Mark Watson, once you get used to his hyperactiveness, is completely adorable too.



So if you don’t watch it, what are you waiting for? It’s all up on YouTube, and I guarantee that you'll be laughing for ages. :D

Seeing the funny side of it all with the lil’ brother.

Earlier this week when I was sitting in the study reading “Candyfloss” with Tom, my brother (yes, I know, but for his entrance exams in secondary school we’ve been told that he’s really bad at English and should read as many types of books as poss. Hence the Jackie Wilson), my mum came in and asked us if we’d heard of the actor Morgan Freeman. I was indignant beyond belief, he only goes and bloody stars in my favourite bloody film! Even Tom acted like the question was ridiculous, yelling at her, “He was in The Dark Knight, mum!”

Anyway, my mum told us that he’d been in a terrible car crash and was in a terrible condition. I was heartbroken, it sounded to me like it might die, and it was Morgan Freeman! The Dark Knight was starting to become a curse.

Two days later though, I heard that he was alive in hospital. To say he was well would be pushing it, but he’d been well enough to banter with all the nurses and even say to the paparazzi “no freebies!” when they’d tried to snap him up.

Freeman could have a laugh and a joke even at the unfunniest, seemingly most dismal situation. And that made me smile.

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Btw, terrifying as The Dark Knight was, now that it’s been two weeks since me and Tom watched it, we can’t stop taking the piss out of it. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a great film (in my top 4 of the year along with Wall-E, Man on Wire and Bigga than Ben [my part guilty pleasure, part obsessed with Russia movie]) and technically wonderful, etc etc, but the lines that had me quivering in fright in the cinema, now, with retrospect, also happen to be such easy targets of ridicule.

Take the line “Want to know how I got these scars?”

I currently possess a heat rash, and one morning I went to Tom, “Want to know how I got this heat rash?” in that creepy Heath voice, and we couldn’t stop laughing.

Another area of The Dark Knight that Tom and I enjoy making fun of is Harvey Dent’s horrifying face. You know how in the movie it was beyond terrifying, simply because one side of his face was normal and the other, his mouth and eyes are wide open? Well, we’ve been trying (and failing) to distort our own faces like that in front of the mirror.

I know we’re never going to make it onto Mock the Week, but laughing at inappropriate things is what me and my brother do best. Whilst it’s OK that he does it – he’s 10 – I’m 18, a legal adult, and probably should start growing up sometime soon. XD

All this piss-taking out of The Dark Knight is my way of pussfooting around writing an actual review of it. I just can't, I dunno why.

Having a laugh.

Thursday night signalled the return of one of my all-time favourite comedy shows, Mock the Week, (and Friday the return of a less-loved, but still entertaining, Would I Lie to You?) And thank God, because without the comedy shows, I do think that I would have started to go mad with the bad blood from Summer.

Mock the Week came back in rollicking good form, with guests Lucy Porter and Michael McIntyre (whom I had the pleasure of seeing live last year) in addition to the show’s regulars Russell Howard, Hugh Denis, Andy Parsons, Frankie Boyle and the show’s presenter Dara Ó Briain. I always learn quite bit about current affairs from watching MTW, and surely enough, one of the things I learnt this week was that inflation in Zimbabwe is 1 million per cent. However, that was only after a lot of banter encompassing topics from Amy Winehouse’s constant state of drunkenness to the Media over-reaction to that 14-year-old Brit winning young Wimbledon. Then there was the creatively titled “Britain’s Got Jokes”, wherein four fo the contestants did a spot of stand up, before the caption round. In this week’s round, the actual caption was “Church Decrees Women Bishops”, with a photo relating to the outcry aagins the female bishops. Of course, the panel knew very well what the actual caption was, but that didn’t stop them from having a bit of fun first. “Christ Didn’t Wear Bras” was one suggestion. “Church Don’t Want Birds” was another.

Finally, it was the familiarly brilliant round “Scenes We’d Like to See”, which had me in total stitches. Despair at the state of society clearly exists in these comedians, but following the prescription that laughter makes the best medicine, they show us that all you can do is laugh.