4/19/2005 10:57:00 PM|||James O'Malley|||

At lunchtime today, I witnessed something horrible. I'm often criticised for not having a sense of humour, but it was beyond a joke. Today, for some reason the teachers at school had some sort of "talent" (and I use the term loosely) show. That is to say, students had the opportunity to pay 50 pence to watch a selection of teachers try and be "entertaining" on the "stage".

The money raised apparently went to a good cause. I don't know which, but I'd wager it enhanced the staff room Sky subscription.

I'll be honest, I didn't know what I was going to see until I was in there. My good friend Dundas was the one who talked me in to attending (I'm very easily influenced). This said, I didn't anticipate anything good. This was a school production, after all.

First on stage was the English teacher and the RE teacher playing the recorder. I know the instrument is universally criticised, but it was horrible. Maybe they were being ironic, maybe they were participating in what was to become a running joke. I don't know. What I do know is that of my 50p, which could have been used to buy a Twix, was paying for a sub-standard ITV stage show, which instead of starring Martin Clunes or being presented by Ant & Dec, featured the crappiest "celebrities" with the crappiest "talents".

After a couple of other mediocre "performances", including an unrehearsed keyboard atrocity, the "performance", if it can be called that, was the PE teacher and the science teacher who came on stage with inflatable guitars. "Oh no, they're only going to sing! They can't even play the guitar!", I thought. It was worse than this- the song started and it was apparently a "Busted" song. Did they sing? No. They didn't sing or play the guitar. It's easier to describe it like this as defining what they didn't do is easier than defining what they did, because they did... nothing.

It was obvious to all involved that they'd originally planned to run on to the stage, and "hilariously" jump, saying to the audience "look at us, we're hilarious, we're running about on stage pretending to play the guitar along to a well known song", but in reality, they became really self-conscious so just... stood there. This wasn't talent, this wasn't anything. This made me angry as it didn't justify my 50p and was wasting valuable slacking time.

The finale was the languages department performing a "Grease" song. Whoopee. Emphasising the lines that contain innuendo make it funny. Apparently.

I think the main problem, aside from the lack of rehearsals, was that I'm jaded. I use the internet, I read the B3ta newsletter, I've seen the pulp fiction theme tune played with a blender and a guitar. I've seen a parody song about the London Underground that has gratuitous swearing, I've seen a cat with sellotape on its sides being forced to walk sideways, I've seen an array of minor celebrity in silly situations. Nothing the school can do can surprise me, the internet has already done it, years ago. It's like that Peter Kay video. "Oh look, it's Ronnie Corbett! Isn't this great?!". No. I've seen minor celebrities before, this isn't exciting.

In summary, schools, get with the times. Internet, give schools a chance. Kilroy, get out of Britain as we don't like Orange people here.

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