Tag Archives: Cunk

Cunk on Earth

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Cunk 1

I’m delighted to find a new BBC TV series from Philomena Cunk (aka Diane Morgan), the “Landmark Documentary Presenter”, with her distinctive style of forensic investigation:

  • Cunk on Earth (available here for the next year).

Again, among targets that she sends up are the documentary format, her own persona, both elite and popular cultures, and indeed human history itself.

In the beginnings opens by exploring the achievements of early humans:

One thing they did invent was fire, which allowed them to see at night and kept them warm, tragically prolonging their already tedious lives.

Having conquered numbers, humankind moved on to something even more boring, by inventing writing.

The Ancient Greeks invented lots of things we still have today, like medicine and olives, and lots of things that have died out, like democracy and pillars.

And another invention:

Philosophy is basically thinking about thinking—which sounds like a waste of time, because it is.

On Pompeii,

Thanks to the volcano, we know everyday Romans had grey skin, were totally bald, and spent their time lying around inside their shockingly dusty houses. But it also preserved glimpses of how sophisticated Roman life was, with creature comforts like indoor plumbing and cunnilingus.

In Faith/off the intrepid Ms Cunk covers religion.

What’s ironic about Jesus Christ becoming a carpenter was that he was actually named after the two words that you’re most likely to shout after hitting your thumb with a hammer.

She perks up with an entirely gratuitous plug for an all-inclusive five-star resort near the temple of Kukulkan, “the last word in luxury”.

Islam represented a radical break from previous religions, because the buildings it happened inside were a slightly different shape.

And she asks

Why can’t the religions all learn to live together in peace, like they do in Ireland?

In The Renaissance will not be televised Ms Cunk sets the scene:

It’s the year 1440 (not now, but then, in 1440).

The historic present has always Got my Goat too.

Gutenberg’s press was the first of its kind in history—except Chinese history.

This is Florence—the Italians call it Firenze to try and stop tourists from finding it. […] Florence might look like a pointless mess today, but in the 15th century…

On the Mona Lisa:

Just looking at her prompts so many questions. Who is she? What’s she smiling about? Is she holding a balloon between her knees? And if so, what colour is it?

Cunk 2

Turning to the New World,

After arriving in America to forge a life of honest hard work and toil, many of these colonists quickly discovered they couldn’t be arsed, so they stole people from Africa and made them do it instead.

Eventually Washington won, becoming America’s first president, the single most revered role in the world until 2016.

Rise of the machines opens with a succinct recap:

Last time we saw how the Renaissance turned Europe from a load of mud and parsnips into a posh resort full of paintings…

Introducing Manifest Destiny, she helpfully explains:

Americans back then weren’t the humble unassuming people they still aren’t today.
[…]
The North asked the South what kind of America it wanted to live in—one where white people leeched off other races while treating them as inferior, or one where they pretended they didn’t.

Following the Civil War,

Now Lincoln was President, at long last slavery was abolished, and replaced with simple racial prejudice.

Turning to recording,

Thanks to Edison’s pornograph, classical music could now bore an audience of millions.

Cunk 3

She returns to the theme of femininism, on which she has already established her credentials;

Finally, with the vote, women could choose which man would tell them what to do.

Besides her collaboration with Charlie Brooker, in the final episode, War(s) of the World(s)?, “it’s easy to see why” she’s an admirer of the ouevre of Adam Curtis. Turning to Russia, Tsar Nicolas

was allowed to rule the country like a dictator, which I’ve been advised to say isn’t how Russia works today. […]

A world like this, where the masses toil for pennies while a tiny elite grow rich, seems so obviously unfair and unthinkable to us today. We can scarcely imagine what it must have been like.

Cunk 4

As to 1950s’ America,

Adverts were so influential that it made viewers at home want to be the sort of person who bought things too. They’d work hard to get money, to buy a car, so they could drive to the shops and buy more things, which they’d have to pay for by going back to work, which made them miserable, so they’d cheer themselves up by going out and buying more things, which they’d have to work to pay for.

On the birth of popular culture:

Unlike normal culture, which was paintings and Beethoven, this was stuff people actually enjoyed.

For decades, pioneering black artists had steadily built on each other’s work to develop an exciting new musical form for white people to pass off as their own.

Moving on to the technological revolution, the Apple Macintosh was

the world’s first inherently smug computer.

And

smartphones revolutionised the way people interact, by providing a socially acceptable way to ignore everyone around us.

But we’re not lonely—thanks to social media, it’s quicker and easier to bond with millions of others over something as simple as a cat photo or the ritual shaming of a stranger.

* * *

Cunk interview

Dr Shirley Thompson’s musicological expertise somewhat under-used
in fielding fatuous questions like
“Would it be fair to say the Rolling Stones were the Beatles of their day?”.

To help her unlock the mysteries of human civilisation Ms Cunk consults a range of academics, asking penetrating questions like “Why are pyramids that shape—is it to stop homeless people sleeping on them?”, “Has a mummy ever ridden a bicycle?”, and “Is there a Great Roof of China?”. Scholars such as Jim Al-Khalili, Douglas Hedley, and Ashley Jackson manage to keep a straight face, even as she disputes their so-called expert views with stories about “my mate Paul”, recommending them helpful YouTube videos wat ‘e sent ‘er. The Cunk interview is fast becoming the hallmark of the public intellectual; and I now feel that it should be a compulsory ordeal, a rite of passage for any aspiring lecturer. As Rebecca Nicholson’s review observes:

You could spend a lot of time wondering whether the interviewees are in on the joke or not; if they are in on it completely, it ruins the gag, which surely works best if they think Cunk is deadly serious. The same is true for viewers, in a way. If you look closely enough, you can see that there’s a formula: compare old thing to new thing, ask anachronistic question, wait for baffled response. In both cases, though, I don’t think it matters. None of the academics seem to think they are being mocked, nor are they trying to be funny; likewise, it’s so hilarious and well-written that if you can occasionally see the bare bones poking out, it isn’t much of an issue.

The interview in Cunk on Shakespeare, where she quizzes Ben Crystal on a list of words that Shakespeare, er, might or might not have made up, remains a great favourite of mine:

cuckoo?
ukulele?
omnishambles?
mixtape?
sushi?
titwank?

This series has a new, mystifying musical leitmotif, introduced by fine links such as

Descartes inspired an intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, during which metrosexual elitists published essays that expanded humankind’s horizons in a manner that will go unmatched until the 1989 release of Belgian techno anthem Pump up the jam… [cue music].

Philomena Cunk attains a level of vacuity with which no-one outside the current government could compete. Too bad she’s over-qualified to serve as the next Prime Minister.

Interview stories

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World map

I note that there are several related stories on ‘ere about interviews.

This one features a young hopeful applying for a position in the Music Department at Cardiff:

Shifting the scene to a prison, this story may or may not be true:

Branching into “world music”, this one certainly is:

as is this fine story about Esa-Pekka Salonen’s interview for the LA Phil, exposing a mindset that is still common in both WAM and Daoist ritual studies:

Salonen

This is a fantasy interview with Sam Cooke:

“The undisputed master of” * the interview is of course Philomena Cunk, as in her programmes on

Cunk

Seriously though folks, I discussed issues in fieldwork interviewing/chatting here, following Bruce Jackson.

* In homage to I’m sorry I haven’t a clue; with “master” serving as a gender-neutral term until someone comes up with a good substitute…

Can’t get you out of my head

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Curtis title

Do watch the brilliant BBC TV series

Love, power, money, ghosts of empire, conspiracies, artificial intelligence—and You

The series, in six parts over some eight hours, is broadly chronological, with an ambitious coverage of major events and recurring themes—failed political revolutions amidst a widespread distrust and resentment of elites; radical movements, and their defeat; pessimism as old power structures remain intact and kleptocracy rages; racial antagonism (with sexism revealed less explicitly); anger, insecurity, and paralysis in the age of individualism, haunted by the malignant scars of the past, lacking a vision for the future, “free but alone”; personal expression, technology, psychology, consumerism, advertising, mass electronic surveillance and algorithms. You know the kind of thing…

While countercultural discontent has long been a much-discussed theme, Curtis’s take is virtuosic. The dystopian vision of his message, juxtaposing cultures, is conveyed as much through the collage of blending images and a sinister, psychedelic soundtrack (including pop and Chinese revolutionary opera) as through graphic newsreel footage, interviews, and his own voiceover.

Funnily enough, among interviews, this—with Diane Morgan (aka Philomena Cunk), no less—is rather good.

I think I get so sucked into the stories that you choose and the people you concentrate on. They’re not boring people. Like Jiang Qing! She could’ve been from Bolton.

As Ms Cunk, herself master of the deadpan delivery, notes:

It’s partly your calm, authoritative voice. I feel like you could be a cult leader. You could tell me that bananas were invented by the Polish secret service and I’d believe you. There’s something hypnotic about it.

Here’s the fine parody of Curtis’s style mentioned in their chat (“In a landmark new documentary produced for YouTube, Adam Curtis has not examined his career and laid bare his style in the light of some confused academic papers he stumbled across on the internet”):

Themes
In the USA, bastion of individualism through the Cold War, we are introduced to Richard Hofstadter (tracing suburban anxiety, fear, and hatred right back to the pilgrims), the John Birch Society and the Illuminati conspiracy theory; the CIA’s MK-Ultra mind-control experiments; Black Power, and infiltrators.

In Britain, the loss of empire also gave rise to insecurity and xenophobia. Curtis covers Kenya and the Mau Mau; and the disillusion of new arrivals from the former empire. In the wake of the slave trade, in the USA guilt mutated into fear and anger, along with deep resentments over racism and police violence. Featured are the Yellow Peril, and the KKK; the IRA, and MI6; Blair’s Britain.

In Germany the Red Army Faction (aided by the Stasi) responded to what they saw as the mutation of Nazism—with the far right indeed growing. But revolutionary chic also emerged.

Politicians gave up being our representatives who would challenge the powerful on our behalf, and began to tell us what to do on behalf of the powerful. But we didn’t notice because we were too busy shopping.

Alongside climate change and suburban alienation, Valium (and later OxyContin) submerged people’s disillusion at the false promises offered by material comfort—at first particularly for women. The blurring of reality and illusion is illustrated by The dream of the red chamber. Curtis surveys Nixon, the Vietnam war, his visit to China, and Watergate; ever more volatile money markets; US and British involvement in the Middle East, and oil; 9/11, Iraq, Syria, ISIS; USSR dissidents and prison songs; new despair in Russia after the fall of Communism; oligarchs, corruption; the Balkan wars, and the corrosive allure of nationalism, always connected with the past.

Democracies, subordinate to financial and bureaucratic interests, often seemed to be producing the wrong results (north Africa, the Middle East)—“What if the people are stupid?”. Meanwhile humanitarian aid arose from frustration with politicians, attempting to change the world by bypassing them; but it was vulnerable to being exploited by them, as in Ethiopia.

With technocrats ever more powerful over politicians, and constant global financial crises, a conservative nostalgia for empire re-emerged. Curtis notes the magical vision of Britain’s feudal past that had been created by artists and writers from the late 19th century; passing over socialist currents within the folk music and dance revival, he suggests they were

invented to create a kind of safe dream of the nation that could hide the violence and the horrors. The dream persisted under the surface of the 20th century. But as the fears and uncertainties and the chaos of the last few years rose up, millions of people started to believe that dream. That it was real.

Part 5 ends with a particularly disturbing montage, as How beautiful they are, the lordly ones accompanies images of Isis and Morris dancing.

What had begun a long time ago as a make-believe version of England, created in the deserts of Mesopotamia as the British Empire fell apart, had now turned into a terrifying nightmare.

This has led to the similar urge in the USA and UK to recreate the dream of a lost greatness—Trump and Brexit, the inevitable dénouement that Curtis’s whole project has sought to explain.

Part 6 takes in the rapper Tupac Shakur, son of Afeni, with civil rights an ever unresolved issue; Saudi Arabia, and jihad as a remedy for nihilism; Chaos theory and Complexity theory amidst growing paranoia; the 2008 economic crash and austerity, as resentment against elites grew further; the growing power of global corporations; AI, conspiracy theories, manipulation, “a world beyond freedom and dignity”.

China dolls

In Russia, Curtis shows post-Soviet unrest, with popular protest at corruption and chaos; Putin, Pussy Riot, Navalny. The 1997 British handover of Hong Kong; capitalist consumerism in reform China, Deng Xiaoping and the limits of democratic reform; Tiananmen 1989 and the disturbing figure of Chai Ling; land grabs and corruption, the downfall of Bo Xilai’s attempt to revive collective idealism, popular grievance; mass surveillance—and Xinjiang—under Xi Jinping.

And so to Trump, Bannon, QAnon; Cummings, and Farage—with Covid now compounding inequalities. Politicians have moved from espousing reprehensible visions to having no agendas beyond power itself. With liberalism in retreat, tech companies feed off paranoia.

Characters
Largely eschewing the Usual Suspects, Curtis’s choice of personalities and interviewees is most original, with a wealth of fascinating stories to follow up, making the viewer reach for wiki—including Peter Rachman and Michael X, Ethel Boole and Maya Plisetskaya, Edgar Mittelholzer, John L. Lewis and Harry Caudill representing the miners of Appalachia; Kerry Thornley, Operation Mindfuck, and Lee Harvey Oswald; Daniel Kahneman; the Russian criminals sent (along with Solzhenitsyn) to New York in 1974 who became the Potato Bag Gang, and Eduard Limonov; Horst Mahler, Afeni Shakur.

Jiang Qing and her psychological makeup feature (perhaps too) prominently:

In her operas, Jiang Qing had gone back into China’s past. Her aim had been to rework them, to express a new kind of revolution. But in reality, she had reawakened a dark and poisonous kind of violence that had lurked under the surface of China for hundreds of years. It was driven by a resentment of the rigid hierarchies that the revolution had not really changed. Mao had not given her or anyone else guidance about what to do with the fury that she had summoned up.

Curtis’s vision will doubtless be unwelcome to entrenched elites. So while he gives the revolutionaries a poor review, and rejects being labelled as a leftie, I guess we might settle for a definition based on having an enquiring mind prepared to challenge the status quo—precisely the fear of conservatives.

Despite all the endless pressures, he ends with the possibilities that the election of Biden may offer hope for a return to a former stability, and that people will be able to imagine genuinely new kinds of futures—dependant on their regaining confidence. We may need further encouragement. Some may recall the counter-intuitive optimism of Steven Pinker over the long sweep of human history. Others might suggest that paralysis and nihilism have not conquered all; while Curtis hardly broaches the more modest (but not necessarily less radical) advances of non-violent movements for social justice (cf. Hašek’s ironic “Party for Moderate and Peaceful Progress within the Bounds of the Law”!), progressives don’t necessarily seem doomed by the demons of the past, as young grassroots activists increasingly take up noble causes, holding power to account. 

Anyway, it’s an immensely stimulating series, whether “dazzling”, “terrifying”, or “incoherent”; perhaps Hugo Rifkind’s comment is apposite:

I feel I learnt a lot. I’m just not sure what it was—

which indeed encapsulates the very confusion that Curtis evokes.

I’m not a doctor, but…

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Cunk

In these trying times, Charlie Brooker’s antiviral wipe is just what we need.

With my penchant for Philomena Cunk, her Moments of wonder (from 39.00) is yet another gem—updating a previous episode in which she amply displayed her qualifications for discussing medicine:

Why can’t we get medicine crisps?

It doesn’t look like a crown to me—it’s more like a big football. Sometimes it looks massive, like when I’ve seen people standing next to it on the news, it sort of comes up to their waist. How’s that going to get up your nose?

Right now a Coronovirus vaccine is on trial, but we’ll have to wait to discover if it’s guilty or not.

Her suggestions for remedies are every bit as valid as those of POTUS, the Baby in Chief (for the gems of Sarah Cooper, start here). Indeed, Rumour Has It that Ms Cunk’s recent application for the post of Publicity Officer to the White House was only rejected because she was vastly over-qualified.

Still, alongside all her hapless victims (such as Alice Roberts, Ashley Jackson, Robert Peston, and Howard Goodall), Tweety McTangerine would make a perfect interviewee—they speak each other’s language.

* * *

And if anyone can still remember last year, it’s also good to revisit Cunk and other humans on 2019:

At one point, the Amazon caught fire—which must have been a real blow to those people trying to chop it down.

Grown men taking the piss out of a 16-year-old girl sounds terrible, but when you think about what massive wankers it made them seem to literally everyone, it’s an act of extreme heroism in a way.

And finally, on Bumbling Boris,

It’s a lot of power for someone like him—but I’m sure it’ll be fine, and he’ll probably look after us like we were his own children…

 

 

 

Bach gravy

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I’ve already mused on the list of countries that the Stats for this blog provide for me. For some obscure reason, the Stats also include a list of Search Terms that have somehow led readers to my site. This can be entertaining—recently I found

Bach gravy

It sounds like a hazily membered dream in that common category of impossible tasks:

“We need to serve the Bach gravy without further ado, Algernon! You’re keeping the guests waiting—we can’t afford another scandal.”

Or perhaps it’s hipster slang:

“Man, that cat was off his tits on the ol’ Bach gravy!”

Or is it an arcane allusion to the mondegreen (or rather soramimi) Ate, in terror, Paxo minibus from the B Minor Mass?

I wonder if the curious seeker found a satisfying answer—I do hope so. I was so intrigued that I had to Google it myself, to little avail.

Now I love Bach, and gravy, but as Philomena Cunk observed wisely to Jay Rayner,

bread, and sauce, are two completely different things, aren’t they?

Still, now I’m keen to try some, liberally poured over my sausages. And like Haydn’s prophetic symphony (see link here), it deserves its own hashtag (#Bachgravy™)—could be the culinary hit of the new decade.

Guide to another year’s blogging

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Li Manshan doing paperwork for Hoisting the Pennant ritual, 2003 https://stephenjones.blog/the-film/

Struggling to encompass all this? I know I am. While we inevitably specialize in particular topics, it’s important to build bridges. I guess it’s that time of year when another guide to my diverse posts may come in handy—this is worth reading in conjunction with the homepage and my roundup this time last year.

I’ve added more entries to many of the sidebar categories and tags mentioned in that summary. I’ve now subheaded many of the categories; it’d be useful for the tags too, but it seems I can’t do that on my current WP plan. Of course, many of these headings overlap—fruitfully.

Notably, I keep updating and refecting on my film and book on the Li family Daoists. I wrote a whole series resulting from my March trip to Yanggao (helpfully collected here) and Beijing (starting here, also including the indie/punk scene). Other 2018 posts on the Li family include Yanggao personalities and Recopying ritual manuals (a sequel to Testing the waters).

To accompany the visit of the Zhihua temple group to the British Museum in April, I also did a roundup of sources on the temple in the wider context of ritual in Beijing and further afield, including several posts on this site.

I’ve posted some more introductions to Local ritual, including

Gender (now also with basic subheads) is a constant theme, including female spirit mediums—to follow the series on women of Yanggao, starting here. Or nearer home, Moon river, complementing Ute Lemper.

Sinologists—indeed aficionados of the qin, crime fiction, and erotica—may also like my post on Robert van Gulik (and note the link to Bunnios!).

I’ve added a few more categories and tags, notably

Women of Herat https://stephenjones.blog/2018/10/29/women-of-herat/

Twin Peaks https://stephenjones.blog/2018/10/17/twin-peaks/
The conformist https://stephenjones.blog/2018/11/08/the-conformist/

The film tag is developing, with a side order of soundtracks—for some links, see here.

cof
Gepopo https://stephenjones.blog/2018/09/13/gepopo/

I’ve given basic subheads to the language category (note this post on censorship), which also contains much drôlerie in both English and Chinese. Issues with speech and fluency (see stammering tag) continue to concern me, such as

Following Daoist football, the sport tag is worth consulting, such as The haka, and a series on the genius of Ronnie.

Some posts are instructively linked in chains:

More favourites may be found in the *MUST READ* category. Among other drôlerie, try this updated post, one of several on indexing and taxonomy; and more from the great Philomena Cunk.

Most satisfying is this collection of great songs—still not as eclectic as it might become:

Do keep exploring the sidebar categories and tags!

 

 

Saga and Sofia

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*UPDATED! Watch the last clip below only if you’ve seen the whole of the final series!*

We can now bask in a fourth series of The bridge on BBC2, more noir than ever.* It’s one of the great dramas “like ever“.

I realized it’s obligatory for TV cops to be damaged, but it remains a mystery to me how Saga could get, and keep, a job that demands such skills of personal interaction, at least a feigning of empathy (contrast the equally magnificent Sofie Gråbøl in The killing—no less troubled, but not hampered by Asperger’s).

This interview with the divine Sofia Helin is one of the best bits of acting since Klaus Kinski playing himself, as she transforms her personality at the flick of a switch:

And we can relish many more interviews with her on youtube too.

This clip is a tad niche, but her diction is a revealing aspect of Saga’s personality:

And a drôle, not to say macabre, language lesson:

To imbibe the passion the series generates, try Twitter #THEBRIDGE4, and the BTL comments under the Guardian recaps.

But don’t take my word for it—here’s a critique of an earlier series from Philomena Cunk, where she explains the technicalities of foreign languages:

The theme tune complements the mood. Its lyrics have defeated most people—here are some fine mondegreens:

BTW, I note that the timbre of the singer is akin to that of Henrik’s voice!

*Watch the clip below only after you’ve seen the whole of the final series!*

Here’s a tribute to the Saga–Henrik relationship:

For more soundscapes of Nordic noir, see here.

 

*Meanwhile if you have a month to spare right now, the first three series are also available! Not to mention The killing…

Inspiration: women’s football

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WFA

How wonderful to see the Women’s FA Cup Final on BBC1, showing that progress continues despite misogynistic reactions around the globe. The schoolgirls who, this time last year, wrote those brilliant letters to the FA (“We aren’t brainless Barbie dolls”) will be delighted—not a pink fluffy football in sight.

Among numerous posts under the gender tag, see e.g. “Little Miss Mozart“; Vera and Doris; Cunk on femininism; You don’t own me; and how men moved the goalposts for women’s football in medieval China.

“I dunno, they’ll be demanding control over their own bodies next”.

A selection of recent posts

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Ten Kings detail https://stephenjones.blog/2018/04/04/god-images-old-and-new-1/

To help navigate through a plethora of recent posts, this is just a selection of some of the more substantial ones:

Sachsenhausen https://stephenjones.blog/2018/04/27/sachsenhausen/
GDR 2 https://stephenjones.blog/2018/05/02/gdr-2/


For more, click on MY BLOG in the top menu and scroll down…

Two geniuses

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MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 23: Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal looks on ahead of the Barclays Premier League match between Manchester City and Arsenal at Etihad Stadium on September 23, 2012 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

It’s all very well me swanning off to China (see flurry of posts since 14th March) and Germany, but one has to keep up with the domestic news. OK, the Windrush affair is shameful, but on a lighter note:

  • The imminent departure of Arsène Wenger from Arsenal has finally produced the tributes he deserves (for his classy send-off, see here). Football will never see his like again. And if you haven’t noticed my post on Daoist football, then DO!
  • And meanwhile in the snooker, the gorgeous and inspired Ronnie is back in action!!! I’m getting this in early (his next match is on Friday), as one never knows, but beholding him is always a thing of magic. Whether or not he progresses further, here’s my occasional reminder that you just have to watch his 147 maximum break from 1997—I will accept no excuses.

And I have another episode of Cunk in Britain to catch up on too!

Cunk pulls it off again

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YAY!!! Much as I love China, you can’t beat coming home to a new BBC TV series of Philomena Cunk (now immortalized with her own tag on this blog!)—this time reflecting, topically, on the history of Britain, in a noble tradition stretching way back to the mists of time with 1066 and all that.

All the trademarks of her inimitable style (scripted largely by Charlie Brooker) are here, not least her fatuous interviews with bemused experts.

Episode 1 takes us through Britain’s early history:

Dinosaurs came in many flavours, just like kettle chips.

On the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset (“the second crudest hill in British history, after Benny”):

Before Snapchat, hills were the best way to distribute dick pics to a wide audience.

I’m very keen on “middle-evil” (cf. “femininism“), and intend to adopt it. Admiring the Bayeux Tapestry, she observes:

It’s just like being there—but in wool.

I’ll need several viewings, as by the time I’ve scraped myself off the floor in tears of helpless mirth I’ve missed yet another bon mot.

Episode 2 does for the Tudors [is that it?—Ed.]:

Hampton Court Palace—a building so impressive, it has to be accompanied by harpsichord music.

Drake—the first person to circumcise the globe.

As a Puritan, Cromwell outlawed popular entertainment—effectively turning the entire country into BBC4.

Holding further earnest interviews with the likes of Alice Roberts, Ashley Jackson, and Shini Somara, all suitably shell-shocked:

How did Sir Walter Raleigh invent the potato?

she moves boldly on to Horrorshow Nelson (unable to clap, possibly a prototype for Rod Hull and Emu) and Napoleon Cumberbatch.

The third episode, helpfully called The third episode, takes us on a heady journey right up the 19th century,

a time when British creativity was at its peak, bringing us everything from great works of art to great works of train.

Again hapless experts find themselves fielding probing questions like

If Shelley’s one of the greatest poets in English literature, how come nobody gives a shit about him today?

Who was the man from Nantucket that By Ron wrote about in his poem?

She moves deftly on to the novels of Jane Austen,

filled with words it’s almost impossible to care about.

And the “Industrial Revalation”:

Workers did long, thankless hours with no breaks and low pay, in a squalid and threatening environment—conditions unthinkable today to anyone who isn’t a junior doctor.

Putting her experience in researching “femininism” to good use, she ends with a paean to the suffragettes:

Women were thought of as simple creatures who could give birth and raise families, but couldn’t be trusted with something as complicated as drawing an X with a pencil. Today it’s unthinkable that a woman wouldn’t able to vote—unless she was really hungover or… in her slippers and it was raining…. Emmerdale Pankhurst thought women could be more than just wives and mothers, so she deliberately only had five children, leaving her loads of time for politics.
One suffragette, Emily Davison, threw herself under a horse to get the vote. But the vote wasn’t under a horse—it was in a little wooden booth in a primary school, though to be fair, women wouldn’t have known that.

Episode 4 is a penetrating analysis of the turbulent 20th century, beginning with King Edward—

who despite his name, wasn’t a potato, but a man.

Interviewing the game Howard Goodall about Land of ‘ope and glory, she asks

If you sang it in, like, Portuguese, would it still feel British, or would that just fucking ruin it?

Along with the sitcom Brush strokes, which makes several lengthy and baffling cameos throughout the series, Ashley Jackson is one of the star interview victims, fielding questions like

Why did they call World War 1 “World War 1”? It’s quite pessimistic numbering, isn’t it? Or did they just know it was the start of a franchise?

and

Why did neither side think about mud wrestling?

Cunk addresses the early days of BBC television:

The show got a record audience of 400—the sort of viewing figures BBC4 still dreams of.

Boris Johnson doesn’t come out of it lightly either.

Ms Cunk covers the NHS:

Once the NHS arrived, if you were poor and you got sick, you weren’t on your own any more—you were in a crowded waiting room full of other sick people.

Robert Peston gets sucked into discussing whether the NHS might give out free crisps, observing patiently:

I don’t think many people would argue that you can’t have a decent life without free crisps.

Episode 5, The arse end of history, is the icing on the cake, taking us right up the present—

a time when the archive footage goes colour at long fucking last, and some things you might actually have heard of, happened.

The only form of expression women were allowed was wearing pointy glasses.

Were miniskirts actually shorter, or did it just appear that way, cos people’s legs were getting longer?

With his love of yachts, classical music, and church organs, Edward Heath seemed to be a real man of the people.

Howard Goodall comes in for some more probing questions:

What was the difference between punk rock and … just being angry—but without a guitar?

For Ms Cunk’s insights on medicine, and another eminently suitable interview victim, see here.

* * *

The series is essential viewing. Having been led astray by Chinese culture from an impressionable age, I’m deeply grateful to Ms Cunk for her authoritative survey of British history. Surely the BBC must soon commission a series in which Chinese history is mercilessly subjected to Cunkification, and So-Called sinologists meet their inevitable fate. There’s a promising start here:

They’re not boring people. Like Jiang Qing! She could’ve been from Bolton.

And now we can relish Cunk on Earth!!!

Cunk on Christmas

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Cunk

Following her probing accounts of Shakespeare, and “femininism”, what better seasonal viewing than the immaculately-researched historical overview provided last year by Philomena Cunk—herself touched by the divine:

Besides the usual bewildered expert interviewees, she consults some “small adults—which are known as children”, who also manage to keep a straight face.

… Jesus Christ—an icon who was almost as revered back then as Beyoncé is today.

Civil war is like a real war—but not abroad, so it’s cheaper. […] According to the Puritans, Christians shouldn’t celebrate Christmas, ‘cos it’s not in the Bible. Instead, they should be inside a church (which isn’t in the Bible), reading the Bible (which isn’t in the Bible).

At Christmas 1914 there was a brief ceasefire—the fighting stopped, soldiers got out of their holes and joined together in a place called No Man’s Land, showing that even at moments of peace, men will still divide into two sides, and try to beat one another.

She consults a hapless Jay Rayner:

I don’t understand bread sauce […] Bread, and sauce, are two completely different things, aren’t they?
[I’ll leave you to listen to the dénoument]

As ever, it’s not what you say but the way that you say it—her delivery and expression are faultless (see also The art of the voiceover).

Ms Morgan also leapt into print with equal facility, here, and in a handy 2020 guide.

Philomena Cunk

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Cunk
As another cautionary tale for fieldwork interviewers, how delightful to find Diane Morgan back on our screens, after her deadpan incarnation as “professional TV dimwit” Philomena Cunk (now with her own tag in the sidebar!).

Among innumerable aperçus, here’s her exegesis of Benefits Street:

They weren’t claiming benefits like MPs do, but a different type of benefits that they weren’t entitled to, because they were poor.

Her Moments of wonder series contains some classics, like her potted history of “femininism”:

—not least her helpful comment on Emily Davison throwing herself in front of the king’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913:

They [women] did this partly to highlight how unfair it was that women didn’t have a vote but horses did. And also because, being women, they really liked ponies.

On Shakespeare (“Did Shakespeare write boring gibberish with no relevance to our world of Tinder and peri-peri fries—or does it just look, sound and feel that way?”):

Among her hapless interviewees (watch from 24.19), she consults the valiant Ben Crystal, co-author of the Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary, testing him on a list of words that Shakespeare, er, might or might not have made up:

cuckoo?
ukulele?
omnishambles?
mixtape?
[fumbles ineptly with script]
sushi?
titwank?

—a list surely on a par with the names in Rowan Atkinson’s roll-call. Another perspective on Shakespeare is offered by the series Upstart crow.

Diane Morgan now has a hilarious role in the new TV series Motherland, written by the equally brilliant Graham Linehan and Sharon Horgan. I’m reliably informed that it’s horribly well observed:

I really want the children to be brought up like I was—by my mother.

It looks as if a Chinese version might be in order, though I’m not holding my breath. And now we can relish Cunk on Earth!!!

This week’s dinner-party

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Guests for my fantasy dinner-party this week (Friday to Monday):

Jaroslav Hašek, Stella Gibbons, Flann O’Brien, Harpo Marx, Keith Richards, Viv Albertine, Zoe Williams, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Caitlin Moran, Diane Morgan [far-fetched stage name of Philomena Cunk—Ed.], and Bridget Christie.

Dress optional. 1859 for 1900. That gives them 41 years.

It might be churlish of me to worry that Hašek and Myles might not shine in a large mixed group. But hey, it’s a fantasy.

Season’s greetings

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Xmas

Along the lines of

Meretricious and a Happy New Year,

here’s a seasonal entry from Alan Bennett’s 2001 diaries:

15 December. Words only used at Christmas: Tidings. Abiding. Swaddling. Lo! Abhors.

Indeed, as a boy chorister it always felt embarrassing having to sing “Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb”—despite having only the vaguest idea what any of these words might possibly mean (and once you do understand the line, it becomes problematical—it has attracted much comment, notably this). But that’s ritual for you, eh…

AB goes on:

A card from Victor Lewis-Smith with a sanctimonious  picture of Jesus and printed underneath:

Jesus loves everyone—except you, you cunt.

This makes me laugh helplessly.

What makes this entry so funny, apart from the content of the card itself, is both that AB was delighted to receive it and that he saw fit to tell the tale. For a related exhortation from Fascinating Aida, see here.

Conversely, the way AB is portrayed in Love, Nina is hilarious precisely because his persona there is so boring.

Some readers can be so literal… This article by the glorious Philomena Cunk prompted quite a few BTL comments from readers unaware that it’s a spoof, or that she’s a fictional creation (“Like, hello?”)—thus inadvertently making the comments hilarious too.