Thursday 20 June 2013

It could have been me


I love this picture of Princess Eugenie photo-bombing her grandmother at Ascot this week. So like her mother. Right - down to business, and it's business which some people outside of the UK may find a little confusing.

There have been a few milestones in 'The Archers' over the years - the gay kiss under the poly-tunnel (no innuendo intended... yeah, right) between Ian and Adam; the audible sex in the shower between Joleen and her ghastly Brummie husband (whose name I have forgotten and I wish I could also forget the scene) which provided the Foley artist with such a lot of interesting work involving cucumbers and plaster of Paris; lesbian affairs, etc. etc.

Last night, Jazzer let off a loud and fruity fart straight into the microphone, then actually said, "Better out than in", just in case you missed it.

This is radio on the edge, pushing the boundaries and giving a no-holds-barred, gritty portrayal of what the life of ordinary country folk is really like.

With one brief blast of flatulence, Jazzer has transformed himself from the standard, token Scotsman - one of which every soap is contractually obliged to have in the cast - into a real, living and breathing, deep-fried Mars Bar-eating Jock that we know from long experience makes up at least 90% of the residents up there.

But Jazzer is a more complex character than his Highland-Games organising, beer-swilling stereotype would suggest. Every Christmas for the last few years, he has been persuaded to stand up and sing a classic Scottish folk song, and he sings it so sweetly that one wonders how on earth he learnt to perform so well that he ended up as a milkman and sheep-shearer rather than a professional singer on the folk ballad circuit, if such a thing exists.

The actor who plays Jazzer is totally blind, so I assume his sense of smell is fairly acute as well. I wonder if he does his own stunts?

I once entered a competition for charity in which the winner would briefly appear in one episode of The Archers, but sadly didn't win. I would give almost anything to record just one little fart which would be heard by millions on the nation's best-loved and most long-running radio show.  Sigh...

16 comments:

  1. Well it made me Larf
    Lilian's snotty crying is getting on my tits

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    1. Yes, me too. Get over it, you dozy cow (Lilian, not you, John). He was a psychopathic c*** (like 50% of the rest of them) anyway.

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    2. By which I mean 50% are psychopaths, the rest are just c***s - to a man, even the children.

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  2. Gosh! And to think I've been watching Channel 4 News instead... On the other hand listening to sex in the shower while having my dinner might be problematic...

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    1. Every now and then, I involuntarily re-live the scene in my head, and start gagging all over again, years later.

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  3. I see that xenophobia towards the Scots is still alive and well in your Bathonian brain ?

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    1. Xenophobia involves hatred and fear, and feel neither of those toward our kilted brethren of the North. I don't think they can say the same about us down here. Most of them hate us English, and have (historically) good reason to be wary of us. I feared the British government when the cabinet was about 99% Scottish. I like taking the piss out of Welshmen too, but I prefer it when they are Druids as well.

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    2. 'I' - insert where you like, but have a care.

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  4. The horse of a London Hackney Carriage lets out a huge fart, so the driver turns to his lady passenger and says 'Sorry about that Maa'm'.
    The lady replies 'Oh that's all right; I HAD thought it was the horse'.

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    1. That's like the old, "How dare you fart in front of my wife!" joke. ("I didn't know it was her turn", is the punch-line, in case you don't remember).

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  5. Tom, you need your own long running radio soap, and can't wait to see what you will say about that. "Take the piss out of," I believe you say. Or not.

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    1. I think that Mr Gray is a better contender for some sort of sit-com than me, Joanne. I (like the user manuals of most electronic equipment these days) take it for granted that most US people now know the difference between our different uses of the word, 'pissed'. You get angry, we get drunk. Sometimes we get both at the same time, though. We take the piss out of people, you just shit them - "You shitting me?"

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  6. Nope. Missed the whole thing. Damn. (Again).

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    1. There is no justice. We had to endure about 10 years of Kylie Minogue on 'Neighbours', and you have never heard of Ambridge. Some sort of one-sided media carve-up.

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  7. Damn, missed it. I gave up listening to the Archers a few years ago - maybe I should start again. Or maybe not.

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    1. A few years makes little difference to a prodigal Archers fan. I will probably have heard that fart about 5 times by next week, if you count 'Feedback' and 'Pick of the Week'.

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