Two pints of Lager, and an almighty number of painkillers please.

The other day I saw The Two Pints of Lager, Grownups and Coming of Age comic relief special. It was not good; although, it was probably as good as that sentence suggests. I know it's for charity but, surely, Africa isn't that hungry that they would wish this inflicted upon the British Public? We've already sat through enough Little Britain sketches, what more could they want? We've had to witness the indignity of Davina McCall dancing to FloRida!(and looking not unlike Barbara Castle experiencing a particularly potent crystal meth trip)Isn't that enough? She's 41 for fucks sake! And on top of that FloRioda is shit, so I'm not sure who she was trying to impress, but it certainly wasn't me. I'm sure if they allowed the Beneficiaries of Comic Relief to vet some of the sketches, most would sent back for making a mockery of their starvation. Also Comic Relief has been going for, like, a million years, and from what I can gather after watching the numerous appeals, is that it's done fuck all. Maybe we need a more effective method of giving aid, one that doesn't clog up the viewing schedule with Davina McCall. It's a thought. Anyway, I digress, The Two Pints special brought together the casts of 3 of BBC 3's premier comedy series, which most people probably didn't realise were different shows anyway, as the sets characters acting and scripts are all pretty much interchangeable. I think this whole exercise was designed just to inform people but they were separate shows as it is really difficult to tell which one you're watching and, just to confuse you further, two of them even have the same actress playing almost identical characters. The show starts with Janet (Sheridan Smith) getting excited about the local pub's comic relief fun night of fun, Gaz (Will Mellor) interjects that it won be as fun as "Gaz Wilkinson's fun night of bum"(snort) with the kind of comic timing you'd expect from someone who used to be in Hollyoaks. And there, was the shows high point. Soon everyone is lined up in the pub and we are informed that they represent a sizable proportion of BBC 3's 16 - 34 demographic, but then so do doggers, so it's not that impressive. Most of the jokes revolve around Sheridan Smith's (admittedly impressive) rack, with the characters constantly pointing out, over and over again, that she is rather well endowed. Now far be it from me to complain about people extolling the virtues of our fairer halves assets, indeed, when they are as impressive as Miss Smith's sweater bunnies I actively encourage it, but she was in The Royale Family, and performs regularly on the West End. The rest of the show is based on a fairly loose premises set around the pub quiz, with various rounds such as the bitch off and flirt off. I've never been to a pub quiz with rounds such as these and usually only have to tackle boring subjects such as general knowledge and films, but then I've never been to fictional pub in Runcorn, that combines three hugely unrealistic sitcoms. The various characters take part in the different rounds, although most of the characters are little more than glorified extras. The show ends with a song entitled "Stop thinking, start drinking" Which is good advice, although one wonders whether it may have been far more useful if placed at the beginning of the show. It's quite disconcerting when the creators of a show freely admit should be pissed to enjoy it, but in this case it's quite apt. And anyway, it's far more dignified to blame the disintegration of your brain cells on excessive drinking rather than watching this.