Dot comedy
"I hate television," Orson Welles once said. "I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts." It's that ambivalence to television-loathing tempered by fascination-which permeates much of the humour on British television websites.
The tvgohome.com is a laugh-out-loud funny parody of the Radio Times, forged in the same misanthropic fire as Chris Morris's Brass Eye. Like Morris, it sets about its subjects with remorseless energy. The site has recently given us Mullah Smith, in which "Tooting-based Taleban leader Omar Smith orders his fianc?e to don an opaque sack with tiny eyeholes and forget everything she learned at school." It has a phone-in about how the war in Afghanistan should be prosecuted for readers of Bravo Two Zero. And there's Zulu: Named and Shamed, a remake of the classic film in which "the Zulus' faces are digitally replaced with those of men on the sex offenders register."
Mediapill.com and emporiumoffruit.co.uk continue the celebrity fixation. The Emporium of Fruit goes for softer targets-faded, small-screen stars such as John Craven and Keith Chegwin. But I did enjoy "Satan's jukebox," which pipes randomly chosen, irritating tunes straight to your desktop.
Unnovations.com's ads for "tomorrow's outmoded artefacts today" features useless, blackly surreal products, with more Morris-like uncertainty. The blurb calls television "little more than a parade of ceaseless electronic idiocy, cynically pandering to the basest desires of the lowest common denominator. For all the good it does you, it might as well hurl shit into your face while you watch it. And now it does."
With the exception of tvgohome.com, Americans do web humour, as they do sitcoms, better than the Brits. Unlike British dot comedies, the Onion (theonion.com) can somehow blend huge quantities of consistently clever and funny satirical stories with excellent straight reviews of books, movies and music. The 11th September issue is quite brilliant.
Betty Bowers' website (bettybowers.com) is a delicious lampoon of middle American Christian zeal. Her slogan is "God Told Me to Hate You" and her pages are gushing love letters to Laura Bush, good grooming and Baptist Ladies Against Media Entertainers (B.L.A.M.E.). The site is more crafted, less dependent on minor celebrity than the telly-obsessed British offerings. "What Would Betty Do?"-her glorious advice column-gives answers to "Does God fart?" "Is revelation a drug?" and "Is it ever OK for men to wear panty hose?" The answer? "Only over their heads when they are robbing a bank. Stealing is a forgivable sin. Cross-dressing, on the other hand, is an unforgivable sin-against both God and, more importantly, good taste." No ambivalence there, then.
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