Sometimes I am such a dizzying mix of high and low brow that it worries me. However, I usually come to my senses quickly, realising that is exactly how it should be. The intense joy of reading Iain Sinclair while sipping pastis in Vieux-Port does not preclude laughing along with 12,000 other people at the public beheading of the Honey Monster. The only contradiction between enjoying a discussion on generative grammar and laughing at the line: “Because you want to smell like the tear of a weeping unicorn…” is self-imposed claptrap.
Therefore for the second time this year, Surreal Girl and I traipsed out to the rambling freakshow of The Mighty Boosh tour. In October, our journey through time and space took us Cardiff. This time to the misguided euphemism of North Greenwich.
Escaping the Hitcher’s evil Cockney urine and the terribleness of Naboo turning his back on me, we settled down to songs about future sailors and eel trouble in Bethnal Green. Howard Moon educated us on the differences between the brown of “Aggressive Teak” and “Savage Mahogany” while Vince Noir on the multiple settings of the Jean Claude Jacquettie hairdryer. Even though I have been in the wars of late, my laughter was muscular and constant.
In the final moments, Honey Monster’s skull was spiked Old London Bridge style to cries of: “Take it you plagiaristic yellow wanker!” As show stoppers go, it is not the third act of Götterdämmerung, but it was damn funny. It also beats anything Wagner ever wrote about the theft of intellectual property.
Show over, there was little else to do but flee the Dome in a style reminiscent of the final scene of Logan’s Run. Pocket universe ended, the chaos of the Jubilee line was now triumphant. Even in the stuttering crush, the world was better for Nanageddon outfits, jokes about shamanistic crows called Philip and the best smiling company in London to share them with.
