I’ve been subjected to an ad for his comedy standup on the radio for months now. Honestly – how far in advance do they really need to advertise these things?
I used to find Pat Shortt funny. I used to find John Kenny funny too. Then it slowly (over the last ten or so years) became apparent that both of them only have two basic jokes.
1. Irish small towns are backward, and anyone pretending to be from a small town is funny
2. Men dressed in women’s clothing are funny
In fact, through several stage shows and guest appearances, and a barrage of advertisements for eircom, Pat Shortt eventually learnt that he could join these two jokes into one uber joke:
3. Men dressed in women’s clothing pretending to be from a small town are funny
It was from this third, grand unified joke that the show killnaskully came to be. Most of the jokes and plot were pilfered from age old stereotypes of small town ireland, with a bit of father ted stolen for good measure.
The english equivalent, little britain, demonstrates with further aplomb that western europe is teeming with closet transvestites who only seem to find release in the world of TV comedy. I could probably write a whole article on this phenomenon, and its sister phenomenon, the prevalence of gay bashing as a form of humour on TV that people will hopefully one day realise is just not funny anymore.
But I digress. I’m giving out about Pat Shortt here, not TV comedy in general.
This radio ad is painful to listen to. Partly because they play soundbites of one of his gigs that make no sense whatsoever on their own. But mostly because they managed to sample a laugh thats more irritating than that crazy frog ringtone, and play it three times during the 30 second ad.
It grates on my nerves so much it makes me want to pull the radio off the wall, find pat shortts mansion in limerick or wherever the hell he lives, ring his doorbell, wait for him to answer, and then bludgeon him to death with said radio.