"Giving up the past tense for lend"
One of my regular blog readers (you know who you are) will have already gathered from the title of this post, that it is inspired by them following a joke which they got wrong when telling it to me at their non-house-moving party last Saturday, after I informed them that I had given up chocolate for lent for about the 12th year running (as much to prove that I'm not addicted to it as for religious purposes).
Of course it would have helped if my friend in question had got his tenses correct, but it has inspired me to think about what comedy I would happily give up for lent, and when I did start thinking about it the list came quite easily, so here goes.
1. New American sitcoms - there are far too many of them and as regular readers will know I'm not a massive fan of sitcoms from the States. This was going to be all American sitcoms, but I found myself watching a Frasier repeat on Channel 4 this morning whilst waiting for an engineer to arrive and finally fix my broken boiler. Also, this means that I will have to wait for the box set to come out before finally watching Zooey Deschanel in the "New Girl".
2. Out of date repeats of news based panel shows - at least until Easter I promise just to laugh at current politics.
3. Talking about out-of-date, any comedies shown on "Yesterday" (yes it does show comedy) - My dad would happily give this up as well as my mother is currently on a mission to record and watch the channel's re-runs of "Last of the Summer Wine" from scratch.
4. On the subject of digital channels, any repeats of BBC sitcoms that have now had adverts inserted into them to make them 40 minutes, rather than 30 minutes long. "GOLD" and "DAVE" you know you're to blame on this one. If I love the sitcoms that much, I will watch them advert-free on DVD instead.
5. Finally any comedy that involves prosthetics, men dressed as women, sketch shows, remakes of classic comedy and anything that doesn't make me smile in the first five minutes and laugh out loud at least once an episode.
So what does that leave me with, the comedy I just couldn't give up for lent, well it's hilarious British sitcoms and film comedies, side-splitting stand-up and thoughts of the new series to come of The Thick Of It (being filmed at the moment), Red Dwarf, Miranda and the IT Crowd. Then on Easter Sunday, I will open the comedy and chocolate flood gates wide open again.
