The Kevin Bishop Show: is Bollocks
High Hopes Dashed
Tsk. This Channel 4 series has been a grave disappointment. I like Kevin Bishop; he's a damned likable guy and a damn good impressionist. He's even been in a foreign film - of all things! - that I've really liked (though the sequel left a lot to be desired). And he has shown off his skills of mimicry to the full, sometimes brilliant (Jonathan Ross and Ewen McGregor), sometimes what the? (Tom Cruise), but generally spot on in his star vehicle, but the material used to pad them out has been so excruciatingly cheap, easy and crap that all it makes me want to do is shake my head in a vigorously disenchanted manner. Then, tonight, just to illustrate how craven and inept it is there was the University Challenge three-skit series. Competing were Inbred College, Cambridge versus Trustafarian College, Oxford. The contestant names included Spooninmouth, Rah, Horseface and Twate. Stifle your laughter. The best is yet to come.
As ever Bishop unveiled a great Paxman impression, perhaps even better than Chris Barrie's on Spitting Image, but the questions ... read for yourself: "Have you had sex with anyone?" "Do you have any friends apart from the people are sitting with?" and Identify a pair of naked breasts (the picture question). Naturally, the clueless students hadn't, didn't and couldn't.
It was so funny that I stared through the TV and started to grind my teeth. What did you say? The scriptwriters meant to imply that UC contestants are all sexless, friendless white richkid nerds. Ho ho ho - that's such a highly original insinuation I'm going to break down in Niagara tears of hilarity at the righteous stereotypes made comedic gold. No, I won't. I'll continue grinding my teeth into ugly nubs of blackest despair. I thought comedy was meant to evolve not devolve and regress. LIKE THIS.
They could have gone for the surreal joke, clever wordplay, I mean anything but the bucket of baboons' balls they ended up with. Only they probably didn't have the time to write a script, with proper jokes and everything, and instead went for such genius dialogue as "Tits! You bloody geeks!"
As for stuff I liked, well, there are the growlsome Al Pacino impressions, the use of Someone Great in the Fony/Sony ads, his screaming luge competitor, 'Gashes for Gashes' in my moments of terrible weakness, and that's quite possibly it. Everything else has been godawful. Go back to Star Stories, Kev, and be silly and sweary there. This could have been good - it still could be - but for now ... I'll watch it because there really is nothing else on if I happen to stay in. I am forever trapped by circumstance I am.
FE:XXII
1 Which Carniolan - as in modern day Slovenia - diplomat, writer and member of the Holy Roman Empire wrote Imperial Council Notes on Muscovite Affairs/Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (1549), a Latin book on the geography, history and customs of Muscovy and the main early source of knowledge about Russia in Western Europe?
2 What is Barbados' biggest festival, having had its early beginnings on the sugar cane plantations during the colonial period and taking its name from a tradition begun in 1688, and featuring singing, dancing and accompaniment by bottles filled with water, shak-shak, banjo, triangle, fiddle, guitar, and bones?
3 "Discovered" by Swiss ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier in the 1960s, which Romanian folk musician and "Master of the Pan Flute" has sold over 40 million albums and was asked by Ennio Morricone to perform the pieces Childhood Memories and Cockeye's Song for the soundtrack of Once Upon A Time In America, while his song The Lonely Shepherd, penned by James Last and recorded with the James Last Orchestra, featured in Kill Bill Vol. 1.?
4 Also known in the past as Doi Luang (meaning 'big mountain') or Doi Ang Ka (meaning 'the crow's pond top'), Doi Inthanon at 2,565 metres above sea level (8,415 ft) is the highest mountain in which country?
5 Which religious organization originated in Germany in the late 1940s, having been inspired by the work of Oskar Ernst Bernhardt (also known by his pen name Abdruschin or Abd-ru-shin), principally his collection of 91 lectures In the Light of Truth whose subtitle gives it its name?
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Answers to FE:XII
1 Baron Sigismund von Herberstein 2 Crop Over 3 Gheorghe Zamfir 4 Thailand 5 The Grail Movement
Tsk. This Channel 4 series has been a grave disappointment. I like Kevin Bishop; he's a damned likable guy and a damn good impressionist. He's even been in a foreign film - of all things! - that I've really liked (though the sequel left a lot to be desired). And he has shown off his skills of mimicry to the full, sometimes brilliant (Jonathan Ross and Ewen McGregor), sometimes what the? (Tom Cruise), but generally spot on in his star vehicle, but the material used to pad them out has been so excruciatingly cheap, easy and crap that all it makes me want to do is shake my head in a vigorously disenchanted manner. Then, tonight, just to illustrate how craven and inept it is there was the University Challenge three-skit series. Competing were Inbred College, Cambridge versus Trustafarian College, Oxford. The contestant names included Spooninmouth, Rah, Horseface and Twate. Stifle your laughter. The best is yet to come.
As ever Bishop unveiled a great Paxman impression, perhaps even better than Chris Barrie's on Spitting Image, but the questions ... read for yourself: "Have you had sex with anyone?" "Do you have any friends apart from the people are sitting with?" and Identify a pair of naked breasts (the picture question). Naturally, the clueless students hadn't, didn't and couldn't.
It was so funny that I stared through the TV and started to grind my teeth. What did you say? The scriptwriters meant to imply that UC contestants are all sexless, friendless white richkid nerds. Ho ho ho - that's such a highly original insinuation I'm going to break down in Niagara tears of hilarity at the righteous stereotypes made comedic gold. No, I won't. I'll continue grinding my teeth into ugly nubs of blackest despair. I thought comedy was meant to evolve not devolve and regress. LIKE THIS.
They could have gone for the surreal joke, clever wordplay, I mean anything but the bucket of baboons' balls they ended up with. Only they probably didn't have the time to write a script, with proper jokes and everything, and instead went for such genius dialogue as "Tits! You bloody geeks!"
As for stuff I liked, well, there are the growlsome Al Pacino impressions, the use of Someone Great in the Fony/Sony ads, his screaming luge competitor, 'Gashes for Gashes' in my moments of terrible weakness, and that's quite possibly it. Everything else has been godawful. Go back to Star Stories, Kev, and be silly and sweary there. This could have been good - it still could be - but for now ... I'll watch it because there really is nothing else on if I happen to stay in. I am forever trapped by circumstance I am.
FE:XXII
1 Which Carniolan - as in modern day Slovenia - diplomat, writer and member of the Holy Roman Empire wrote Imperial Council Notes on Muscovite Affairs/Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (1549), a Latin book on the geography, history and customs of Muscovy and the main early source of knowledge about Russia in Western Europe?
2 What is Barbados' biggest festival, having had its early beginnings on the sugar cane plantations during the colonial period and taking its name from a tradition begun in 1688, and featuring singing, dancing and accompaniment by bottles filled with water, shak-shak, banjo, triangle, fiddle, guitar, and bones?
3 "Discovered" by Swiss ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier in the 1960s, which Romanian folk musician and "Master of the Pan Flute" has sold over 40 million albums and was asked by Ennio Morricone to perform the pieces Childhood Memories and Cockeye's Song for the soundtrack of Once Upon A Time In America, while his song The Lonely Shepherd, penned by James Last and recorded with the James Last Orchestra, featured in Kill Bill Vol. 1.?
4 Also known in the past as Doi Luang (meaning 'big mountain') or Doi Ang Ka (meaning 'the crow's pond top'), Doi Inthanon at 2,565 metres above sea level (8,415 ft) is the highest mountain in which country?
5 Which religious organization originated in Germany in the late 1940s, having been inspired by the work of Oskar Ernst Bernhardt (also known by his pen name Abdruschin or Abd-ru-shin), principally his collection of 91 lectures In the Light of Truth whose subtitle gives it its name?
Y
E
A
H
I
K
N
O
W
L
O
N
G
G
G
G
Q
U
E
S
T
I
O
N
S
Answers to FE:XII
1 Baron Sigismund von Herberstein 2 Crop Over 3 Gheorghe Zamfir 4 Thailand 5 The Grail Movement
posted by That Quiz Guy at 2:14 PM
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