Thanks to whoever sent in The Bullshit Detective. I guess it's quite tame compared to most...

Does anyone remember 'The Dirty Protest Challenge' from a program called 'The People's Book of Records'? I think that was the exact moment I realised that something really weirdly awful was happening to telly. The show was a crappy 'Banzai'-clone (people suggest various challenges and then compete in them, or something...it actually hurts my brain, trying to explain it), and I would have forgotten it completely if it hadn't been for this bit.

Picture this: Two blokes, dressed and made-up to look like Hunger Striking IRA prisoners, each of them with a plastic container containing chocolate strapped to their arses (again, I am not making this up), competing against each other in a race to daub political slogans on the wall of their 'cell' with the chocolate. You see, The Hunger Strikers used to use their own shit in this way to vent their anger at not being classified as political prisoners. These guys turned it into a hilarious...well, not hilarious maybe but certainly a...a...well, they did it.

Seeing these merry pranksters reaching behind them and scooping out more chocolate/shit and then slapping it onto the wall, I remember having something akin to an out-of-body-experience. This couldn't really be on telly, I thought, and yet there it was. "Maybe I've died" I sort of thought. "Maybe I'm in hell." It made me feel like I really was in a prison cell with the walls covered in shit, except the prison cell was my life, and the shit was telly.

Even now, I feel like I may have imagined it. Does anyone have a link to the clip?

Yikes. I have to say, I really don't like the look of the film of His Dark Materials. First of all... 'The Golden Compass'? What the hell is that? Do they mean 'Northern Lights'? Are they referring to the Alethiometer?

And who's that prissy-looking kid? Surely that's not supposed to be Lyra!!! She's a tomboy, for Christ's sake, a street urchin! She doesn't have the money for that haircut!

God, I wish Hollywood would fuck off.

(Ooh, in the cold light of morning, I wish I hadn't written this post. I wasn't aware that the US title was 'The Golden Compass'. I also forgot that Lyra was cleaned up by Coulter. I may be turning into the Comics Shop Guy from the Simpsons...but I realised later I did have a real problem with this teaser--what on earth possessed them to stitch together a trailer before the special effects where finished? The whole point, surely, is to create a world you can believe in, not destroy it before the film's even started. Very, very bad idea. They should withdraw it QUICKLY.)