The Wrong Door

Thanks to a friend at the BBC (ha) I was made aware of BBC Three's new sketch show some time last week. Their attractive interactive website and numerous fake government organisation type sites to coincide with the show were enough pull to switch over from Charlotte Church's (olympic swimmer winner) Becky Bashing and have a gander at the sketches I didn't see online. I recommend the main site highly for its entertainment value and its quirky little games. However, exploring the Urban Zone will take you to the TIT website (Tactical and Intelligence Training) which induced real, out loud, laughter when I first saw it.

So, clearly, I had spent enough time on the website to see the destructively forgetful robot looking for his keys but it was no less amusing. The annoying little shit Nemesis III was as annoying as I could ever have imagined and Dance Mat Girl looked like she was having a whale of a time.

I was pleased to see Matt Berry pop up though he's becoming little more than a comedy cameo of late, it's almost as if putting him in will make everyone thing the show has more comic credibility. In some ways, it sort of works, he certainly manages it better than Rich Fulcher whose last effort (or at least, the last thing I saw) Trixie and Whateveritwas, was so unforgivably appalling that I barely lasted ten minutes into it before switching over in disgust.

The show made use of keeping it to a few sketches and giving each piece a little bit of a story but I know there's more to come. It felt a little bit of a slow burner but it was not entirely devoid of laughs, the bit towards the end with the car crashing into the lamppost was a personal highlight, but I don't think I'll ever get the dinosaur boyfriend bit.

Giving it that alternate universe edge is nice and it could really develop into a darkly funny bit of British comedy. I want more and just by looking at the website(s) I have no doubt I'll get more.

Start here: The Wrong Door, have fun.

I'll make this snappy

My computer's having a slow day but it's only right that I mention something I caught on BBCThree this evening. I think it was called 'Britain's Most Disgusting Food' or something to that effect.

It was presented by a charming young man by the name of Alex Riley, with his rectangular, dark rimmed glasses and rather floppy hair he looked great in a lab coat and even better in a wet suit filled with 40% his own weight in water. He was out on a mission to find the mos disgusting, crap-filled food in Britain and it was a wonder what he came across. 'Bangers with Beef' was a favourite, with only 5% beef, these 'bangers' because it's illegal to call them sausages, were fall of the most appalling, sickening, science-experiment, lab rat crap you could imagine, E numbers, 'connective tissue', pork fat, reconstructed chicken (or something) and he made it all, into a lovely sausage, and fed people with it at the Good Food Show. He even tried to ask Gordon Ramsey about his endorsements of this Cash and Carry, at a book signing; this didn't go so well.

In some ways he was the antithesis to Hugh Fearnley Whittinstall (forgive spellings, I can't be bothered to Google him) in that everything he did was concentrated on 'food' that came barely anything close to a farm. He made pies, 'meaty' and 'sweety' and tried to fob them off. He, in true journalistic fashion, got told to stop filming, asked if he had permission to be filming he said: 'no', because he's a trooper.

Of course, he wasn't really the antithesis to lovely Hugh, he plays a supporting role to his quest, look at this bad food, so Hugh can kep plugging the good food.

I'm not even fed up of these programs though, in fact I want more, I want a constant reminder that I should, wherever possible, be cooking my own food using good quality ingredients. For example, this evening, I made burgers (to Jamie Oliver's recipe on the 'feed the family for a fiver' ads) and they were delicious and all good, aside from the fact that they were fried, I FRIED THEM. Well done Jamie, well done Mr. Riley.

Of course the best part about tonight's programme on disgusting food were all the comedy interludes, he set to market his pies and made a hilarious advert with a child asking for 'more connective tissue please' then at the end he goes to his 'mum': 'can i eat one' and she slaps the pie out of his hand: 'no, they're disgusting!' Beautiful.