Fancy a laugh?

It’s been hard finding something that makes me laugh as much as the series of Ricky Gervais podcasts that swept the nation, but the Cobra Pubcast with Dom Joly and Danny Wallace comes closer than most efforts.

Joly, in particular, is very funny.

The main problem with the episodes is that they’re too short, clocking in at roughly 15 minutes each, but it’s quality stuff with one particularly great piece about when Iain Lee got an egg thrown at his back when he was on the job.

It’s also very amusing listening to Joly’s enthusiasm for his ‘new’ gameshow ‘Cunt or Not Cunt’ and Wallace’s refusal to say anything nasty about anyone no matter how hard Joly pushes him.

Great guests too – Iain Lee, Mackenzie Crook and others.

All 10 episodes available free from iTunes.

Going Ape Shit

Well, I’m back from France – refreshed, chilled-out and with lots of nice memories of a very enjoyable break, of which more in future posts.

For now – a minor rant which is aimed at a new target for me – Five TV.

They have a program called ‘Monkey Time’.

Now, granted it’s filmed here – a place in Dorset called ‘Monkey World’ – but to call the program ‘Monkey Time’ when it’s all about rescue apes seems to just reinforce the common misconception that anything hairy and non-human but vaguely human-shaped is a monkey. It’s not always – it could be an ape.

I’ve guffawed long and loud at the ‘Monkey News’ parts of the Ricky Gervaise podcasts in which Karl Pilkington always talks about a chimpanzee doing something incredible like holding up a bank but that was for (great) comic effect.

However, to screen a serious program perpetuating this misconception just seems wrong to me.

It’s not that far short of calling a program ‘All About Great Big Fuck-off Fish’ and then filling it with footage of whales…