COMMENT
You can, if you are silly enough to spend money on digital telly, watch The Two Ronnies at 2am, or Benny Hill at 5.30am. I hope I am never mad, sleepless or drunk enough to do this, but I suspect - and fear - it is bound to happen some day.
There is something nightmarish about the prospect but not half as nightmarish as the idea that popped into my mind while studying the digital telly listings. That thought was this: What if some day, 30 years into the future, I find myself up at 2am or 5.30am and turn on the telly and find repeats of anything featuring Marc, or Marc 'n' Matthew.
In 30 years, Marc (Ellis) and Matthew (Ridge) - like Mary-Kate and Ashley they scarcely need surnames - will be almost ready to apply for the pension, if there is a pension.
Already they seem to have been on the telly forever. Not that I mind. I quite like Marc 'n' Matthew together, and I generally like Marc on his own. Then again, I once quite liked those two other idiots from another age, the Ronnies, and Benny made me laugh before I knew what a dirty old man he was.
Matthew and Marc's Rocky Road to Athens (it should be called Matthew and Marc's Really Big Junket) is a reminder of how much television comedy has changed.
Goodness, hasn't the humour got sophisticated? I caught a bit of an old Benny Hill Show (it is on rotate so you can see it at times other than 5.30am, but that timeslot seems seedily appropriate somehow.)
Benny Hill involves double entendre and chicks in skimpy outfits fighting over a man wearing a grey singlet. The Two Ronnies involves a fat guy and a short guy who are (often) rivals - and double entendre.
Marc 'n' Matthew have done away with that comic stand-by, the double entendre. Now that is sophisticated. Here they are watching a woman wrestler in Berlin.
Matthew: "She's got more hair under her arms than you and I."
Marc: "It's cultural. They like that."
Matthew: "Big hairy bushes." They'd be tittering by now, except tittering isn't manly.
Neither is sulking, but that has never stopped Marc from doing a good line in outraged manliness when he loses to Matthew, which he did last week in the fencing and the shooting (the excuse for this boys' fun day out was to pretend they were competing in their own mini version of the pentathlon).
The excuse Marc gave for losing the target shooting was that Matthew had a bent stick. He liked this so much he said it twice, despite it being meaningless. Perhaps they haven't quite done away with the double entendre.
Marc does good petulant. Congratulated on his abysmal performance in the shooting by the coach ("you're the second winner") he tore up his target card and said, "No. That's loser in New Zealand".
Only in New Zealand? Possibly. Over on Sports Cafe Marc, going it solo, was talking about his performance in the cheese-rolling competition in Gloucester. "This is not meant to be rude to anyone but if maybe you're obese or, in fact, a very chunky dwarf, you'd make like the cheese. Put them in a hefty wetsuit and grease [it] with axle grease and just give the bastard a boot up the arse."
This was all a build-up to taking a poke at host Rick Salizzo's weight. "You'd go well, actually," Marc said to Rick, as though the thought had just occurred to him.
It's not quite the digression that little Ronnie offered from his big chair, but it is quite clever in its way.
And there is probably no real need to worry. In 30 years' time we may be watching replays of this stuff, but at least we won't be exporting it.
As Marc pointed out when about to get offensive about "those in-breds" in the "two-head city of Gloucester" — no worries, nobody watches it anywhere but here.
<i> Michele Hewitson:</i> Double the entertainment
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