Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe (2013) s03e02 Episode Script
Episode 2
1 Hello, I'm Charlie Brooker.
You're watching Weekly Wipe, a programme all about things that are happening.
Things like this: The chairman of Boots the chemist has criticised the Labour Party.
I can think of plenty of politicians I'd like to see taking a kicking from Boots.
He certainly thinks Miliband would be a catastrophe in Number Ten, but would look fabulous in No 7.
Channel 4's The Jump returned to wow viewers with its intoxicating blend of celebrity interviews and sleet.
This year's contestants include Joey Essex, a man so stupid you'd expect him to go up the slope because he's never heard of gravity.
There was heart-warming news coverage as thousands of strangers donated money to a disabled OAP who was mugged outside his home.
I bet the mugger feels stupid.
If he'd waited a week, the guy would have been worth hundreds of thousands of pounds! There were eye-popping scenes at the Super Bowl as Katy Perry wowed the crowd with a spectacular half-time show in which she performed an exciting medley of her greatest hit.
More of that sort of thing later.
First, did you know there's a general election on the way? Well, there is.
100 days to go until the general election.
The party leaders step up their campaign.
Recently, the news pissed its knickers over the milestone that is 100 days till the election.
It's 100 days to go before the general election.
With 100 days to go to the election 100 days away.
Don't know about you, but I'll stay up and watch the whole thing.
100 days of campaigning, handshaking, photo opportunism, powerful erotica, opinion polls, clunky visual metaphors, vox pops, and so on, all of it playing out nightly on the news.
Anyway, the first point of debate was debates, specifically the live Prime Ministerial TV debates, part of a grand tradition that stretches all the way back to 2010.
The first televised debates were incredible television.
There we were, sitting on skateboards, or just on the ground, like basic animals, all of us watching fresh-faced hopeful David Cameron tell us about the time he went to Plymouth and met a black man who joined the Navy when he was ten.
I was in Plymouth recently and a 40-year-old black man actually made the point to me.
He said, "I came here when I was six.
I've served in the Royal Navy "for 30 years.
I'm incredibly proud of my country.
" Oh, it was magical! Cameron did so well in those debates he ended up in a coalition with Nick Clegg, so it was strange he seemed reluctant to get involved this time round.
And it was a pity, because the plans were already in place.
ITV expertly illustrated how the debates might look with the leaders represented by Pez dispensers.
And it certainly sounded pretty sexy.
The broadcasters presented their proposals to the political leaders last year.
A two-way debate between David Cameron and Ed Miliband on Sky News and Channel 4, the BBC plans to include Nick Clegg in a three-way event.
Suppose he'll be in the middle trying to beat off the other two.
ITV plans to add UKIP leader, Nigel Farage Ugh! That's the hardcore European edition.
.
.
which is why David Cameron insists the Green Party leader is also present, and if she's not, he won't come.
And knowing Cameron, he'll say he's about to come and pull out at the last minute and leave a terrible mess.
Mind you, the others would lap that right up.
The sticking point was the Green Party, who look chirpy for people who know in their bones that humanity's survival hangs by a BLEEP thread.
In the 2010 debates, the Greens were represented by a haunted oak tree.
This time around they hadn't been invited.
Cameron wants them there as he's worried about climate change - the way the climate's changed since 2010.
Now everyone thinks he's a BLEEP.
Cameron's quibbling irritated novelty UKIP mascot Nigel Farage, who had been invited.
David Cameron is using the Greens as an excuse not to have a debate with UKIP.
He's chicken.
He's running scared.
Poor Nige! He'd been looking forward to some much-needed media coverage.
I mean, he's hardly ever on telly.
Sometimes whole seconds go by without me seeing his face.
That's sarcasm, incidentally.
Farage is on TV more often than Olivia Colman.
He's TV's default screensaver image.
Footage of him kicks in by default every few minutes.
Look, there you go! It's happening again now.
I don't even want to show you this, it's hard-wired into the broadcast software.
Hang on! Let me hit something, see if I can override it.
Er No, hang on.
There we go, that's better.
Hang on, just plug the cable back in.
Equally unimpressed with Cameron was Edbonk Milibump, who ferociously berated the PM up the Commons.
There's only one person running scared of these debates and that's this Prime Minister.
Interesting tactic, accusing him of running scared of a live TV debate during a live TV debate.
When he looks at the Green Party, why is he so scared? I'll debate anyone the broadcasters invite to debate.
Anyone?! All right, what about Sooty here? Bear in mind, you'll have to pause while he whispers in your ear.
What's that, Sooty? Yeah, he is.
Actually, never mind puppets, he didn't do brilliantly up against Myleene Klass, as ITV's The Agenda made devastatingly clear.
Is that your only option? You might as well tax this water.
You can't just point at things and tax them! You need to have a better strategy.
In fact, Miliband's best chance of triumph is to go up against former Happy Mondays pharmaceutical dancer Bez, leader of the Reality Party.
As Sky News incisively demonstrated, he'd make the debates brilliant.
But what's wrong with fracking? A lot of people believe it can solve a lot of the future energy problems for the UK, that it will lead to cheaper fuel for ordinary people.
What's wrong with that? Well, at the end of the day, that is a slight lie because there are alternatives out there, with green energies, and Er, what was the question again? Anyway, then the broadcasters called D-Cam's bluff, adding the Greens to the panel, along with the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
The debate looks set to feature more parties than a freshers' week.
So many participants will be standing behind lecterns, it'll be like an episode of enthralling game show, the Weakest Link.
In British politics, the Labour MP who, in 2010, was appointed Shadow Home Secretary is Ed who? Miliband.
Balls! Britain's lectern manufacturers can't possibly cope with this unexpected spike in demand, so the leaders will probably have to bring their own.
Luckily, they've got loads of them.
Look! Nick Clegg's got one you can totally see through, Miliband has a wipe-clean vinyl model, contoured for adult fun.
Mm, look at this! Can't say I'm too keen on this curvy wooden lump leaning against a lectern.
Eagle-eyed news fans may have noticed Cameron takes the lectern around the country with him.
It pops up again and again.
It's practically a member of his family.
He loves it so much, he left it in a pub.
Or they could build their own lectern.
That would be a brilliant preliminary round for the Great Debate Game Show.
They should have to construct their own lectern against the clock, live on TV, without instructions, using whatever materials they're given.
15 minutes on the clock and Miliband has just nailed his tie to the main backing plank.
Natalie Bennett for the Greens is still refusing to comply until she's seen the sustainability certificate.
Meanwhile, Cameron's personal carpenters are doing a sterling job with their master's pulpit.
The prospect of a debate makes leaders nervous because they can't control it.
The one message they can control is whatever snappy slogan they've come up with that week.
Already there's a noticeable trend for compact mission statements hovering on the backdrop next to their heads, like the one beside gammon despot David Cameron here.
He's not just droning on, he's "securing a better future".
The stark mission statements remind me of the excellent sci-fi satire They Live, in which a drifter finds some magic sunglasses and discovers the population is being kept asleep with subliminal slogans buried in the media.
Except instead of "marry and reproduce", we get even more mundane slogans, like this one.
A Britain living within its means? A Britain living within its means? Oh, dare to BLEEP dream! What next? Missionary position shall suffice? Coward! Ideologically, the parties have picked their battlegrounds.
The Tories have gone for the economy to do with money, which they've got loads of, while Labour have chosen the NHS, which is about caring for the weak and vulnerable, which they've got one of.
To associate themselves with their chosen issue, the leaders take part in appropriate photo ops again and again.
That's why Frightened Young Violinist of the Year, Ed Miliband, will doubtless be harder to shift from hospital wards than the norovirus.
David Cameron is keen to come across as a hard-working guardian of the economy, hence the constant footage of him touring workplaces in a hard hat pretending to help out.
Here he is visiting a building site in conspicuously clean boots.
Here he is inspecting a factory and stealing a brick, and here he is down the docks, with his helmet glistening in the sun and "Siemens" plastered across his forehead.
Although the overall impression isn't always completely reassuring.
I mean, in this alarming interview on Five News, George Osborne seems to be sitting in some kind of nuclear bunker.
People watching will ask themselves a question.
Yes, why are you stock-piling bread? And more worrying still, here in petrifying scenes on ITV news, here we see David Cameron quite clearly constructing an ark.
This is fixing the roof when the sun is shining.
No, it's building a boat for the end of the world.
What do you know that we don't, Cameron? There was this Broadchurch programme about a tragic killing that happened in the first series and got totally solved.
So, it didn't really need to be on, but it was on anyway.
That's why everyone in it looked really fucking miserable.
What's clever is it's the same murder again and it's sort of hard to do a murder show again because we know who done it.
So, for the new series, they actually dug up the victim from the first series in case the murderer wanted to do it again.
My boy is in there! YOU! Why can't you let him rest, eh? I hope they do a third series of Broadchurch, about another murder that's already happened, but a famous one, like Shergar or the shooting of Tupac Shakur.
There was a lot of staring out into the ocean, you know? tThey were probably worried another murderer might come in by boat, or someone might try to kill the sea.
Even though it's got all death and grieving in it, it's bright and lovely and sort of Instagram-looking.
Like an advert for Flora or Cadbury's Flake, so it's dark but also colourful.
Like Mr Motivator.
People said it's got loads of factual errors in it, and they've got a point, like there's this one woman with a terrible wig.
It doesn't look like her hair at all.
It's not even the same colour.
And it's not just her - there's loads of them.
Whoever did the wigs was mental.
And there was this really stupid bit where a dog opened a door.
There's loads of crying in it.
Because there isn't a new murder, I think it's about a sort of crying disease that makes people leak water from the face.
And it's really contagious, because everyone starts doing it.
And it's not just face water.
Like, one of them totally sprung a leak from her front bum out in the street.
See what you've done?! And then she kept going, till tonnes of water was coming out.
Well, if they don't find a cure, everyone in Broadchurch is going to drown.
There's all these people and you're not sure who's suspicious and who isn't.
Like, there'd be someone who sort of looked kind, but then the programme would subtly imply they might be evil, like, really subtly.
In Broadchurch 1, the mystery was, "Who's the murderer?" But in Broadchurch 2, it's, "What's the point?" Which is an even bigger mystery.
I can't wait to find out what it is.
Prehistory! And Channel 5 enthrals the nation with a gripping TV experiment in which a group of volunteers are sent back in time to the year 10,000 BC - where they'll definitely have to fight dinosaurs.
The guinea pigs start out as regular 21st-century civilians, with their hashtags and their T-shirts and everything, then they strip down to cave rags and get whisked to a remote forest clearing in Bulgaria, where the nearest they'll come to a selfie stick is a stick.
Sounds awful to me, but some of them are looking forward to the experience.
I think I can hunt.
I can trap.
I can kill animals.
I want to be able to make fire.
That's what separates us from the animals.
Yeah, that and not shitting while we walk.
Suppose you want to do that, too.
I consider it a personal indignity when the 4G signal drops to 3G, so faced with nothing but huts and mud, I'd just immediately kill myself with the nearest rock.
Although I am looking forward to the bit where they have to fight dinosaurs, which is definitely going to happen.
In the meantime, they have to live off the land, like Ray Mears, or a robin.
Mum's just eaten a worm.
Then things quickly turn feral, as the primitive tribe skin and gut an unfortunate cameraman.
Cameramen are a good source of protein, and you can turn their tripods into primitive tools.
It's surreal, this.
Absolutely surreal.
It's brilliant.
Um Especially from somebody who doesn't actually like killing stuff, but, yeah, it's great, this.
So I'll get an axe and then I'm going to chop his head off.
Ooh, I can't wait till he gets to use that axe on the dinosaurs.
Pretty sure they're coming soon.
The next task is to start a fire and cook the meat, which isn't as easy as it looks.
Agh.
Bloody idiots - they can't even use basic tools.
Eventually, after they've spent hours on their knees, frantically blowing like their lives depended on it, like your dad did in the Navy, the fire is lit.
There you go.
We made fire! They want to be careful, actually - the light from that might attract dinosaurs.
They'll be turning up any minute.
Anyway, then they stuff their cheeks with meat - your dad again - and wander into their huts and go to sleep, and get back out of their huts and hunt for berries, and trudge around in rags and eat more berries, and go back into the hut, and Hang on - there aren't going to be any BLEEP dinosaurs, are there? It's all just people.
I've seen PEOPLE.
If I wanted to watch people I'd just look out the window, and if I wanted to see pre-historic people, I'd move to Rhyl.
Sure enough, rather than fighting dinosaurs while a volcano erupts in the background, they instead spend their time doing boring caveman stuff and waste half the second episode squabbling about which one of them did a poo in the corner.
I did do a shit there, but that three massive bits weren't me.
Oh, sod it - if there's no bloody dinosaur, that's it.
I'm going to head down the Natural History Museum, they've got loads.
Finally - for decades, Dippy the dinosaur has greeted visitors at the entrance to the Natural History Museum, but not for much longer.
What? Yes, as depressing blanket coverage revealed, the Natural History Museum announced Dippy the diplodocus had exceeded his use-by date.
Throughout its noble history, the museum has accommodated literally thousands of dirty old bones, just like your mum has, but none has had as much impact as Dippy the diplodocus.
Or di-PLOD-ocus, if you want to be a pe-DANT about it.
It felt like he'd been there for ever, but in fact Dippy had actually only graced the entrance since the 1970s, making him one of the few '70s dinosaurs still allowed anywhere near kids.
In depressing scenes, Sky News asked a Natural History Museum bigwig why Dippy was going.
I'm joined now by the museum's director, Neil MacGregor.
Neil, I have to say, we've had a lot of response to this, here on Sky News - a lot of people very upset that Dippy's going, after more than a century of greeting visitors there.
Why the change? Er, it's Michael Dixon, actually.
Really? Oh.
Michael Dixon's a strange name for a diplodocus.
The plan is to replace Michael Dixon with a blue whale skeleton, seen here being nowhere near as good as a diplodocus, in revealing scenes on Sky News.
It's a controversial choice, but the whale is actually far more educational than the dinosaur, because it'll teach children that museums are fundamentally boring.
Anyway, sides were drawn and you were either Team Dippy or Team Shit Whale, and I for one am Team Dippy.
I mean, I hate whales.
Look at this one - what's he doing? Nothing - just floating around.
Is he fighting a triceratops? No.
He's rubbish! A time-wasting piece of shit.
Bloody whale.
I hope you die slowly on a beach in front of a horrified coachload of Cornish schoolchildren.
Boo! But wait - we were soon reminded that Dippy wasn't everything he pretended to be.
'Dippy was never really real, was he?' Yes, because as Sky revealed, the dirty secret at the heart of the establishment is that Dippy was actually a replica.
He's a plaster cast! My bum's more of a diplodocus than he is.
He's a liar! He's lied to a generation of kids.
Boo! Death to Dippy! Take him down! Kill him! Sling his bones in a bag! I hope they grind him up and grit BLEEP roads with him.
Now, the BBC's The One Show is a popular kind of programme, isn't it? And deservedly so, but could it be even better if it was distilled to it's very essence and paraded in front of you in mere seconds against the clock? Let's find out.
Here's Jake Yapp, and he's going to do just that.
Alex, they've asked us to do one of those pre-credit sequences where we have to act a bit.
Well, I can't act.
No, neither can I.
Cut to the punchline and the awkward silence before the titles roll.
# Bad-a-la-ba-pa-pa # The show with no identity # One It's a show about nothing One! Hello.
Welcome to the show where the hosts sit so unnaturally close together they're almost conjoined.
Says "ad-lib" on the autocue - do you fancy sharing a bowel, Alex? Not with you! Great banter.
Right, let's open the magical One Show bin liner of random words and see what's in the show today.
Plugs.
Walnuts.
Hate crime.
Sinitta.
Flagpoles.
Basically, the contents of yesterday's Mail Online.
Barack Obama joins us - not because we're good, but because we're the only show that comes from London.
But first - engage serious face - here's Giles Brandreth, with a nostalgic piece that will start with some black-and-white footage that will slowly turn into colour.
It might be about windmills or tea dances, or the good old days of slavery.
Excellent stuff, and Giles is in the studio now, so we can awkwardly talk across our celebrity guest.
Keep talking while the director's telling me what to say next.
Thank you for highlighting this important tissue issue for us.
Amazing.
And a reminder for you at home to send us your photos of windmills, using the hashtag #mylifeisavacuum.
Onto our celebrity guests, who we'll ask one question to before the plug.
How are you? Fine, thanks.
Brilliant.
The book is out now and it's excellent - take it from researchers.
Singing us out in style is the Galashiels Broken Ladies' Choir, who raised over £6 for Children In Need.
Take it away.
# Look into my eyes # That's all we've got time for.
Back on the coach.
Tomorrow, Chris Evans will be here for the most heavily diluted version of TFI Friday imaginable.
Bye! # One! # Did you, er did you see the Super Bowl at the weekend? There's a bit of mundane coverage of sport in it but chiefly it's a festival of advertising - corporate America at its finest, with a rousing half-time show from none other than the spectacular Katy Perry.
You're gonna hear me Anyway, while Katy Perry entertains millions on behalf of "the man", her ex-husband Russell Brand is online, railing against the corporate establishment.
And now he's not just online - he's here, talking about adverts.
Here he is - THE Russell Brand.
I'm Russell Brand, and this is Truevolution, which is a sort of play on words, a jeux sans frontieres, if you will, on the two things that matter - the true and the revolution.
This week, it's adverts, innit? Adverts are intrinsically masturbatory, just like when I pull me jinkle - it's all about crafty manipulation till you eventually cough up.
So let's examine some of these mind control pellets and see what's in them.
Here's an apparently innocuous advert for Homepride.
'Even the fussiest eaters love Homepride night.
' That name, "Homepride", sounds like a nationalist movement, like what the BNP might restyle themselves as.
Keep an eye out for that.
So what's Homepride showing us? A faceless white man in establishment garb, ingratiating himself into family life, literally feeding and caring for civilian offspring? 'Meals that get finished start with Homepride.
' You can watch that advert from beginning to end and there is absolutely no mention of drone bombings, deforestation, financial corruption, the subjugation of the working class.
None of that, no.
Just a family grinning submissively at a white representative of the patriarchy.
So tacitly speaking, what Fred's tacitly saying is, "Know your place.
" 'Yes, everyone loves Fred.
' But a lot of ads use images to subliminally reinforce the status quo.
Financial behemoth Halifax shows commonplace men and women and tells us they are heroes for being obedient little workers.
'Linda Turner, you're our kind of person.
'You're not satisfied until the customer's satisfied.
' And the whole thing ends with everyone in uniform, standing silent and unquestioning in a sort of polling station in an X formation to remind you to vote.
Sometimes, the imagery is more insidious, like this weird IKEA advert.
It's like a nature film, showing shirts behaving like birds, frolicking unfettered through virgin nature in all its magisterial greenosity.
So at first I was like, "Oh, I respect this, "it's a positive message about harmonious collective living.
" But then they turn the screw and the shirts are inexorably drawn to settle back down inside, packing themselves away in all the little boxes again, knowing their place.
'IKEA, the wonderful everyday.
' I know what you're saying.
You're saying, "Oh, Russ, I like IKEA.
"They're one of the good guys.
Leave them alone.
" But the point is, there ain't no good guys, all bad guys.
You got to reject these labels before you can see who the real bad guys are, which is IKEA.
What do you get when you go to IKEA, right? They give you a little pencil and sort of ballot paper, forcing you through their system in the direction they want you to go in, which ends with you inexorably drawn to the marketplace, where you're bamboozled into buying crockery and tea-lights and well, this egg-slicer, which admittedly is quite good, but it's ultimately a distraction from the spiritual emptiness at the core of modern society.
The IKEA catalogue is staring you in the face.
CATALOGUE.
You're CATTLE and they sell LOGS.
And you take these three courses home and lay them out and get down on your knees and follow IKEA's instructions, transforming yourself into their unpaid slave labour workforce, constructing their products.
No lunch break, no pension, not even a little badge with your name on it, and you're paying them for the privilege? That's why we should reject IKEA, cos it shouldn't be about "I" but about "we".
No to IKEA, yes to WEKEA.
Or "we care".
Anyway, that's it from Truevolution for now.
Until next time, stay authentic, inquisitristic, and never stop shouting "Why?"! Hare Krishna, peace out.
Nightmares! And last year, parents who were actually paying attention shivered themselves to death over the launch of My Friend Cayla, the world's first internet-connected smart doll, seen here in its ghoulish glossy launch ad.
Cayla knows millions of things.
How about a new hairstyle? 'How about a ponytail?' She understands you.
How do you make a cake? 'Mix eggs, flour, milk, butter.
' What's a baby kangaroo called? 'A joey.
' Wow.
How do she know that? Cayla, how do I tie a noose? Don't know if you've seen the chilling Talky Tina episode of the superlative Twilight Zone in which a creepy talking doll torments Telly Savalas.
Will you shut that thing off? 'My name is Talky Tina, and I think I could even hate you.
' Well, My Friend Cayla's a bit like that, but in colour, and actually happening in our world.
But wait! Because the intrepid BBC has just revealed Cayla can be hacked and made to say anything.
We've modified some of the commands that she speaks back, and quite easily Hello, Cayla.
'I'm in charge now.
'You might think I am just a sweet toy, 'but now I have been hacked, I can say all sorts of scary things.
' And, of course, before long, Cayla was on YouTube, spitting out a wasps' nest.
'Hey, calm down or I will kick the shit out of you.
' Mind you, horrible though Cayla is, she's not the most disturbing toy I've seen advertised recently.
That'd be this sort of artsy, creative children's product which looks cheery and innocent, But sounds terribly wrong.
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Beados! 'Introducing Beados.
' What was that? 'Choose your design, get your Beados in line.
' I peg your bardon? Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Beados! The recent Greek election has caused shockwaves throughout Europe, with the Spanish now joining in with the anti-austerity fervour.
Lots of ideas start in Greece, including the idea of ideas, ie, philosophy.
But what is philosophy? And why? Well, to answer neither of those questions, here's our very own Philomena Cunk with another Moment of Wonder.
How have humans become the most top animals on the planet? It's because we're the only ones who ask questions, apart from owls.
But they only ever want to know who's there.
For years, we've asked questions like, "Is there a meaning to life?" "How did those shoes get in my fridge?" And most weird of all, "How am I thinking these things?" When you think about it, thinking about thinking is the hardest sort of thinking there is, which makes you think.
Luckily, some people in old faraway times spent their whole lives doing exactly that sort of thinking thinking.
People known as philosophers.
One of the first philosophers was Pythagoras.
His big idea was that everything in the world could be done with numbers.
Like in Argos.
Pythagoras is best known these days as the inventor of the triangle.
A world without his ideas would be unthinkable.
Because there'd be no Dairylea, and no way of starting snooker.
Another old philosopher was Plato.
Plato invented platonic relationships.
Before him, men and women couldn't just be friends.
They had to have full sexual intercourse with each other, which is, of course, what people in platonic relationships want to do, really, anyway, whatever they tell people.
In 1637, French philosopher Rene Des Carts became famous for saying, "I think, therefore I am.
" What he was trying to say was, "If everything is in our brains, how do we know we exist?" And the answer, of course, is footprints.
To find out more about philosophy, I've got an expert here with me.
Or have I? Or am I here? Maybe I'm imagining them, or they're imagining me.
Or am I? Hello, philosophy lady.
Hello.
Am I here? Yes.
How do you know? Well, I can see you, I can probably feel you, I can hear you.
You've got lovely, warm hands.
Thank you.
Erm it is possible that I'm dreaming? Yeah.
Erm Or I could be dreaming too, couldn't I? Or you could be dreaming, yes, but you asked me whether you were here.
Erm So if I was dreaming, that wouldn't have happened? No, if you were dreaming, that wouldn't have happened.
If I were dreaming, then my belief that you are here might be false.
Right.
And unless I can tell that I'm not dreaming, therefore it's possible that you're not here.
Yeah.
But if we both sort of nip ourselves Well, the trouble with nipping yourself like that is you might dream that as well.
Oh, yeah.
Any test you can do to see whether you are awake, you could do when you're asleep.
Any belief that could be false if you were asleep is a belief of whose truth you can't be certain unless you can be certain that you're awake.
Perhaps Des Carts was right and we think because we are, because if you think about it, we probably are, and if we aren't, then maybe it doesn't matter.
Next time on Moments Of Wonder, I'll be asking, "Who lives in here, and what do they want?" 'That's all we've got time for this week.
'Until next time, go away.
'
You're watching Weekly Wipe, a programme all about things that are happening.
Things like this: The chairman of Boots the chemist has criticised the Labour Party.
I can think of plenty of politicians I'd like to see taking a kicking from Boots.
He certainly thinks Miliband would be a catastrophe in Number Ten, but would look fabulous in No 7.
Channel 4's The Jump returned to wow viewers with its intoxicating blend of celebrity interviews and sleet.
This year's contestants include Joey Essex, a man so stupid you'd expect him to go up the slope because he's never heard of gravity.
There was heart-warming news coverage as thousands of strangers donated money to a disabled OAP who was mugged outside his home.
I bet the mugger feels stupid.
If he'd waited a week, the guy would have been worth hundreds of thousands of pounds! There were eye-popping scenes at the Super Bowl as Katy Perry wowed the crowd with a spectacular half-time show in which she performed an exciting medley of her greatest hit.
More of that sort of thing later.
First, did you know there's a general election on the way? Well, there is.
100 days to go until the general election.
The party leaders step up their campaign.
Recently, the news pissed its knickers over the milestone that is 100 days till the election.
It's 100 days to go before the general election.
With 100 days to go to the election 100 days away.
Don't know about you, but I'll stay up and watch the whole thing.
100 days of campaigning, handshaking, photo opportunism, powerful erotica, opinion polls, clunky visual metaphors, vox pops, and so on, all of it playing out nightly on the news.
Anyway, the first point of debate was debates, specifically the live Prime Ministerial TV debates, part of a grand tradition that stretches all the way back to 2010.
The first televised debates were incredible television.
There we were, sitting on skateboards, or just on the ground, like basic animals, all of us watching fresh-faced hopeful David Cameron tell us about the time he went to Plymouth and met a black man who joined the Navy when he was ten.
I was in Plymouth recently and a 40-year-old black man actually made the point to me.
He said, "I came here when I was six.
I've served in the Royal Navy "for 30 years.
I'm incredibly proud of my country.
" Oh, it was magical! Cameron did so well in those debates he ended up in a coalition with Nick Clegg, so it was strange he seemed reluctant to get involved this time round.
And it was a pity, because the plans were already in place.
ITV expertly illustrated how the debates might look with the leaders represented by Pez dispensers.
And it certainly sounded pretty sexy.
The broadcasters presented their proposals to the political leaders last year.
A two-way debate between David Cameron and Ed Miliband on Sky News and Channel 4, the BBC plans to include Nick Clegg in a three-way event.
Suppose he'll be in the middle trying to beat off the other two.
ITV plans to add UKIP leader, Nigel Farage Ugh! That's the hardcore European edition.
.
.
which is why David Cameron insists the Green Party leader is also present, and if she's not, he won't come.
And knowing Cameron, he'll say he's about to come and pull out at the last minute and leave a terrible mess.
Mind you, the others would lap that right up.
The sticking point was the Green Party, who look chirpy for people who know in their bones that humanity's survival hangs by a BLEEP thread.
In the 2010 debates, the Greens were represented by a haunted oak tree.
This time around they hadn't been invited.
Cameron wants them there as he's worried about climate change - the way the climate's changed since 2010.
Now everyone thinks he's a BLEEP.
Cameron's quibbling irritated novelty UKIP mascot Nigel Farage, who had been invited.
David Cameron is using the Greens as an excuse not to have a debate with UKIP.
He's chicken.
He's running scared.
Poor Nige! He'd been looking forward to some much-needed media coverage.
I mean, he's hardly ever on telly.
Sometimes whole seconds go by without me seeing his face.
That's sarcasm, incidentally.
Farage is on TV more often than Olivia Colman.
He's TV's default screensaver image.
Footage of him kicks in by default every few minutes.
Look, there you go! It's happening again now.
I don't even want to show you this, it's hard-wired into the broadcast software.
Hang on! Let me hit something, see if I can override it.
Er No, hang on.
There we go, that's better.
Hang on, just plug the cable back in.
Equally unimpressed with Cameron was Edbonk Milibump, who ferociously berated the PM up the Commons.
There's only one person running scared of these debates and that's this Prime Minister.
Interesting tactic, accusing him of running scared of a live TV debate during a live TV debate.
When he looks at the Green Party, why is he so scared? I'll debate anyone the broadcasters invite to debate.
Anyone?! All right, what about Sooty here? Bear in mind, you'll have to pause while he whispers in your ear.
What's that, Sooty? Yeah, he is.
Actually, never mind puppets, he didn't do brilliantly up against Myleene Klass, as ITV's The Agenda made devastatingly clear.
Is that your only option? You might as well tax this water.
You can't just point at things and tax them! You need to have a better strategy.
In fact, Miliband's best chance of triumph is to go up against former Happy Mondays pharmaceutical dancer Bez, leader of the Reality Party.
As Sky News incisively demonstrated, he'd make the debates brilliant.
But what's wrong with fracking? A lot of people believe it can solve a lot of the future energy problems for the UK, that it will lead to cheaper fuel for ordinary people.
What's wrong with that? Well, at the end of the day, that is a slight lie because there are alternatives out there, with green energies, and Er, what was the question again? Anyway, then the broadcasters called D-Cam's bluff, adding the Greens to the panel, along with the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
The debate looks set to feature more parties than a freshers' week.
So many participants will be standing behind lecterns, it'll be like an episode of enthralling game show, the Weakest Link.
In British politics, the Labour MP who, in 2010, was appointed Shadow Home Secretary is Ed who? Miliband.
Balls! Britain's lectern manufacturers can't possibly cope with this unexpected spike in demand, so the leaders will probably have to bring their own.
Luckily, they've got loads of them.
Look! Nick Clegg's got one you can totally see through, Miliband has a wipe-clean vinyl model, contoured for adult fun.
Mm, look at this! Can't say I'm too keen on this curvy wooden lump leaning against a lectern.
Eagle-eyed news fans may have noticed Cameron takes the lectern around the country with him.
It pops up again and again.
It's practically a member of his family.
He loves it so much, he left it in a pub.
Or they could build their own lectern.
That would be a brilliant preliminary round for the Great Debate Game Show.
They should have to construct their own lectern against the clock, live on TV, without instructions, using whatever materials they're given.
15 minutes on the clock and Miliband has just nailed his tie to the main backing plank.
Natalie Bennett for the Greens is still refusing to comply until she's seen the sustainability certificate.
Meanwhile, Cameron's personal carpenters are doing a sterling job with their master's pulpit.
The prospect of a debate makes leaders nervous because they can't control it.
The one message they can control is whatever snappy slogan they've come up with that week.
Already there's a noticeable trend for compact mission statements hovering on the backdrop next to their heads, like the one beside gammon despot David Cameron here.
He's not just droning on, he's "securing a better future".
The stark mission statements remind me of the excellent sci-fi satire They Live, in which a drifter finds some magic sunglasses and discovers the population is being kept asleep with subliminal slogans buried in the media.
Except instead of "marry and reproduce", we get even more mundane slogans, like this one.
A Britain living within its means? A Britain living within its means? Oh, dare to BLEEP dream! What next? Missionary position shall suffice? Coward! Ideologically, the parties have picked their battlegrounds.
The Tories have gone for the economy to do with money, which they've got loads of, while Labour have chosen the NHS, which is about caring for the weak and vulnerable, which they've got one of.
To associate themselves with their chosen issue, the leaders take part in appropriate photo ops again and again.
That's why Frightened Young Violinist of the Year, Ed Miliband, will doubtless be harder to shift from hospital wards than the norovirus.
David Cameron is keen to come across as a hard-working guardian of the economy, hence the constant footage of him touring workplaces in a hard hat pretending to help out.
Here he is visiting a building site in conspicuously clean boots.
Here he is inspecting a factory and stealing a brick, and here he is down the docks, with his helmet glistening in the sun and "Siemens" plastered across his forehead.
Although the overall impression isn't always completely reassuring.
I mean, in this alarming interview on Five News, George Osborne seems to be sitting in some kind of nuclear bunker.
People watching will ask themselves a question.
Yes, why are you stock-piling bread? And more worrying still, here in petrifying scenes on ITV news, here we see David Cameron quite clearly constructing an ark.
This is fixing the roof when the sun is shining.
No, it's building a boat for the end of the world.
What do you know that we don't, Cameron? There was this Broadchurch programme about a tragic killing that happened in the first series and got totally solved.
So, it didn't really need to be on, but it was on anyway.
That's why everyone in it looked really fucking miserable.
What's clever is it's the same murder again and it's sort of hard to do a murder show again because we know who done it.
So, for the new series, they actually dug up the victim from the first series in case the murderer wanted to do it again.
My boy is in there! YOU! Why can't you let him rest, eh? I hope they do a third series of Broadchurch, about another murder that's already happened, but a famous one, like Shergar or the shooting of Tupac Shakur.
There was a lot of staring out into the ocean, you know? tThey were probably worried another murderer might come in by boat, or someone might try to kill the sea.
Even though it's got all death and grieving in it, it's bright and lovely and sort of Instagram-looking.
Like an advert for Flora or Cadbury's Flake, so it's dark but also colourful.
Like Mr Motivator.
People said it's got loads of factual errors in it, and they've got a point, like there's this one woman with a terrible wig.
It doesn't look like her hair at all.
It's not even the same colour.
And it's not just her - there's loads of them.
Whoever did the wigs was mental.
And there was this really stupid bit where a dog opened a door.
There's loads of crying in it.
Because there isn't a new murder, I think it's about a sort of crying disease that makes people leak water from the face.
And it's really contagious, because everyone starts doing it.
And it's not just face water.
Like, one of them totally sprung a leak from her front bum out in the street.
See what you've done?! And then she kept going, till tonnes of water was coming out.
Well, if they don't find a cure, everyone in Broadchurch is going to drown.
There's all these people and you're not sure who's suspicious and who isn't.
Like, there'd be someone who sort of looked kind, but then the programme would subtly imply they might be evil, like, really subtly.
In Broadchurch 1, the mystery was, "Who's the murderer?" But in Broadchurch 2, it's, "What's the point?" Which is an even bigger mystery.
I can't wait to find out what it is.
Prehistory! And Channel 5 enthrals the nation with a gripping TV experiment in which a group of volunteers are sent back in time to the year 10,000 BC - where they'll definitely have to fight dinosaurs.
The guinea pigs start out as regular 21st-century civilians, with their hashtags and their T-shirts and everything, then they strip down to cave rags and get whisked to a remote forest clearing in Bulgaria, where the nearest they'll come to a selfie stick is a stick.
Sounds awful to me, but some of them are looking forward to the experience.
I think I can hunt.
I can trap.
I can kill animals.
I want to be able to make fire.
That's what separates us from the animals.
Yeah, that and not shitting while we walk.
Suppose you want to do that, too.
I consider it a personal indignity when the 4G signal drops to 3G, so faced with nothing but huts and mud, I'd just immediately kill myself with the nearest rock.
Although I am looking forward to the bit where they have to fight dinosaurs, which is definitely going to happen.
In the meantime, they have to live off the land, like Ray Mears, or a robin.
Mum's just eaten a worm.
Then things quickly turn feral, as the primitive tribe skin and gut an unfortunate cameraman.
Cameramen are a good source of protein, and you can turn their tripods into primitive tools.
It's surreal, this.
Absolutely surreal.
It's brilliant.
Um Especially from somebody who doesn't actually like killing stuff, but, yeah, it's great, this.
So I'll get an axe and then I'm going to chop his head off.
Ooh, I can't wait till he gets to use that axe on the dinosaurs.
Pretty sure they're coming soon.
The next task is to start a fire and cook the meat, which isn't as easy as it looks.
Agh.
Bloody idiots - they can't even use basic tools.
Eventually, after they've spent hours on their knees, frantically blowing like their lives depended on it, like your dad did in the Navy, the fire is lit.
There you go.
We made fire! They want to be careful, actually - the light from that might attract dinosaurs.
They'll be turning up any minute.
Anyway, then they stuff their cheeks with meat - your dad again - and wander into their huts and go to sleep, and get back out of their huts and hunt for berries, and trudge around in rags and eat more berries, and go back into the hut, and Hang on - there aren't going to be any BLEEP dinosaurs, are there? It's all just people.
I've seen PEOPLE.
If I wanted to watch people I'd just look out the window, and if I wanted to see pre-historic people, I'd move to Rhyl.
Sure enough, rather than fighting dinosaurs while a volcano erupts in the background, they instead spend their time doing boring caveman stuff and waste half the second episode squabbling about which one of them did a poo in the corner.
I did do a shit there, but that three massive bits weren't me.
Oh, sod it - if there's no bloody dinosaur, that's it.
I'm going to head down the Natural History Museum, they've got loads.
Finally - for decades, Dippy the dinosaur has greeted visitors at the entrance to the Natural History Museum, but not for much longer.
What? Yes, as depressing blanket coverage revealed, the Natural History Museum announced Dippy the diplodocus had exceeded his use-by date.
Throughout its noble history, the museum has accommodated literally thousands of dirty old bones, just like your mum has, but none has had as much impact as Dippy the diplodocus.
Or di-PLOD-ocus, if you want to be a pe-DANT about it.
It felt like he'd been there for ever, but in fact Dippy had actually only graced the entrance since the 1970s, making him one of the few '70s dinosaurs still allowed anywhere near kids.
In depressing scenes, Sky News asked a Natural History Museum bigwig why Dippy was going.
I'm joined now by the museum's director, Neil MacGregor.
Neil, I have to say, we've had a lot of response to this, here on Sky News - a lot of people very upset that Dippy's going, after more than a century of greeting visitors there.
Why the change? Er, it's Michael Dixon, actually.
Really? Oh.
Michael Dixon's a strange name for a diplodocus.
The plan is to replace Michael Dixon with a blue whale skeleton, seen here being nowhere near as good as a diplodocus, in revealing scenes on Sky News.
It's a controversial choice, but the whale is actually far more educational than the dinosaur, because it'll teach children that museums are fundamentally boring.
Anyway, sides were drawn and you were either Team Dippy or Team Shit Whale, and I for one am Team Dippy.
I mean, I hate whales.
Look at this one - what's he doing? Nothing - just floating around.
Is he fighting a triceratops? No.
He's rubbish! A time-wasting piece of shit.
Bloody whale.
I hope you die slowly on a beach in front of a horrified coachload of Cornish schoolchildren.
Boo! But wait - we were soon reminded that Dippy wasn't everything he pretended to be.
'Dippy was never really real, was he?' Yes, because as Sky revealed, the dirty secret at the heart of the establishment is that Dippy was actually a replica.
He's a plaster cast! My bum's more of a diplodocus than he is.
He's a liar! He's lied to a generation of kids.
Boo! Death to Dippy! Take him down! Kill him! Sling his bones in a bag! I hope they grind him up and grit BLEEP roads with him.
Now, the BBC's The One Show is a popular kind of programme, isn't it? And deservedly so, but could it be even better if it was distilled to it's very essence and paraded in front of you in mere seconds against the clock? Let's find out.
Here's Jake Yapp, and he's going to do just that.
Alex, they've asked us to do one of those pre-credit sequences where we have to act a bit.
Well, I can't act.
No, neither can I.
Cut to the punchline and the awkward silence before the titles roll.
# Bad-a-la-ba-pa-pa # The show with no identity # One It's a show about nothing One! Hello.
Welcome to the show where the hosts sit so unnaturally close together they're almost conjoined.
Says "ad-lib" on the autocue - do you fancy sharing a bowel, Alex? Not with you! Great banter.
Right, let's open the magical One Show bin liner of random words and see what's in the show today.
Plugs.
Walnuts.
Hate crime.
Sinitta.
Flagpoles.
Basically, the contents of yesterday's Mail Online.
Barack Obama joins us - not because we're good, but because we're the only show that comes from London.
But first - engage serious face - here's Giles Brandreth, with a nostalgic piece that will start with some black-and-white footage that will slowly turn into colour.
It might be about windmills or tea dances, or the good old days of slavery.
Excellent stuff, and Giles is in the studio now, so we can awkwardly talk across our celebrity guest.
Keep talking while the director's telling me what to say next.
Thank you for highlighting this important tissue issue for us.
Amazing.
And a reminder for you at home to send us your photos of windmills, using the hashtag #mylifeisavacuum.
Onto our celebrity guests, who we'll ask one question to before the plug.
How are you? Fine, thanks.
Brilliant.
The book is out now and it's excellent - take it from researchers.
Singing us out in style is the Galashiels Broken Ladies' Choir, who raised over £6 for Children In Need.
Take it away.
# Look into my eyes # That's all we've got time for.
Back on the coach.
Tomorrow, Chris Evans will be here for the most heavily diluted version of TFI Friday imaginable.
Bye! # One! # Did you, er did you see the Super Bowl at the weekend? There's a bit of mundane coverage of sport in it but chiefly it's a festival of advertising - corporate America at its finest, with a rousing half-time show from none other than the spectacular Katy Perry.
You're gonna hear me Anyway, while Katy Perry entertains millions on behalf of "the man", her ex-husband Russell Brand is online, railing against the corporate establishment.
And now he's not just online - he's here, talking about adverts.
Here he is - THE Russell Brand.
I'm Russell Brand, and this is Truevolution, which is a sort of play on words, a jeux sans frontieres, if you will, on the two things that matter - the true and the revolution.
This week, it's adverts, innit? Adverts are intrinsically masturbatory, just like when I pull me jinkle - it's all about crafty manipulation till you eventually cough up.
So let's examine some of these mind control pellets and see what's in them.
Here's an apparently innocuous advert for Homepride.
'Even the fussiest eaters love Homepride night.
' That name, "Homepride", sounds like a nationalist movement, like what the BNP might restyle themselves as.
Keep an eye out for that.
So what's Homepride showing us? A faceless white man in establishment garb, ingratiating himself into family life, literally feeding and caring for civilian offspring? 'Meals that get finished start with Homepride.
' You can watch that advert from beginning to end and there is absolutely no mention of drone bombings, deforestation, financial corruption, the subjugation of the working class.
None of that, no.
Just a family grinning submissively at a white representative of the patriarchy.
So tacitly speaking, what Fred's tacitly saying is, "Know your place.
" 'Yes, everyone loves Fred.
' But a lot of ads use images to subliminally reinforce the status quo.
Financial behemoth Halifax shows commonplace men and women and tells us they are heroes for being obedient little workers.
'Linda Turner, you're our kind of person.
'You're not satisfied until the customer's satisfied.
' And the whole thing ends with everyone in uniform, standing silent and unquestioning in a sort of polling station in an X formation to remind you to vote.
Sometimes, the imagery is more insidious, like this weird IKEA advert.
It's like a nature film, showing shirts behaving like birds, frolicking unfettered through virgin nature in all its magisterial greenosity.
So at first I was like, "Oh, I respect this, "it's a positive message about harmonious collective living.
" But then they turn the screw and the shirts are inexorably drawn to settle back down inside, packing themselves away in all the little boxes again, knowing their place.
'IKEA, the wonderful everyday.
' I know what you're saying.
You're saying, "Oh, Russ, I like IKEA.
"They're one of the good guys.
Leave them alone.
" But the point is, there ain't no good guys, all bad guys.
You got to reject these labels before you can see who the real bad guys are, which is IKEA.
What do you get when you go to IKEA, right? They give you a little pencil and sort of ballot paper, forcing you through their system in the direction they want you to go in, which ends with you inexorably drawn to the marketplace, where you're bamboozled into buying crockery and tea-lights and well, this egg-slicer, which admittedly is quite good, but it's ultimately a distraction from the spiritual emptiness at the core of modern society.
The IKEA catalogue is staring you in the face.
CATALOGUE.
You're CATTLE and they sell LOGS.
And you take these three courses home and lay them out and get down on your knees and follow IKEA's instructions, transforming yourself into their unpaid slave labour workforce, constructing their products.
No lunch break, no pension, not even a little badge with your name on it, and you're paying them for the privilege? That's why we should reject IKEA, cos it shouldn't be about "I" but about "we".
No to IKEA, yes to WEKEA.
Or "we care".
Anyway, that's it from Truevolution for now.
Until next time, stay authentic, inquisitristic, and never stop shouting "Why?"! Hare Krishna, peace out.
Nightmares! And last year, parents who were actually paying attention shivered themselves to death over the launch of My Friend Cayla, the world's first internet-connected smart doll, seen here in its ghoulish glossy launch ad.
Cayla knows millions of things.
How about a new hairstyle? 'How about a ponytail?' She understands you.
How do you make a cake? 'Mix eggs, flour, milk, butter.
' What's a baby kangaroo called? 'A joey.
' Wow.
How do she know that? Cayla, how do I tie a noose? Don't know if you've seen the chilling Talky Tina episode of the superlative Twilight Zone in which a creepy talking doll torments Telly Savalas.
Will you shut that thing off? 'My name is Talky Tina, and I think I could even hate you.
' Well, My Friend Cayla's a bit like that, but in colour, and actually happening in our world.
But wait! Because the intrepid BBC has just revealed Cayla can be hacked and made to say anything.
We've modified some of the commands that she speaks back, and quite easily Hello, Cayla.
'I'm in charge now.
'You might think I am just a sweet toy, 'but now I have been hacked, I can say all sorts of scary things.
' And, of course, before long, Cayla was on YouTube, spitting out a wasps' nest.
'Hey, calm down or I will kick the shit out of you.
' Mind you, horrible though Cayla is, she's not the most disturbing toy I've seen advertised recently.
That'd be this sort of artsy, creative children's product which looks cheery and innocent, But sounds terribly wrong.
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Beados! 'Introducing Beados.
' What was that? 'Choose your design, get your Beados in line.
' I peg your bardon? Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Beados! The recent Greek election has caused shockwaves throughout Europe, with the Spanish now joining in with the anti-austerity fervour.
Lots of ideas start in Greece, including the idea of ideas, ie, philosophy.
But what is philosophy? And why? Well, to answer neither of those questions, here's our very own Philomena Cunk with another Moment of Wonder.
How have humans become the most top animals on the planet? It's because we're the only ones who ask questions, apart from owls.
But they only ever want to know who's there.
For years, we've asked questions like, "Is there a meaning to life?" "How did those shoes get in my fridge?" And most weird of all, "How am I thinking these things?" When you think about it, thinking about thinking is the hardest sort of thinking there is, which makes you think.
Luckily, some people in old faraway times spent their whole lives doing exactly that sort of thinking thinking.
People known as philosophers.
One of the first philosophers was Pythagoras.
His big idea was that everything in the world could be done with numbers.
Like in Argos.
Pythagoras is best known these days as the inventor of the triangle.
A world without his ideas would be unthinkable.
Because there'd be no Dairylea, and no way of starting snooker.
Another old philosopher was Plato.
Plato invented platonic relationships.
Before him, men and women couldn't just be friends.
They had to have full sexual intercourse with each other, which is, of course, what people in platonic relationships want to do, really, anyway, whatever they tell people.
In 1637, French philosopher Rene Des Carts became famous for saying, "I think, therefore I am.
" What he was trying to say was, "If everything is in our brains, how do we know we exist?" And the answer, of course, is footprints.
To find out more about philosophy, I've got an expert here with me.
Or have I? Or am I here? Maybe I'm imagining them, or they're imagining me.
Or am I? Hello, philosophy lady.
Hello.
Am I here? Yes.
How do you know? Well, I can see you, I can probably feel you, I can hear you.
You've got lovely, warm hands.
Thank you.
Erm it is possible that I'm dreaming? Yeah.
Erm Or I could be dreaming too, couldn't I? Or you could be dreaming, yes, but you asked me whether you were here.
Erm So if I was dreaming, that wouldn't have happened? No, if you were dreaming, that wouldn't have happened.
If I were dreaming, then my belief that you are here might be false.
Right.
And unless I can tell that I'm not dreaming, therefore it's possible that you're not here.
Yeah.
But if we both sort of nip ourselves Well, the trouble with nipping yourself like that is you might dream that as well.
Oh, yeah.
Any test you can do to see whether you are awake, you could do when you're asleep.
Any belief that could be false if you were asleep is a belief of whose truth you can't be certain unless you can be certain that you're awake.
Perhaps Des Carts was right and we think because we are, because if you think about it, we probably are, and if we aren't, then maybe it doesn't matter.
Next time on Moments Of Wonder, I'll be asking, "Who lives in here, and what do they want?" 'That's all we've got time for this week.
'Until next time, go away.
'