Critical Everything

The Cave of Tythamus

“And the tyrant rose up, all flesh seared from his body. In his hand was Methuzula, the living head staff, its eyes searching the army before it, its gaze striking terror in all that met it. ‘Die’, spoke the tyrant, and they did.”

So says the writing on the wall beside this rather strange cave painting, presumably of Tythamus, the mythical druidic tyrant who held Britain under a rule of terror, some 10,000 years ago.

The cave can be found not far outside the town of Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, set high into a hillside. Though no evidence of a grave or tomb has been found as of yet, it is believed to be final resting place of Tythamus. This is attested to in the writing which accompanies the painting. Of course, the body may have been moved or pillaged since, though archeologists currently searching the huge caves are confident they are close to unearthing it. Whether they should however, is the real question. Duh Duh Duuuuh.

What we know of Tythamus paints a grim picture. Abandoned at birth as an abomination, he was raised by wild dogs, not coming into contact with another human until he was nearly grown. This human was Methuzula, a wandering, powerful druid, who had long been searching for Thythamus, drawn by his wild, uncontrolled power.

Upon finding him, Methuzula aimed to teach him the ways of sorcery, in order that he could control his power, which unrestrained, threatened to destroy all around it. Unfortunately, the creature he met was more beast than man. A savage battle ensued, Tythamus emerging the victor after beheading Methuzula with a glass sword, magically forged from the sand they fought upon. Methuzula, drawing upon his great power, survived by trapping his soul in his detatched head. Speaking to Tythamus in a language beyond sound, he convinced him to keep him, that he might yet teach him. Consenting to the arrangement, Methuzula found himself mounted on a staff, to accompany Thythamus evermore. However, once Tythamus had learnt all he could from Methuzula, of humanity, sorcery, and other things besides, he bent him to his dark will, turning him into a weapon he could wield against the world he now sought to enslave. 

What followed was decades of bloody, horrific war as Tythamus forged the first unified Britain, forcefully unifying its tribes under one banner. Having achieved this, he sought to take over the continent, and all other lands besides. Before this could happen however, there was a revolt, led by 60 rebel druids. The battle was fierce to a degree that is hard to imagine, with magic tearing up the landscape, forming mountains and forging valleys. Finally Tythamus went down, burnt alive by a rain of lightning. He wasn’t dead however, and rising up as nothing more than a charred skeleton held together by sorcery, he destroyed the rebel army entirely. The attack that had been unleashed upon him had a curious side effect, in that it released Methuzula from the bonds holding him. Biding his time until after the fight, when Thythamus was at his weakest, he turned upon him, unleashing everything he possessed in a wave of power that turned the skeletal tyrant to lead, driving the magic from his bones and killing Methuzula in the process. When the dust had settled, a lone remaining druid apparently recovered the bones from the battlefield alongside the head of Methuzula, burying them both in a magic tomb, which would seal in their power for eternity, lest they somehow return to the mortal world. The words, written on the cave wall, were thus placed there as a warning and lesson to the future, or so the story goes.

Now, if you believe any of that, digging the fuckers up would strike me as a bad idea, not that I do, but I’m just saying. As for the point of this review, visiting the cave itself, do it! It’s a cool story, and there are all kinds of ancient cave paintings of weird stuff to look at, such as the image attached, as well as the full translation of the cave writing. Though not the oldest cave paintings, they certainly are the most interesting, and some of them are incredibly realised. I particularly loved an image of armoured fox riding a horse with a bearded goats head, which looks like it could have come straight from The Renaissance. If you stay in Merthyr Tydfil, you can trek to the cave with a guide in about five hours, where you will be given a really good tour, all for £20, which is pretty reasonable. You need to bring your own lunch though, so be warned.

Subjective Rating: 10/10. It’s a pretty unique experience

Objective Rating: 9/10, because there is always one twat who refuses to like stuff.

 

 

  

 

Procrastination……..

….. I’ll get back to reviewing it later.

This Blog

It’s been just about a year since I started this blog and what a year it’s been! Hummus has been made, teapots have been purchased; dreams have been lived. It only seemed right that having cast judgement on other peoples creations and, indeed, my own, I should mark the first anniversary by turning the monocle inwards, and reviewing my reviews. 

All in all, there have been 32 so far, some short, some long. Some good, some not so good. Hey, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Highlights include My Flatmates Weird Envelope Sketch, This Banana, Hoolio’s Magical Mirror Expedition and Mandigo and the Brass Finger. Getting retweeted by Ice-T, the man behind of one of hip-hop’s greatest albums EVER was also very special. In these articles I would say the writing was was top notch, up there with the best critical essays of our, or anyone else’s, time. There was humour, punctuation, pretty good spelling and a whole lot more besides.

Others were a bit shit. The Proms was pretty boring, Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll was rambling, and Spuntino was some foodie bollocks. Here the writing was less the peak of human literary achievement, and more the trough of human refuse. 

Taking the blog as a whole, I am probably biased in saying it’s better than it is worse. I also think it is a good idea and one I want to stick to, regardless of the fact I have about ten readers, (thanks readers). Sure, some of the subjects reviewed are a little mundane, I’m talking about you teapot, and some of the writing below par, but overall I am glad I’ve done it, and think there are still plenty of inane things that need my critical attention in this crazy old world. 

Subjective Rating: 8/10. It could be better, but I’m pretty happy with it so far. A high score maybe, but a person must have some belief in their doings if they are to keep doing them with confidence or indeed do them at all.

Objective Rating: 6/10. There are undoubtably better ways to waste your time, and reviews about actual real stuff are probably more useful to most people, but stick with me and I’ll keep you mildy entertained on a semi-regular basis. I promise.

P.S I’m giving this here review 2/10. It’s really just filler.

My Left Big Toe

Marmeduke Tewksbury the Left

My left big toe is called Marmeduke Tewksbury and he’s a bit of a cad. I would not say he is the best behaved big toe. I would not say that at all. He often sneaks off when I am asleep to go drinking and womanising. Furthermore, he is a heroin addict, which has knock on effects for me. Sometimes I wake up and my entire left foot is numb. Marmeduke himself will be swollen and blue, with a tiny belt tied around his waste. This is both good and bad. It’s good because the belt stops the rest of me getting high, otherwise I would surely be a fulltime smack addict by now. It’s bad because one day I am going to wake up to find I have a dead left toe, which I will then have to amputate and bury. 

Last week I was ripped from sleep by the sound of loud music and laughter. I awoke on a strange sofa, far from my bed to find Marmeduke canoodling with the two big toes of a crack hooker. Having gone into a rage, been threatened by a pimp and had the contents of my wallet repossessed, I had to make my way back across london, bare footsied in the chilly cold and dressed in nothing but my jim-jams. 

My Right Big Toe, Lawrence Tulip (see below), is a paragon of good behaviour and never gets into trouble. In fact he does very little of anything, like a big toe is supposed to, apart from brewing me thimbles of hot toddy when I have a cold. 

Lawrence Tulip the Right

Lawrence often gets bullied by Marmeduke, who will stamp on him when I am walking, often tripping me up in the process. He also calls him a loser and a goody-goody. It is true that Lawrence is a bit of a wet blanket, he often complains when I am out drinking and cries during action movies, even not very violent ones like 3 Ninjas. He also tries subtly and patiently to convert me to Christianity, which I find most annoying. I think he fears that he will be a lone toe in heaven, detached from the rest of me. This might be so, but he’ll have wings anyway, so what’s the fucking problem?

Sure, Marmeduke is a wildcard who often gets me in trouble, but at least he knows his own mind, lives life without sorrow or regret, and parties like a boss. I just wish it wasn’t at my expense:/

Subjective Rating: 6/10. I love the little guy really.

Objective Rating: None. I don’t think it’s possible to objectively rate one’s toe. 

Snack to the Future

Snack to the Future is an 80’s style sci-fi stoner B-movie with a cult following and an IMDB rating of 1.4. It stars a young Val Kilmer in the lead role, playing your typical weed-chuffing, booze-gulping young American fuckhead.

The plot is as such: Barney Kasovitz (Val Kilmer) is a dropout with a job as a newspaper boy, at the age of twenty. He lives on a friends sofa and spends his time bumming around, scrounging money, smoking tons of weed through his mega-bong and crashing college house parties where he inevitably bangs a bunch of wild ‘n’ crazy drunk chicks. The friend is a scientist and has all kinds of lab equipment laying about. This will become important later. He also happens to be the inventor of the mega-bong your man loves using so much. It is operated by a tiny fusion reactor. This is unimportant. In the midst of this debauched lifestyle, Barney is testing the patience of his scientist friend who is going to kick him out in a month and spends his time chastising him and telling him to get a real job. He is also becoming disillusioned himself with this crummy lifestyle and thinks he could do something great, if only he got the chance.

Anyway, after a particularly rugged house party montage in which our hero drinks a shit load of tequila, smokes a fuck ton of weed and has an orgy with a wank crate of girlies, he wakes up with the hangover to end all hangovers. (This montage happens to ‘Wasted’ by Black Flag. See Below:)

There is lipstick all over his face and a toothbrush up his arse, and he is in bed with a stuffed bear. Classic stuff.  Shuffling his way downstairs, he does a quick hit of the mega-bong before rooting about in the fridge, emerging with a couple slices of old, crummy pizza. Now here is where the film gets interesting. He puts the pizza in the microwave, turning it up to full power and switching it on, then stands there looking vacantly at it like the moron he is. What he doesn’t know, but we do, is that there was a post-it stuck to the microwave, presumably by his mad scientist friend, saying ‘NEVER, I REPEAT NEVER USE THIS FUCKER ON FULL!!!!!!!!!’. The note is there to see, but it falls off when he slams the microwave door, fluttering to the ground.

Basically, the microwave when operating on full power acts as some kind of mini particle accelerator, and reacting to the pizza, creates a wormhole in the fucking kitchen. Barney is like ‘WHOA!’, as this budgetly animated whirlpool grows from the microwave, sucking him into another dimension, a dimension inhabited by warlike tribes of humans and evolved giant land-squids with posh English accents. A few chases follow, a short spell of imprisonment in the squid fortress, an escape with a beautiful damsel, some fights, some sex, with both humans and squid ladies, and some getting fucked up strange-dimension style.

At some stage it is revealed that this is actually the earth a thousand years in the future. Squids have evolved to become dominant after human civilisation collapsed from war and pollution or whatever. The bands of humans still about have devolved to tribal gangs who are fighting the squids before they are made extinct. They are also fighting each other, because food etc. is scarce, and quite frankly they just roll like that. In the midst of this, Barney discovers vast swathes of wild growing weed. He manages to get the various tribes to make peace by getting them all stoned to fuck, (humans have no idea in the future that weed can be smoked and neither do squids), and then leads them in an all out assault on the squids. It just so happens the battle takes place the midst of the weedy fields and during the conflict, our hero starts a bush fire starts which not only gets all the humans stoned, but the squids as well. Everybody forgets why they are fighting, man and squid alike, and they make peace. Barney has saved humanity, and everybody celebrates by having a big party, kind of like at the end of Return of the Jedi, but with squids instead of Ewoks. Our hero gets wanked of by a squid while puffing on a blunt and says ‘now that’s a happy ending!’. Fin.

This film is a rip off of Back to the Future, Planet of the Apes and Star Wars, all mashed together with a healthy dose of the green stuff. It’s shit. I imagine you would need to do as much drugs as Barney to enjoy this, but then that’s the case with most cult movies. Cult movies are rubbish movies, but movies so rubbish they become hilarious when you are off your face, or so I believe. Don’t watch it.

Subjective Rating: 1/10. Val Kilmer is pretty good in the role, everything else is twaddle.

Objective Rating: 1/10. Nobody wants to see Val Kilmer finger a drunk squid.

This Banana.

This banana, or this artist’s impression of this banana, may look like a normal everyday banana to you, but it isn’t! “Then what is it?” I hear you ask. Well. This is a special banana, created by none other than everybody’s favourite loco chef, Heston Blumenthal.

I had this banana served to me quite by chance whilst visiting Waitrose the other day. There I was, browsing through the dehydrated soup section when a hand tapped me on the shoulder. Turning around I was faced by Mr Blumenthal, grinning at me whilst holding a brass plate in ofference to my person. “Would you like to try my Bana-na-na?” he said. “Sure”, I replied.

The fruit itself looked like any other banana, albeit one ripened to perfection. The plate it rested on, according to the H-dog, was an authentic bronze, ancient Roman turkey-feasting dish. He said the bronze added a certain indescribable flavour to the banana, as well as providing a little majesty and excitability to this humble fruit. To be fair it did.

I picked it up, gave it a quick peel and took a bite. It tasted like a banana. A good banana sure, but still a banana. “Well?” said Heston. “It tastes like a banana” I replied. “Haha!”. He burst out laughing and started doing a little leprechaun dance. “It’s not a banana at all! It’s made of chicken and beef, mushrooms and broccoli, cornflakes and kale. What do you think of that?”. I have to say I was impressed. Upon asking him how he made such ingredients look, feel and taste like a real banana he danced away down the aisle, shouting “magic!” before disappearing around the corner. I finished the banana and resumed my shopping feeling pretty satisfied. The large amounts of compressed meat and vegetable that must have been contained in the banana gave me a massive burst of energy and, having paid for my shopping, I ran the 10 miles home in seven minutes before punching my sofa into a thousand pieces.

Each banana costs £15 and is available in all good Waitrose stores.

Subjective Rating: 6/10. It tastes like any other banana. Points are given for its energy bestowell-to-gobble ratio. Points are deducted because it made me kill my sofa and shit horribly for the next three days.

Objective Rating: 3/10. I don’t think humanity is ready for it yet.

Tone Tank - The King of Surf Guitar Rap

This is a free four-track EP that came out three or so years ago, but I only just heard it, so it’s as fresh to my ears as some stupid word that all the kids have started saying which has gone from 0 to international in flash, this being a global community we all live in, full of YouTube, ever changing trends and people trying to be original.

The King of Surf Guitar Rap seems a fair title, this being a mixture of surf guitar music and rap, of which Tone Tank is undoubtedly the king, he being the only person I have ever heard doing it. The tracks haven’t been sampled or anything, they play out as is, which is nice, me being a fan of the old surf guitar. The rapping is imaginative, story based and weird as can be expected, and the project as a whole is the best thing I’ve heard in years that has anything to do with Hip-Hop. There are bar fights, shady Mexican femme fatales, lizard people and a whole lot more. Groovy. Part of the reason this E.P works is Tone’s voice. He has the deadpan, slurry delivery of a drunken robotic cab droid from a dystopian 80’s sci-fi movie Brooklyn, and a slightly off kilter rhythm, all of which adds to the comedy and derangement of the thing.

As there are only four songs, I thought I may as well go through them one by one. You’re welcome.

Actually I won’t. You can bloody well take the time to listen to them yourself. Make your own opinions. God. Here’s the download link:

http://modernshark.com/tone-tank-the-king-of-surf-guitar-rap-free-download

Subjective Rating: 10/10. Its only fault is that there isn’t more of it.

Objective Rating: 10/10. If you don’t like it, you’re either not human or a dick.

Hoolio’s Magical Mirror Expedition

This is one of those wacky theatre things where the audience participates in the craziness. It’s not really my bag, but I was bored so I thought I’d give it a whirly. There were two methods for payment, either you hand over five of your pounds or you get smushed in the face with a Chicago Town mini-pizza. Being a little short on cash I opted for the pizza slap, receiving a scalding hot pepperoni pie to the grid. It burnt, I screamed, and feeling ashamed, I made my way into the venue with my head down, negative expectations welling up.

There were no seats in room I entered, just cricket stumps welded to the floor, the pointy ends facing up. Ha. It was almost pitch black, apart from some dull green floor lighting, and there was smoke being pumped in from grates in the walls. About ten more people shuffled in, looking about uncertainly at the field of stumps before clumping into a standing group near the stage. Two had pizza faces which cheered me up a little. We exchanged shy grins and waited for whatever weird shit was sure to come next.

Suddenly a spotlight came on in the centre of the empty stage and a selection of Wham! songs began to play backwards. After about ten minutes the music cut out abruptly and with a loud scream, a gentleman wrapped in tinfoil ran into the spotlight. He stood there staring at us in silence, his waxed Dali moustache glinting. Pulling a mirror from his pocket, he preened himself, all the while shouting : “HAGALIMUSH. HAGALIMUSH ANAMBO. HALALALALALALALALALALALA PIBBITY POM BOM BIBBLE TE TAAAAAAAA…………..HAGALIMUSH”

Still shouting, he turned the mirror to face us, then threw it on the floor. While pretending to weep over it, he took the tinfoil off to stand naked except for a pair of mirrored Y-fronts and his silver clown shoes, naturally. He then put his fists on his waist and laughed like a bearded Russian: HA HA HA. Again he stopped doing anything and stared at us for a while before announcing in a girlish voice, “follow meeeeee, follow meeee. Let’s see what we will seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”. Reluctantly heeding his words, we made our way onto the stage, following him through a curtain into a large maze of mirrors. Similar I guess to the one in Enter the Dragon.

What came next was rather disorientating, and I only remember bits. The first thing that happened was that we were split up by a tiny person dressed as a squirrel and holding a plastic cutlass, each taking a different route into the depths of the maze. Where the squirrel popped out from I don’t know, he was just there suddenly, prodding people in particular directions and squawking “GO WAY THAT! GO WAY THAT!”

Before long I was walking down endless twisting mirrored passages. The sound of screaming was coming from all directions and the floor was covered in jelly. Even though I knew it was a show of some sort, it was becoming more and more unnerving. To make it worse, some of the passages were blocked off with perfectly invisible perspex walls, so if you didn’t proceed with caution, you would smash into them, which I did more than once, bloodying my nose in the process. In some places, instead of mirrors there were perspex boxes where people dressed as animals were performing uncensored, and frankly indescribable hardcore sex acts or other such bizarrity. In one, a tuna fish was being repeatedly beaten across the head with an oversized rubber mallet by a lobster. No sound could be heard apart from the screaming, which added an extra element of wrong to this shit.

I must have been in there over an hour, getting increasingly desperate to escape when I came upon a crossroads. Right there where the passages met lay a huge bloody heart. My senses failing and my mind crumbling, I screamed and turned about, running back the way I came. Suddenly from nowhere a transvestite kitchen maid was running towards me with what looked like an axe in his hand, only the head of the axe was a huge dick. I screamed again and slipped on some jelly, hitting my head on the floor. Looking up I saw the maid looming over me screaming “fucker!”, the axe upraised to deliver the killer blow. My survival instinct took over and I kicked out, catching him square on a kneecap. He fell with a curse and before I knew it I was up, beating him repeatedly with the dick axe while he pleaded for me to stop.

Spotlights lit upon me from somewhere above and a voice on loudspeaker started shouting “murderer” repeatedly. A bucket of treacle was tipped upon me as I looked blindly up, followed by a bag of feathers, then loud sirens started blaring out and I ran, and ran, and ran, finally running plum into one of the perspex walls and knocking myself out. I woke up in a bed in the middle of the stage to the sound of cheering and Marvin Gaye’s, Let’s Get It On playing from a vintage gramophone. Recovering my senses, I sat up to see the rest of the audience and the cast clapping at me. The tinfoil pants man came up to the bed, offering me a glass of wine and a Chicago Town mini on a paper plate. All I could do was laugh.

Subjective Rating: 1/10. It gets one for the free pizza. Fucking lunacy.

Objective Rating: 1/10. I can’t imaging the majority of people want to go through that.

Bill Bradley’s Corporate Bootcamp

In an attempt to better equip myself for the world of work, I spent my pennies on Bill Bradley’s Corporate Bootcamp, having come across the promotional video on YouTube. It looked interesting. I’d get to fire some guns, learn survival skills. At the very least it would get me off the sofa doing something productive.

It’s intended for companies as a group training scheme, but individuals can sign up as well. I was thus put with a group of Google employees, who didn’t look best pleased about leaving the safety of their Macbook bubble pits and coffee biccy think lounges to go Marine Core in the great outdoors.

The first thing we did was marksmanship, which everybody enjoyed, me included. Firing guns in the woods is a good time in most peoples books, and by the end of the course everybody was in good spirits. So far so good.

The next day was close combat, and here things started to become dramatic. Bill Bradley, the head instructor, is not a man to be trifled with. Having been in the Special Forces for numerous years, he isn’t one to take no for an answer, or listen to excuses. People who complained about having to fight their colleagues were called ‘blubbery sacks of shit’, and told that if they didn’t fight their friends, they would be fighting him. One gentleman balked at this, saying he wouldn’t fight. He was a liberal looking type, wearing cauliflower sandals and a brown woollen hat, and clearly thought nothing would come of his conscientious objecting. He was wrong. In a flash Bill was on him, delivering a flurry of blows to his guts and face before putting him in a choke hold until he passed out. No words were said, and no more objections were raised.

I was paired with a brute of a man. He looked I.T to me, in a short sleeve white shirt and ergonomically suitable footwear, standing at least 6’4” and weighing god knows what. I tried to keep my distance, landing some good jabs to his nose, but eventually he corned me, grasping me in a terrifying bear hug. I repeatedly head butted him, but his grip never slackened, and I was near blacking out when time was called. We had a handshake and moved to the side, both of us, I think, feeling better for the experience. Some of the other fights were truly brutal. One lady stabbed another through the arm with her high heel, but at the end of the day, the course was mostly successful. The team had bonded.

Next came Survival. this took place over a few days, starting with gruelling physical training, such as running up hills with rocks tied to our legs. Everybody puked, me three times. I really liked the survival instruction and learnt some awesome skills, such as making fire with sticks, and using the stars as a compass. There was an air of apprehension in the group however, because everybody knew what came next: real survival in the wilderness.

During the night we were flown to remote locations in a helicopter and dropped off individually at random spots. The aim was to make it back to base by nightfall the next day using nothing but our wits, a knife and a compass. Some people were crying and pleading, refusing to leave the chopper. All were told they could either get off or be pushed off. One person was bodily thrown from the flying chopper, disappearing into the night with a fading scream. Once the chopper had gone I was left alone in the dark, freezing cold and with no idea what to do. Finally I collected my wits and started making my way to cover. Finding a tree which provided some respite from the rain, I managed to light a fire and get some sleep.

By the time I got back to base the next day, I was a wreck of a man. My muscles ached, I hadn’t eaten anything but some berries which were repeating on me, making progress slow, and I was hallucinating. The hallucinations actually helped, and I was egged on for the final leg of the journey by a talking potato. When I got back, I was congratulated and given tea and cake. Slowly my senses started to recover. That is when I realised I had lost a toe. To this day I don’t know how it happened, I just remember noticing a throbbing pain coming from my right foot, as I sat there sipping my brew. When I looked down I saw I had lost my shoe, and upon closer inspection, my big toe as well. At that point I blacked out.

When I awoke I found myself tied to chair with a sack over my head. Ten second blasts of Jessie J were being played at a deafening volume, and through the sack came flashes of heavy strobe lighting. I don’t know how long I was left this way. Time melted, trapping me in a senseless, torturous purgatory. All I could do was scream. The sack came off, the lights returned to normal and there was Bill Bradley, a pastry cutter in one hand and a telephone book in the other. ‘What is your name soldier, what is your name!’, he shouted at me repeatedly. ‘I don’t know!’ I cried, and I really didn’t. My mind had been broken, I existed no longer. With a smile Bill congratulated me, offering me treats and promising to help. He had become my saviour. I was in the grip of a serious bout of Stockholm syndrome.

Over the next few hours I was rebuilt; a stronger, more able version of myself, ready to take on the world with new insight and vigour. I feel ready for success now, and my work ethic has dramatically improved. I am missing a toe, and maybe part of my soul, the bit where love and compassion dwells, but it’s a small sacrifice for gains I’ve come away with. You can find out more about the bootcamp here: http://www.bbcorporatebootcamp.co.uk/

Subjective Rating: 8/10. The course worked, of that there is no doubt. I do miss my toe though.

Objective Rating: 8/10. Of the twenty people who started the course, only twelve survived, the others presumably perishing in the wilderness. They were weak though, and the weak have no place on this earth.

Johan Flybody

Johan Flybody is a little fly comedian who hangs around my living room, cracking jokes in return for edible treats. Being an ethical fly, and a nice guy, he feels he should put a bit of work in for his meals, rather than just landing on other peoples dinner uninvited. This is partly because he once gave somebody a serious case of food poisoning, and it made him feel bad. Now instead of having to sneak onto other peoples plates, he gets his own little thimble dish of grub, and can feel safe in the knowledge that he won’t again have to shoulder the blame for somebody get sick and pooing at the same time.

So I get my very own comedy shows, delivered once or maybe twice a day, from a matchbox stage with rasher curtains, which sounds great, but it’s been going on a couple of weeks now, and the act is starting to wear thin.

“Why did the fly cross the road?”

“I don’t know Johan, why did the fly cross the road?”

“Because he wanted to get to the other side ……. of beef! hehehehehehehehehehehe.”

That is a classic example of Johan’s humour. Ridiculous. I can’t describe in words the little laugh he does after each joke, but I will try. It sounds like a Marigold windsock squealing in a hurricane. It’s really grating.

“What’s the most popular haircut for a fly?”

“I don’t know Johan, what is it?”

“A BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ cut! hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe, throooop”

That ‘throop’ is him sucking up Marmite by the way. It is something I will never feel comfortable witnessing. That said, it would not be fair to review Johan’s show negatively because of his eating habits. I will, however, review it negatively because his jokes just aren’t that good, and his delivery is pretty appalling. Here’s a clanger he told me just this morning:

“A fly walked into a bar. The barman said ‘what do you want’. ‘Anything in a blue bottle’, mumbled the fly. ‘What was that? I couldn’t understand you’, said the barman. ‘Sorry’ the fly replied, ‘I’m a hoarse fly’.”

I laughed, but only because there was such pitiful yearning in Johan’s many eyes, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He is, after all, a pretty nice fly.

Subjective Rating: 2/10. His jokes suck. 2 for the effort.

Objective Rating: 6/10. In the big scheme of things, he’s better than a lot of comedians. If he worked more on observational humour rather than one liners, he’d probably be a hit.