I have hundreds of the Screen Break columns on my laptop, and I am currently putting together a book of some of 'the best,' which frankly are barely distinguishable from some of the worst. Here's one that might not make the cut, but you might enjoy simply for the fact that The Guardian let me get away with so many questionable jokes.
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My parents would not let me have a
dog when I was a child.
They took
me to Butlins in Pwllheli instead, as a consequence of which I have grown up
with an abiding love of the North Wales coast, but no real understanding of
people’s utter dottiness about their dogs. The annual jamboree at Crufts
reaches me like a communication from another planet.
It is unmissable TV, though.
Twenty-two thousand dogs, 140 thousand
people ranging from the mildly eccentric to the totally barking (last pun, I
promise), and Clare Balding in a leather coat.
What is not to like?
As for Clare’s co-presenter, he
sets me wondering if, in the same way as dog owners are said to grow to look
like their pets, television presenters might begin to resemble the events they
cover; because if ever there was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, shiny-coated,
eager, panting pedigree puppy of a TV front man it is Ben Fogle, as he bounds
onto the sofa alongside Clare to appraise her of the latest developments in the
gundog category.
He was that close
to laying his head in her lap, I swear.
Maybe the BBC is playing it for
laughs this year.
Just as it is
well nigh impossible to take seriously the music of bands like Saxon, Krokus,
or any other with an unnecessary umlaut or two in their name, after the
merciless lampooning of This Is Spinal Tap, so the same team’s spoof
dogumentary (all right, two puns) Best In Show must make it difficult to
approach Crufts with an entirely straight face.
The crew certainly seemed to be
finding it so at times.
There was
a glorious sequence where Ben, having bought little fluffy facsimiles of some
of the dogs from a stall, returned to the studio and presented them to their
canine models, who did exactly what dogs tend to do with soft toys.
“Archie, don’t eat yourself,” Ben
instructed the animal, to the very audible amusement of the boys behind the
cameras, who were clearly thinking of dogs eating themselves in the more
literal sense occasionally referred to in whiskery old locker-room jokes.
I should explain, for those of you who
have not spent much time in that bracingly masculine atmosphere, that these
jokes usually involve a male watching an act of canine self-fellatio, saying,
“I wish I could do that,” which is hilariously misconstrued by a second
spectator, whose response is on the lines of, “Well, give him a dog biscuit and
he might let you.”
That joke, by the way, before you
throw down the paper in disgust, was in aid of Comic Relief, under which banner
I believe almost any old tat is currently considered acceptable.
Regular listeners to BBC Five
Live’s hit Saturday morning show Fighting Talk will know of my objections to
Comic Relief on the principle that comedy should by its very nature be
subversive and anti-establishment, and while it is laudable that performers
work for charity, it would be preferable if comedians at least were to do this
on the quiet, while publicly turning their mocking gaze on self-regarding
leviathans like Comic Relief.
Charity begins at home, I say, not
on prime time BBC1 with repeats and expanded coverage on BBC3.
I am not entirely sure exactly where
the comic element comes in either.
Though it might be mildly amusing for a nanosecond to hear Ray Stubbs
murdering The Jam’s Goin’ Underground, it is not exactly The Marx Brothers.
And who decided the event should go on
for two weeks?
Later this week,
God help us, there is a celebrity version of The Apprentice under the Comic
Relief imprimatur.
This is not so
much telethon, more fund-raising eternity.
And so, with some relief, back to
Crufts, where competitors are going through their paces in the obedience ring,
which is not, as you might have imagined, an internet network of like-minded
fetishists, but the area where owners demonstrate how damned clever their dogs
are.
My favourite bit is where the dog
careers around the ring before the judges, with its handler clutching the lead
and running behind with what dignity he or she can muster.
I particularly enjoyed the work of Miss
Jonna Sanden, a statuesque Swede, trailing after her flatcoat retriever Simon,
successful in the gundog category.
The commentators praised Simon’s “deep girth,” and one spoke admiringly
– I am not making this up – of his being “obviously a male dog, but without
being overdone anywhere.”
I could
not say myself, because I was busy watching Miss Sanden.
Is that wrong?
There has been some talk this year
about this kind of event being tantamount to animal cruelty, but my view is
that when an owner spends hours on end following behind his or her animal with
a little plastic bag scooping up its waste product and looking for a bin in
which to deposit it, it does not seem too much to ask for the mutt to give
something back once a year.
I am inclined to accept the
assurances of Jessica Holm, one of the BBC’s commentary team, that the
four-legged competitors find all the fussing, the training, the preening, the
pimping, and performing a huge blast.
“They love it.
My dogs turn
themselves inside out with excitement when they know there is a show in the
offing,” she said, “It’s like a big social for them,” and with 21,999 brand new
backsides to sniff, who could doubt it?