Badgerstoke on Comedy

Badgerstoke on Comedy

The television comedy of today is not a patch on what it was in the past. In the 1960s and 1970s we had such comedy gems as Terry and June, On The Buses and Crossroads. There is nothing today to match that golden age. It really does worry me that the youth of today will grow up with no sense of humour and then where would we be? It is a well-known fact that people with no sense of humour are more prone to commit petty crime and it isn’t too much of a stretch to assume that much of today’s crime can be laid at the door of such new wave comedians as Ricky Jervase and Roland Atkinson.

In my day we had such enlightened liberal comedians as Bernard Manning and Jim Davison and we’ll never see their like again.

It all started to go wrong with so called alternative comedians in the 1980’s. I did try to get into the spirit of the thing at the time but I found that the bad language put me off. I did take Mrs Badgerstoke to see a new wave comedian at the civic hall just after we were married. This didn’t turn out to well as my wife put her finger in her ears every time she heard a swear word and so she tended to miss much of the show.

I was determined to give it another try on my own (nobody can say I give up easily) and watched a couple of stand-up comedians on a late night TV show and I now think I understand the secret of Alternative Comedy. What I noticed was that they were still telling the same old jokes that I’d heard in the past but their trick was to tell the joke in a very loud and aggressive voice and sprinkle in the F-word occasionally and for no apparent reason. This tactic disguised the fact that it was just an old joke that they were telling and allowed the comedian to reuse much material that had been discarded by other non-Alternative comedians because it was no longer funny.

Comedians seem to have calmed down a bit since the 1980s but they still haven’t got back to the quality of their heyday. Many of today’s shows like Little Britain save on material by just doing exactly the same sketches every week. I can only assume that they are hoping their audience have forgotten the previous show.

Mrs Badgerstoke insisted that we had Satellite Television so that we could continue to watch the delights of yester-year. She is a great fan of Are You Being Served and is particularly fond of allusions to Mrs. Slocombe’s pussy as she is an animal lover herself.

Badgerstoke’s Tip: You can always freshen up an old joke by talking loudly swearing.

Badgerstoke on Sexuality

A couple of weeks ago Mr Jones and Mr Chang who live at number 1 announced that they were coming out of the wardrobe and were in fact gay. This was not a great surprise as they’d already told everybody informally two years ago. I think the only reason for the announcement now was as an excuse for a party.

So last Thursday Mrs Badgerstoke and I went along in the evening with a bottle of fizzy wine that my cousin had given me for my birthday. Everyone from the close was there as well as a few others. My daughter Gloria, who lives two streets away, was there with her husband Dean. Gloria is a highly qualified hairdresser and will visit people in their homes and do their hair for a very reasonable price and she cuts Mr Chang’s hair every few weeks. If Mr Jones wasn’t completely bald then I’m sure he’d be a customer as well. It was a surprise to see my son-in-law Dean there as it is normally difficult to get him out of his armchair but I expect that the television programmes that evening may have been not very good.

I must say it was a really excellent spread. There was quiche, sausages on sticks, vol-au-vents, various cheeses and lots more. Also there were open bottles of wine on the table for people to refill their glasses as they pleased. At one point in the evening I made the mistake of filling my glass from the bottle that we’d brought along but when I realised this I disposed of it into a large pot plant when no one was looking.

As Mr Chang is a Chinese gentleman I was a little surprised that there was no oriental type nibbles but when I tackled him about this he said that he actually came from Wolverhampton. I should have guessed from his accent but in the past I had always thought that he must have had elocution lessons from someone who came from the West Midlands. I expect that also explained why there was ELO playing on the stereo instead of something more oriental.

At one point in the evening I found myself sitting next to Mrs Bradley the widow that lives at number 6. She was telling me about her in-growing toenails. The good thing about Mrs Bradley is that she doesn’t expect you to say anything during any conversation you have with her and so you can use the time productively to think about other things. Mrs Bradley’s husband was deaf so in a way they had the perfect marriage. After he passed on Mrs Bradley got herself a parrot as a replacement. I must say it is unusual to hear a parrot say “lumbago” and “bunions” instead of “hello” and “who’s a pretty boy then”.

Anyway as I was sitting there not quite listening to Mrs Bradley talking about her sciatica I started to consider a statistic I’d read once that one in ten people are gay. Well a quick check of the close and I found we had exactly thirty people living there and so there should be three gay people. Well if Mr Jones and Mr Chang were two of them then who was the third?

Later in the evening I was chatting to Miss Dingle from number 13 and I began to wonder if she was the missing gay person as to my knowledge she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Feeling more uninhibited than normal due to the six glasses of wine I’d drunk I asked her about her sexuality. She said she couldn’t talk about it there but I could come around to her house at nine o’clock the next evening if I wanted.

The party wrapped up quite late and we all agreed that Mr Jones and Mr Chang should go back in the wardrobe so that they could come out again next year.

On Friday I told Mrs Badgerstoke that I was popping out for a little walk and went to see Miss Dingle to ask her whether she was gay. I must say she has no idea of punctuality. I got there a few minutes after nine o’clock and she was still in her underwear. It was the sort that Mrs Badgerstoke used to wear only it was much more colourful and it took a lot less material to cover Miss Dingle that it does to cover my wife.

Miss Dingle was also wearing long boots and carrying a riding crop. I’d never realised that she was a horsewoman in the past (I wonder where she keeps her horse?). I came right to the point of my visit and asked her about her sexuality and she suggested that we should go into the bedroom to discuss the matter; I assumed that she wanted to put something on over her underwear. As we went she kept flicking the riding crop in my direction and I had to tell her she could have someone’s eye out unless she was more careful.

When we got to the bedroom I found that Miss Dingle has a most strange hobby; she collects police equipment. Hanging on the walls were handcuffs, chains, hoods and lots of other stuff that I didn’t recognise. She suggested that I might like to try some on but I declined and said I’d only come to talk and she seemed most disappointed. And so we returned to the lounge where I asked her straight-out about her sexuality and she assured me that she wasn’t in fact the missing gay person and she had no idea who it might be.

So I’m not sure who it is but I will keep my eyes open and be sure to let you know if I discover anything.

Badgerstoke’s Tip: Gay people are just ordinary people who happen to be gay. So they can be just as annoying as everyone else.

Badgerstoke on The Democratic Process

Recently we had elections for the role of Police Commissioner and I noticed with some sadness that the turnout was very low. King Charles II had his head cut off and King John signed the Magna Carta so that we could all have the right to vote.  I think it’s very important that we exercise that right even if we have no idea who the candidates are or what they stand for as was the case with the Police Commissioner elections.

The Badgerstokes go to the polling station, located at The Dame Deidre Bagshot primary school, as a family. Mrs Badgerstoke and I set off after tea and before the good television starts and we pick up our daughter Gloria, who lives just a couple of streets away, on the way there.

Gloria’s husband Brian is on a Government scheme which seems to involve a good deal of sitting in an armchair and watching day time television. I do encourage Brian to join us but he says he doesn’t vote on the principle that all politicians are a waste of space. I did point out to him that most people share that opinion but that doesn’t stop them voting but he was firm on his decision not to join us and to continue watching the television, especially as it was starting to rain.

Voting is a secret process and even Mrs Badgerstoke and I don’t know how each other vote although I did get a hint at the last General Election when my wife pointed out that the Liberal Democrat candidate was wearing tight jeans and had rather a nice looking bottom.

In order to ensure that people don’t guess my political allegiance I discourage any party that comes to our house canvasing by pretending to have the opposite opinion to their policy. For example when the Conservative party calls I tell them that I’m in favour of Nationalising The Royal Family and the Railways and that’s normally enough to make them go away. For the Labour party, telling them I’d like to privatise the NHS is normally enough to make them froth at the mouth and walk away muttering.

I did have an unfortunate misunderstanding a few years ago when I mistook some Jehovah’s Witnesses who called at our house for members of UKIP as they tend to dress in a similar fashion. When they told me that they could save me from eternal damnation I thought that that manifesto pledge might be going just a little bit too far.

I know the country did flirt with the idea of changing our voting system from first-past-the-post to AV (Alternating Vote) a little while ago and I’m glad we decided not to. The first-past-the-post system is quite simple to use (although it doesn’t in fact have a post involved anywhere in the process). It is a shocking fact that 50% of the population have less than average intelligence and hence are not able to understand AV and so I won’t describe it here in case any of them might try and read this and get a headache.

So I hope I’ve persuaded you of the importance of voting. Whether you vote Labour or Conservative or for one of the more offbeat parties it is important that you put your cross in the box.

Badgerstoke’s Tip: If you don’t know who to vote for it is acceptable to close your eyes and choose at random. After all it’s a secret process and no one will ever know what you did.