The special, entitled A MANX ODYSSEY, was to see the gruesome threesome (revise? - Ed.)  descend upon the peaceful Isle of Man and wreak their usual brand of adorably slapstick havoc upon the island and its inhabitants.  Locations lined up included the living museum village Cregneash, the Calf of Man (wherein Uncle Albert would accidentally steal a seal cub and invoke the wrath of hundreds of furious seals) and Tynwald Hill, where Rodney was to become the next Chief Minister via a hilarious sequence of events involving him walking down Gravity Hill backwards.

Unfortunately for the BBC, the Manx Tourism department nixed the script entirely, alleging that it portrayed the island as “a grim shithole”, and its inhabitants as “backwards, straw-chewing country bumpkins who like to do the naughty with their brothers and sisters and eat kippers for every meal”.  It was put to bed at the very last minute, just hours before it was to be announced to the press, and was quietly filed on a shelf in a giant DO NOT TOUCH warehouse somewhere near Wood Green.

And so onto our scoop - the very special re-written version of the closing theme which had been hastily knocked together by John Sullivan to illustrate the humorous and slightly mocking nature of the episode.   Listener warning - your ears may not thank you afterwards.

Lyrics:

We’ve got some tall hills, bike skills, Castletown and quid bills
Independent parliament,  hundred thousand kippers killed
Cregneash, crap beach, hotels to which punters rush
Lifeboats down the promenade, pervy bloke behind a bush
Bush bush bush bush bush bush bush

No tails on cats, no monarchy
No sunny days, that’s guaranteed
Fairy Bridge, say hello
Dodge your taxes, here we goooooooo….

Long live the Isle of Man
Viva the Isle of Man
God bless the Isle of Man
Ta graih aym ort, the Isle of Man
I love you, the Isle of Man
Or Ellan Vannin
Whatever it’s called…

(Disclaimer - none of this is actually real and all of the above comments are fictional and have no bearing on my opinion nor of that of any member of BBC staff or anything like that so don’t kick off, it’s a joooooke)

Further hilarity is to come.

Sam’s career began in 1999, when he somehow managed to get onto an open slot at the then-booming Doug’s Den club in Burnley.  The club, run by tedious ’70s racist standup Doug Darrow, was famous for its “you pay, you may possibly play, but it depends how we feel on the day (no refunds)” policy, and set a precedent for northern comedy venues until at least the mid-to-late 1980s.  The first time he climbed up on stage, he was dressed in a very similar fashion to the US pisstake-artist, Neil Hamburger, though of course in Sam’s case it was wholly unintentional as he had literally never seen any comedy before then in his life.  Despite his gawky suit and his horrendously sweaty forehead, he somehow managed to win both the crowd and the usually-hard to impress Darrow with his nervous and forced delivery, along with jokes that were so hackneyed you’d think whoever wrote them had been trapped inside a black cab when he’d put pen to paper.

His ‘career’, if you could call it that, spanned only another three years, and was plagued with cancelled shows, ludicrously greedy promoters,  an increasingly prominent stammer and a tendency to snap and insult his audiences viciously.  He now works as an area manager for Sainsbury’s, and runs seven stores in Lancashire.  His is the third most successful area in the North West.  He hasn’t told a joke since his last show, on February 13th, 2003, wherein he walked on stage covered in at least two kilos of macerated dog shit and proceeded to bawl like a baby for his alotted fifteen minutes.

We’re lucky enough to have a rare recording of one of his middle period shows for you to treat (or mistreat, depending on your tastes) your ears to.  From his Christmas 2000 set at Arrive Up My Arse (a seriously short-lived night two storeys underneath Manchester), an experimental set which involved him taking jokes he’d saved from crackers for all of the time previous to that set (though of course he’d never actually read them) and telling them to what would prove to be one of the most schizophrenic audiences ever recorded.  It also briefly features the late, great US comedian, Paul Beverowitz, who, unknown to literally everybody in the room (including Beverowitz himself), was suffering with terminal lung cancer at the time this recording was made.  Sadly Paul died only half an hour after this show ended.  He will be missed.

NEXT TIME IN COMEDY UNCOVERED - Ed Burzum

I really truly have found my old obsession with them.  I wouldn’t be so bothered except that there’s so much other stuff I’d rather like to listen to but I find myself unable to pull away from the glorious hold Messrs. Partridge and Moulding have on my ears of late.

If you say you like interesting music, and poppy music, and music that gives you a permanent grin because it’s so damn twisty and beguiling, and you haven’t yet given XTC more than a cursory glance with your ears… get to it.  Really.  You’ll be glad you did.

This was an unprovoked plug for the band XTC, who were amazing and all that crap.  I am not affiliated with the band.  Just saying.  I mean, you’d think I was trying to get in with them, the amount I go on about how great their music is.  Shut up, Ben.

The title?  Why it’s an XTC lyric.  It popped into my head as I was beavering away on an email to a conference telling them they should’ve really sent their extremely time-limiting letter earlier than one day before what they wanted from us was due in.  Fuck knows why.  I’m fairly sure I’ll be deep down and comfortable back in my past obsession with the group soon enough.  I sort-of got sick of them, a little bit, after obsessively listening to everything I could find by them over the summer.  But, as with many things, now I’ve taken a step back and had a little breather, I feel I can go back in and make another go of things, if you catch my meaning.  I’m fully aware I’ve used the word “things” at least twice, though now of course thrice, though obviously that last time ’round didn’t count for shit.  But yes, the fact that I’ve got to explain my love for their album “Skylarking” to Clare Grogan on Saturday on 6music (in the “All Killer, No Filler” feature, fact fans) has meant I’ve had to listen to the whole thing a few times in one go, and has reawakened my love for their music.

So.  I know that nobody reads this, and perhaps that’s with good reason.  But I rather do enjoy writing this bumph.  That is all.

Scleritis, episcleritis, the mange; whatever it is that is afflicting me so is a bit of a bugger to shift.  Hopefully this latest course of steroid eye drops will fix it and won’t land me with an acute angle-closure glaucoma (apparently a rare side-effect of such drops).  I think my right eye just hates me, to be honest.

(by the way, to whoever actually reads this - probably nobody - I’ve almost finished my pointless diatribe about XTC’s “Oranges and Lemons”, which should be fun to pick apart if nothing else)

Life is… a bit odd, at the moment. I’m suddenly employed, properly, with PAY and everything, for the first time since February. I still live at home and my parents are outrageously kind with regards to keep (£30 a week plus I have to wash dishes/clothes/tidy/etc - yes, I’m a regular fucking Ben-derella, and these are things everyone should do anyway, but there you go, I’m not the one setting the price) so I have just a tiny bit more disposable income than I’ve been accustomed to for the past 6 months or so prior to my first paycheck.

Maybe I’ll decide to move out and take some actual responsibility for myself, but that’s only going to happen once I know I’ve got a job after March. Don’t be so impatient, dear reader. Christ, no wonder you’ve got an ulcer.

Also I feel like I’m getting my friends back, a little bit. Not sure how else to put it, really; it just seemed as if some of us were drifting apart a little bit. Perhaps that’s just my usual paranoia rearing its snaggletoothed spitting head (as per frigging usual), but it’s been smashed in that same head with a brick because - and let’s face it, I probably don’t say this enough - my friends are basically awesome.

I don’t really enjoy being all retrospective and gushy, but yes. I have been, there. Just a bit. Not that any of you turncoat fuckers will read this, but you’re all great and lovely people. There you go. My annual mate-praise, out of the way. Fantastic.

Oh, did I mention that I now have a stupidly hairy chin? I tried my hand at beard husbandry and it seems to have worked. I look like a tit, mind, but it keeps the lower half of my face rather toasty in the arctic breezes we seem to be getting at the moment. Silver linings all over the fucking shop.

Also, it has been brought to my attention that I give good voice. I know it’s an impossible dream, a pipe dream, a dream that only a bit of a divvy could probably dream, but what the hell; I would not mind somehow perhaps in the future attempting to do some voiceover work. The only downside is I’m not a trained actor. BUT I HAVE A GOOD VOICE.

Do I often talk about myself this much? Apparently so. Shit.

BONUS - I was digging through my loft last week when I found this old board game called $00PABOWL!!! which looked a little bit ragged but otherwise quite serviceable. I’ve not bothered playing the game itself yet, but it DID come with an old C90 which had instructions on. I recorded it for you all to hear; it’s super-confusing in parts but mostly it sounds quite straightforward. What d’you think?

In the words of the estimable John Hodgman, THAT IS ALL.

It was 1978 when BBC Radio 4 commissioned the then-hot comedy writer, Raymond Allen (of “Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em” fame) to adapt the hugely successful Thames TV series “The World At War” for the airwaves.  Their reasoning for this decision has, sadly, been lost, along with most of the tapes, making any audio of the short-lived adaptation into aural gold dust.

And therefore last year, when an aspiring and youthful trainee BBC archivist somehow managed to dig up some excerpts from deep in the Radio 4 vaults, their seniors and programme commissioners alike leaped at the chance to broadcast what is regarded by many as the holy grail of 1970s radio.  Unfortunately, following a lot of red tape and fucking about on behalf of various executives (who will not be named here, for obvious reasons) the excerpts were never aired.

Until now.  That’s right kids.  For your listening pleasure, hot out of the left trouser pocket of one of our BBC moles, Yerse is proud to present…. THE WORLD AT WAR?

Credits:

Scriptwriter - Raymond Allen
Junior Scriptwriter - Stephen Tansey
Narrator and all other voices - Benjamin Wissett
Producer - Alan Smithee

“THE WORLD AT WAR?” was a BBC Radio 4 production on behalf of Thames Audio Productions

(Disclaimer - this is a hopefully original audio production which has nothing to do with Raymond Allen, the BBC, Thames Television or anything else.  It is a work of fiction and isn’t supposed to offend anybody or infringe on any copyright bollocks like that.  It is parody and is probably protected as such under various laws, so leave it aaht, RIGHT?)

Unfilmed short film script -

And That’s The Truth

A Ben Wisset joint

Int. A Smart office

Steve

I can’t believe I’ve been here five hours and not done one bit of work, god, if I don’t get this done SOON im going to be in a LOT of trouble…………………why would I say such a thing out loud

[Enter Dave]

Dave

Steve!!

Steve

What??

Dave

Dude I’ve just dipped my balls in the water cooler

Steve

Why would you do that?

Dave

Why would YOU do that?

Steve

Look you’re being childish already

Dave

I’ll fucking twat you in a minute

Steve

Look, I’ve got work to do, can this wait?

Dave

No

Steve

Oh, ok

[Scene 2 – the canteen]

Dave

Right, you know the camp guy I live with?

Steve

Yea?

Dave

Right, well he sneezed with his eyes open last night and reversed time, now I;ve got this wormhole in my apartment

Steve

Ahh shit, where does it lead to?

Dave

I forget, bizarro world?

Steve

Nah no such place mate, you mean opposite world

Dave

Yes!!

Steve

Shit I’ve just grown an afro

Dave

Shit, then the effects of this world are CREEPING UP ON US SLOWLY

Steve

No they’re not

Dave

….

Steve

DAMN THAT OPPOSITE WORLD

Dave

Where’s your afro

Steve

NO!! WE MUST STOP IT

[scene 3 – Dave’s apartments]

Dave

I bet he’s eaten all the corned beef, corned beef corned beef that’s all he wants, pity he doesn’t want a KICK IN THE ARSE because I know where he’d RUDDY WELL GET ONE

[Mr. Grimbles enters shot]

Mr. Grimbles

Oi, Dave, I wanna woooooooord with you

Dave

What?

Mr. Grimbles

You owe me eight weeks rent

Dave

No I don’t

[Dave shoots Mr. Grimbles]

Dave

Right here we are

[opens door]

Dave

DAMN IT ALL!!

Steve

Oh my god!!

Dave

THERE ARE BALD WOMEN IN MY APARTMENT, BALD WOMEN??!?!

Steve

AND YOU OWE ME EIGHT QUID

Dave

AND I OWE YOU EIGHT QUID

Dave

I have had it with opposite world I am going in. Nude.

[Steve is wearing a duct tape moustache]

Steve

JAH REPRESENT

[Both jump into opposite world]

[Scene 4 – opposite world]

Dave

It’s my worst nightmare, all the women, they are bald

Steve

Their strength in a wind tunnel is far superior to ours

Dave

Ahh the wind tunnels, I’ll tell you about wind tunnels, this is how they make their money, they shave themselves bald and wind tunnel it up until the sun rises and THEN THEY KEEP GOING

[cuts to Dave and Steve in betting office]

Dave

Come ooooon 3:15 at haydock

Steve

Err mate, what about that opposite world business

Dave

What? What are you on about you horrid man??

Steve

The bald women? The worm hole?

Dave

You’re babbling again, are you trying to steal my hot tip for this race so you can TAKE my money AGAIN and steal my girlfriend AGAIN by impressing her with a flash new blender or summat??

Steve

No, Dave, we went to your apart-

Dave

You want to tear me APART??

Steve

You’re deliberately mishearing me now

Dave

Police!! Help!!