It's a Mystery

Back to your traffic cones, lads

You know, one of things I'll never understand about the festering human race is how popular Monty Python was and, fuck knows, still seems to be. I mean, it's like trying to comprehend the actions of Sadam Hussein or why people watch the X-Factor. It's beyond me.  
Truth is, I've never seen a Monty Python sketch and laughed. Ever. In fact I have never seen one and smiled, internally sniggered or even vaguely forgot that another channel was probably broadcasting something infinitely more entertaining/ funny/ intelligent.
For a start listening to any Monty Python utterance is like listening to a gaggle of 12 year old boys trying to be funny. Are 12 year old boys funny though? Fuck no. And they certainly aren't funny enough to warrant the sort of befuddled adoration that Cleese and his cohorts have attracted. I even remember hearing Monty Python at a comp school sports day - some trying-to-be-popular bell ends were playing a cassette on their new fangled audio machine - and failed to see what the fuck was funny. Believe me, 30 years on I'm still agog that those kids couldn't find more amusement in white noise. 
And for me this theory has been not just tested like Five Mile Island but it's been proven by the fact that in my experience (so get ready for a hastily constructed generalisation) the only people who ever laugh at Monty Python are men. I have honestly never met a woman who thought that Palin and his mates were anything other than graduates spouting  puerile bollocks in between wearing traffic cones on their heads.
Of course, being critical of Monty Python gets me the same reaction as when I am critical of the Beatles: bemusement that I haven't been sucked in by the endless hyperbolic outpourings of the media and succumbed to liking them.
Seriously, if I want to hear anyone banging on about dead parrots or see Confucius blowing a whistle I'll go back to my psych unit and hang about the waiting room. I don't need some sniggering Cambridge tossers to bang on about it for me. If only the rest of the world would realise that. Jesus, talk about a Holy Grail.

Not-so-Great Pretenders

No, I can't believe your success either

Could you tell me what there is to like about impressionists? No, not the French painting variety, for Christ's sake, I mean the people who put on the voices and twitches of slebs. No really, could you tell me what there is to like? Because I am at a complete and utter bloody loss about why they enjoy national popularity.
I'd rather watch my ovaries being removed via my nostrils than be exposed to un-funny men like John Culshaw and Alistair McGowan. Problem is that their impersonations are nothing less than shite. 
Their voices and actions leave me either bewildered or cold and, worse, they try to make up for it by injecting dull yet explanatory jokes into their acts. You know the sort of thing. The obligatory Bruce Forsythe turn will include references to Strictly Come Dancing and "NIce to see you!" catchphrases because the impression itself is so fucking poor that you'd otherwise have no clue about who it's supposed to be. They'd be better off broadcasting a blank screen and letting viewers use their fevered imaginations. 
In one alleged comedy show - Punt and Dennis, I recall through my frustrated tears - the few attempted impressions were so horrifyingly inaccurate that they actually introduced each sketch with screen captions. What in the fuck were they thinking? Didn't it cross their fame-hungry minds that if their offerings were that poor they should be scrapped? 
This goes for every impressionist, though, doesn't it? They're all laughably bad yet someone, somewhere keeps commissioning the bastards. I suspect that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. There's such a dearth of decent impressionists that any old twat with a passing resemblance to Anne Robinson gets a gig.
Tell you what these guys should do and that's do an impression of being good at something. I dunno, emptying bins or architecture will do. Anything except assaulting the nation with their deluded witterings. Or they could try the French painting. As long as they piss off to France, that is.