Hoping for laughs with Headcases
10:04am Monday 14th April 2008
IN my youth I came across the word "satire" when it was applied to That Was The Week That Was - a very clever television show hosted by David Frost.
I was so impressed that I confess now to trying to imitate the great man's 1960s hairstyle for a short while before I realised I looked even more ridiculous than he did.
Later on, we had the equally influential Spitting Image with its wonderful latex creations and vituperative wit aimed mostly, it seemed to me, at Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet.
The latest show to follow this tradition is Headcases, a computer-generated show on ITV1 that dishes out rude treatment to politicians and celebrities.
Remembering the earlier programmes with fondness probably distorts my opinion a little, but I thought most of the items in the first show were unfunny and that some of the targets - the Beckhams in particular - are no longer worth lampooning.
I did laugh, though, at the strained efforts of Wills and Harry to become normal blokes when they will never be anything of the kind.
My final judgment is suspended for a while in case Headcases grows on me.
After all, we tend to forget that for every brilliant Monty Python sketch there were several others that deservedly remain forgotten.