Friday, April 16, 2010

The Great Debate

Following the Great Big Historic Seemingly-Endless Telly Debate last night, I’m sure the question on everybody’s lips this morning is: how the devil are they going to fill three more hours of this? They’ve already covered immigration, crime, health, education, the expenses scandal and defence, and we’re only a third of the way through.

Assuming they’re not going to stoop to a swimsuit round, or take to the Total Wipeout course when they reach the BBC, I estimate that the only burning national issues still to be covered are:

- Why do the Scottish hate the English?
- Is global warming a myth?
- How can we get Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard to play together in midfield for England?
- Does Richard Dawkins exist?
- Is a golf hole-in-one a matter of skill or fluke?*
- What does an unborn baby dream about?


(*that one should produce a few fireworks, it always does)

20 comments:

  1. or..

    Zen, dark or light? ying or yang?

    blackjacks or fruit salads?

    The hooting yard, does it add up?

    keepin, it real, or keepin' it odd?

    over the rainbow, does is justify the licence fee alone?

    Should we dive bomb Iceland with A380s

    Will elbery find love? does Elbery belive in love?

    Will Garth learn to love his DVD player?

    3 hours will not be enough.

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  2. Are cats really smaller than horses - or are they just further away?

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  3. The abolition of dog poo.

    Does Sean misspell my name deliberately as part of some obscure wind-up or, er, not?

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  4. And who is this 'Elbery', Shaun?

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  5. Where, when, why, if. Or none of the above, someone described it as a rather badly written school play, media fodder in the process of being devoured, I thought.

    Is this all there is, this stuff?

    And Elberry.

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  6. Willard12:26 pm

    A very astute observation, Brit. Clearly a flaw in this plan of having a different broadcaster host each debate. They clearly want to be seen asking the 'big' questions. In other words, we'll have two more reruns with Gordon increasingly seen to be talking over the others, David withdrawing more in his shell, and Nick tutting and rolling his eyes and saying things like 'isn't this typical of these two?' whilst trying to look indifferent to the whole process my playing with the loose change in his pocket.

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  7. Better than the dreary "debate" were the embittered comments afterwards from those who'd been left out of it. I particularly liked the Plaid Cymru spokesman complaining that none of the contestants had mentioned Wales once.

    Love secrets of sleeping in your suit - and waking without a crease!

    An ogre's guide to baby-kissing

    Which one is the real elephant in the room?

    Sock Puppets for Dummies

    Will the King of Shaves make you a better liar?

    Why do people who go to Prestatyn never come back?

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  8. Mark - heh heh, yes I enjoyed that Plaid chap too.

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  9. I just realized that there's no post explaining why the Americans hate the English. Until recently this could have been explained by a witty remark to the effect that we're a little fuzzy on the distinction between "English" and "British" (English translates roughly as "from the big island," right?), which is at the heart of the "why they hate us" series, and then by noting that, by and large, we don't.

    But now that we're making our foreign policy by looking up country names in the index to A People's History of the United States, I think we are supposed to hate you.

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  10. Brown and Cameron seemed to have a personal story for every occasion, starting something like "Well, I was in Dunstable the other week and an old lady said to me..."

    So the interviewers should now come up with questions designed to expose made-up-on-the-hoof Joe Bloggses. I look forward to the tale of the Mancunian circus freak child kept in a dank cellar wearing a crown of thorns because the NHS is so crap.

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  11. True Martpol, though Clegg pulled off the Corny Coup by noting down all the audience names and saying them all at the end.

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  12. As the only British programme I have access to is The Weakest Link, I suggest that the next round of the political debate should involve the parties voting each other off the election campaign. "Alex Salmond, why Gordon?" etc

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  13. It did occur to me, that after having not watched the opening shots in the Gnasher versus Lord Snooty Versus Harry Potter wellie throwing contest, there seems to be a deficiency of wow factor. The show, being hosted by ITV, was never in any case going to be anything other than third rate.
    I proffer the following gem..the remaining episodes done as that well known gardening programme hosted by that well known dolt Titchmarsh. Cast as follows...
    Titchmarsh......Sprechter
    Gnasher Brown...Tommy Walsh
    Lord Snooty.....Charlie Dimmock
    Harry Potter....The third Leylandii on the left
    The discussion will be of an informal nature, taking place as various patio's are laid and water features and nipples are switched on, the cast arriving and leaving in the obligatory tipper truck, rubbish removed by Pansy Mandelson's skip hire company, the truck bought with the dosh given to Pansy by Jeff Robinson.
    The winner will be the one we ogled at the most.
    The audience can feel free to hurl rotten fruit every time the contestant's sound insincere, thirty articulated lorries full of fruit will be on standby, just in case.

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  14. You need the thing we call 'The Worm' - completely worthless, but makes the whole thing three times as entertaining (ie very faintly)

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  15. I cant decide whether I should claim allegience with this Worm or not

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  16. Stephen8:12 pm

    I believe the following link may be relevant to this post.

    http://www.fridgemagnet.org.uk/toys/dave-met.php

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  17. I wish you all good luck from here in the colonies, but can you really support a Conservative Party with a slogan as frighteningly postmodern and ominous as this? Surely they have made a huge mistake and should have looked to their Canadian counterpart from the late 19th century to tap into the zeitgeist of our era.

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  18. Anonymous3:02 pm

    Elberry believes in: avoiding red wine and tramp gangs, keeping unscrupulous & hungry dogs out of his room, doing at least some lesson prep, buying an iron at some point, and so on. He doesn't believe in love. He thought he found it once but it turned out to be a sack of grout and now he only believes in things like buying an iron in the future, etc.

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  19. Viz. Peter's point: how about 'pessimism, caution and stability' as a more conservative slogan?

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