The Hell of It All by Charlie Brooker Read Free Book Online

made it sound a bit like Big Brother in grass skirts. But in practice, it’s far more charming. Downright heartwarming in fact. That’s a phrase I don’t get to type very often. Mainly because I don’t know what it means. I don’t have a heart. I have an unbeating onyx cricket ball. And stone-cold marble eyes. And a brain woven from tangled wisps of cynicism. I’m a miserable robot. Pity me.
    Anyway, there are a few suspiciously manufactured moments – we see the gang enthusiastically trying on suits in a branch of Asda, for instance – but on the whole, whenever there’s a joke, we’re the butt of it. The tribesmen aren’t portrayed as naive simpletons or noble savages, but regular people from a different background – thanks mainly to the savvy decision to give them their own cameras and provide their own narration. In this way, we see our world through their eyes – or at least feel like we do. It’s one of the strangest, most fascinating examinations of our own culture I’ve seen in years.
    This week, they’re hanging with the upper classes, which involves witnessing a fox hunt (which they dismiss as ‘crazy’), swilling champagne and staying at Chillingham Castle as guests of the impossibly posh Lord Humphrey. This perked the interest of my hate cells, because the upper classes always come across as uniquely hateful on TV. I borrowed a loudhailer and prepared to scream at the box. But no. Wrongfooted again. Humph and co turn out to be so gracious and welcoming and spellbound and non-patronising, you can practically warm your hands on the goodwill pouring off the screen. When the Tanna men crew don traditionalblack tie outfits and sit down to dinner it feels less like they’re being dressed up for comic effect, like kittens made to wear top hats for a demeaning poster, and more like they’re gamely sampling some of our cultural quirks first-hand. Because they are. At one point Humph talks them through the ins and outs of ritual cutlery use – starting with the knives and forks on the outside, moving inward as you head for dessert, and they look on in polite fascination, admiring the poshos for ‘living according to the ancient ways of their ancestors, like we do’.
    After dinner, they change back into their native dress and perform a ceremonial dance designed to promote ‘peace and unity’, inviting the blue bloods to join in if they want. And they do, laughing and singing. It’s so lovely and life-affirming, you want to crawl in through the aerial socket and hug everyone on screen. There’s another sentence I rarely get to type.
    By the time Chief Yapa and co are gleefully frolicking in the snow (which they’ve never seen before), you’ll probably be watching them through a haze of joyful tears. If TV manages to broadcast anything as simultaneously thought-provoking and charming this year, I’ll be dumbstruck. And I’ll probably have to switch the set off for good. I tune in to hate, dammit. Stop being so nice.
Henry VIII on a jetski [13 October 2007]
    I’ve got nothing against well-educated people, but it’s hard to behave naturally in their presence. Often, when I’m talking to someone terribly clever, I find I’m concentrating so vehemently on disguising my own ignorance, I can scarcely hear them. My brain’s worried that they’re about to refer to some book I’ve never read, or use terms I don’t understand, and I’m going to have to go into ‘nodding mode’, because the alternative – screwing up my face and going ‘buh?’ like a farmyard animal – is too humiliating to contemplate.
    None the less, I’m going to attempt something foolhardy here, by taking a little public journey into the depths of my own stupidity. I’m going to list every fact about King Henry VIII I can think of, offthe top of my head, without resorting to Wikipedia. Ready? Let’s go. Um. Henry the Eighth was a fat Tudor king with a beard. He composed ‘Greensleeves’. He had six wives: Catherine