Prank show for gormless tourists is like pulling teeth
WHOEVER it was that described sarcasm as the lowest form of wit got it wrong. Not only are practical jokes about eight million times less sophisticated than the average piece of sarcasm, they are almost always completely unamusing.
Of course, pranks – and what a horrible word that is – come in all shapes and sizes. I suppose the, ahem, genre reaches it nadir with the bucket of water perched atop a slightly ajar door. That said, anything that relies on hidden cameras for its humour is also likely to be less than rib-tickling.
Readers of a certain age will remember Candid Camera, the longrunning series that pioneered hidden camera television. It was presented for many years by an awful American called Allen Funt, about whom the only remotely funny thing was his name.
The format has been used in this part of the world with varying degrees of success down through the years. A decade or so ago, comedian PJ Gallagher did a reasonably successful turn on Naked Camera as a gormless, extremely talkative taxi driver who never had a clue where he was going.
It largely worked because his passengers were celebrity sorts who were presumably used to top-of-the-range treatment. There was one very good sequence when the late Bill O’Herlihy – always so affable and unflappable on the telly – lost the rag as he was repeatedly delayed en route to an important meeting.
Probably the best exponent on Irish television, though, was Mike Murphy. He had a memorable run on The Live Mike in the early 1980s when he employed a number of guises to catch out members of the public.
I remember one occasion when he played an assistant in a dry cleaners who had to tell a succession of customers that their beloved garments had been ruined in an accident. By way of compensation, he tried to offer each of them in turn a manky-looking check jacket with scorch marks and a sleeve hanging off.
RTÉ’s new hidden camera show Scorchio is specifically aimed at making fools out of gullible holidaymakers in Majorca. According to the programme blurb, the series will use a ‘host of crazy characters’ to ‘target everywhere from beaches to bars, bus tours to boat parties’.
It adds: ‘Nobody is safe when the Scorchio crack squad of pranksters are on the prowl – the sun-seekers may think a high factor is enough to keep them from going red but their [sic] about to get burnt in a way they never expected!’
Oh dear. The use of the exclamation mark there smacks of desperation. They might as well have said, ‘This is going to be about as funny as undergoing root canal surgery without an anaesthetic.’
The cast of ‘crazy characters’ included Brendan (Cian Kinsella), a moustachioed jobsworth who ends up with a job in beach security in Magaluf after failing the
Garda entrance exam yet again. His principal stunt involved accusing various male holidaymakers of urinating in the Mediterranean and forcing them to atone by walking up the beach with signs reading ‘I p ***** in the sea’ draped around their necks.
Laugh? No, I didn’t actually. Nor did I find much to chuckle about in Pat (Kinsella again), a homesick Carlow man who wears a flat cap and budgie-smugglers on the beach.
I was vaguely amused by spoilt Foxrock princess Sorcha (Michaela O’Neill) getting a string of willing males to give her a piggyback down the beach because she is convinced there are discarded syringes hidden in the sand.
But the funniest thing about that was the extent to which blokes will allow themselves to be humiliated by a good-looking blonde in a swimsuit.
Anyway, I’m unlikely to be watching Scorchio next week. I’m hoping to get a last-minute appointment for root canal treatment without anaesthetic instead.