Review Summary: What does fate hold, if not a throbbing member?
"Let's see what you've won," rasps the creosote mannequin, unpunished for getting too handsy with his lady contestants, his porcelain grin a permanent fixture burned into the CRT monitor. Graham, 32 from Milton Keynes, doesn't look a day over 47, trembles shoulders-squared, yellowed skin reddening under the heat of a dozen spotlights and hundreds of dead, unblinking studio audience eyeballs. "A lovely ashtray set courtesy of the good folks at Bainbridge's." As instructed, the eyeballs "ooh!", and some bog standard glassware appears on a piss-yellow podium. Graham, 32 from Milton Keynes, feigns a smile. The heavy expectation is to be prodigiously grateful, not least for the chance to be on't telly, and much as he would have liked a bit of money, or a nice holiday, the sponsorship has already been paid for. "Aren't you lucky? Isn't he lucky?"
This gaudiest of formats provides a salacious backdrop for Punching Swans' end-of-tether cynicism, framing the woes of the day in blistering bulbs and with the staying power of a forced and hamstrung catchphrase. Having realised that these presenters, destined to be outed as nonces only forty years too late, bare a striking resemblance to today's pig-faced electioneers, Punching Swans spend half an hour manically beating you over the head with a rubber test-your-strength mallet. "Here's tonight's star prize!"
*boof* "Stop crying, you prick!"
*whomp*. It's a filthy hall of mirrors filled with performative prats. 'Clown King' specifically admonishes the currently for-the-shitheap UK PM and the buffoonery he dangerously peddles: "I am just a stand up guy! I am just a silly goose!" 'Murder Seance' is a wry critique of small mediums at large: "I'm getting an S... No, no, a T... Does the name Steve mean anything to you? Anything?" 'Lost Lovely Assistants' salutes the unfortunate right hand women of TV magicians: "Without you I know now, I'm just a shit stand up". 'Stroke The Nuggets' supposes that most famous of all gameshow props, the big ticking wheel, will always land on a putrid cock: "Spin the wheel! It's a game of chance! Get fucked by life, or fuck life in the arse!"
"That's all we have time for today, ladies and gents," spews our spat tobacco host, as Graham, 32 from Milton Keynes, limply waves from behind his ashtray set.
