Quarehawk

“Lovely Dust”

The word from a barman I talked to in Rathmines and guy who waters the plants where I work, is that The Panel isn’t as good anymore. The format is getting stale. You’d be better off spending your Monday nights in Copperface Jack’s trying to meet nurses, so he says. Well let’s see…

Under the inexplicable neon “Motel” sign this week are Neil Delamere, Dermot Whelan, Andrew Maxwell, Colin Murphy, and Mairead Farrell - who sits awkwardly, like she’s posing (Which is what I was going for in the sketch above). Reminds me - the token female panelist last week was called something like Jenny Houston. And from the outset I’ll admit I was cynical and didn’t expect her to be funny at all. And then she wasn’t, so I was right.

Which brings us to a problem that has plagued The Panel since day one; the shortage of funny females. This has provided fodder for closeted mysogynists propping up bars up and down the country - “See, that’s because women aren’t funny” they say “Because they aren’t socialized to be funny” so it goes. “Because men are threatened by assertive women so girls learn at an early age to keep quiet, whereas men develop their funny skills because they see it as an asset in attracting women. That’s why us men are expected to perform and to be funny to impress a mate while women don’t have to bother.” they explain bitterly. Before heading home to masturbate and cry.

Tortured Evolutionary Social Theory - the last refuge of the bloke who isn’t getting laid.

Whatever dudes. If the only women who interact with you are ones that conform to that caricature, then that’s more a comment about you.

But damn it, producers of “The Panel”. It’s getting harder for me to continue drunkenly arguing this point. Get us some funny ladies that I can point to, quick.

Anyhoo - that’s tonight’s panel. No sign of Ed Byrne And His Amazing Yellow Teeth this week.

So they seem to be rotating presenters this season, with Neil Delamere chairing tonight. Delamere is actually developing into a good comedian. The falling-point is still his voice - it needs to be more resonant. Seriously. This is a problem typical to Irish comedians, with the exception of Dylan Moran. They tend to have reedy, helium-voices that grate on your nerves. Wouldn’t you imagine that someone who makes their living communicating vocally would take a speech and drama class and learn to “project” ? Because a good speaking voice matters. Even fat-arsed corporate middle-managers strutting around the IFSC going on about “The Strategies Of People-Management” have figured this out by now.

After the first few scripted opening jokes, here comes the first guest: It’s a woman who’s written a book called “The High Society”. I’d imagine her marketing team were irked that the snappier title “High Society” had already been taken by Ben Elton for his book from a couple of years back. That said - it’s still a very weak pun that makes you doubt what wisdom this book might contain.

A book which, it becomes clear from the start, none of the blasted panel have bothered to actually read. You can’t really blame them. The gist of the screed seems to be “A lot of people use drugs, not just impoverished inner-city prostitutes and the like, would you believe ?”. And this is news to exactly whom ? Cloistered pensioners in Connemara maybe, but everyone else is fully aware of the extent of middle-class coke-hoovering. Probably everyone in The Panel’s audience has looked at the queue for the men’s cubicles in an inner city bar on a Saturday night and asked themselves - can there really be that many blokes desperate to do a poo ?

I asked a publican why do they have those guys in the gents handing out aftershave and expecting a tip, considering every last one of the customers despises them and wishes them dead. It’s to keep out the drug dealers. Hm. Even a moron could think of several ways around this cunning strategy, but ok.

You can expect the tv ads for this High Society book to use the phrases “Blowing apart the myth” and “Exposing the shocking truth”. Yawn.

To his credit Colin Murphy makes the “everyone already knows this” point , but the journo mostly avoids the question.

This is like a book saying that many teenagers are having sex, and don’t be surprised if some middle-class journalist with his head up his arse goes ahead and writes that one next. It’s probably already in the works.

Oh wait - Andrew Maxwell seems at least to have some opinions on this drug issue. Good man. Humans are brainy monkeys programmed to seek pleasure, says Maxwell, banning it is pointless, and politicians are cowards about this issue and so on. All fair points. The audience don’t seem to be getting behind him though. I guess everyone’s watched their Bill Hicks DVDs enough times to be weary of this subject.

Maxwell offers another good monologue re: People existing in a tedious charade living in the suburbs making bland smalltalk with co-workers and buying DVDs and basically leading stupid boring consumerist lives. “Yeah, that’s the way to live” he mocks. I’m sold. I’m going to go and see him in Vicar Street based on that comment alone. He strikes me as some kind of social philosopher who’s opted to work through comedy. I think he was waiting for an applause though after that comment that didn’t really materialise.

Gah. Pathetic question now from Delamere to the drug lady “Is the problem that there isn’t enough information out there ?”. What a wet comment. Exactly the kind of platitude you’d expect from Pat Kenny.

Justine Delaney Wilson is the author’s name by the way, in case you want to go round and shit on her lawn.

Dermot Whelan seems like a nice enough bloke but apart from a few comments early on, including one about “The lovely dust” at the bottom of a bag of Chipsticks, he doesn’t really get into it. I’d say he probably is funny in his own stand up though, where he has more of a chance to expand on his stories.

After the break we have Maxwell making a dig at Delamere re: him doing a great job. His answer was a sharp “It’s because I feel strangely confident” ie drugs. This is why I think Delamere is getting good. That was an unscripted quick retort. And it ‘calls back’ to the previous conversations. He did it a few times throughout this episode.

We had some bit about litigation between Irish snackfood companies, prompting a good crack from Andrew Maxwell “We discuss drugs for half an hour and now you bring out the snacks”. HAR !

And a good nostalgic riff from ND about the old Quinnsworth yellow packs, although obviously it was scripted.

On the outrageous shirtwatching front this week’s winner is Colin Murphy. But it’s been a poor week generally for us crazy-shirt lovers. Ed Byrne will pull it back next Monday though I’m sure. Last time he was on he wore a shirt made from my Auntie’s sitting-room curtains circa 1978.

Onward to Guest No 2, Chris something. A documentary-maker who trained and went into combat zones with the Royal Marine Commandos.

He has a few interesting things to say about his stint with the marines regarding hygiene, and ripping windpipes out, and the tearing off of testicles (Heh. Sounds like we’re in Copper’s after all).

He’s a likeable and funny guy. He definitely beats the other guest. The same thing happened last week where they kept the better guest till last.

Wow. The humour is evaporating fast now though. Serious stuff about soldiers at the front writing death letters. And Maxwell is getting all serious on us again as well, “Why would anyone become a soldier ?” he wants to know. This is not really comedy.

Delamere wraps it all up brilliantly though with a question about “Do commandos wear underwear or do they actually … go commando ?”. Well okay it wasn’t that brilliant, but it was ending on the right note.

So my plant-waterer is an idiot. The Panel is as good as ever, which is to say it’s great Monday night entertainment. If they changed it to Friday no-one would stay in to watch (This doesn’t mean that RTE won’t do exactly that though, the cretins). But in it’s current guise the Panel is perfect. Those nurses should start taping it.