Song, by Toad

A laugh a minute

So there are two huge international festivals of comedy currently underway. One of them is here in Edinburgh now that the Festival Fringe is well up to steam. (The only thing more annoying than trying to navigate pavements packed with thousands of lost tourists not looking where they’re going as you try and go about your daily business, is trying to navigate pavements packed with thousands of lost tourists not looking where they’re going and all carrying umbrellas.)

The other is in Beijing where the games of the 29th olympiad look to have got off to an unsurprisingly farcical start. Despite the Chinese authorities’ attempts to polish their turd of a regime while it’s on display to the world, flaws are rapidly beginning to appear.

Of course, there’s the hullaballoo erupting about elements of the opening ceremony being faked. The story regarding one little girl miming to another little girl’s singing voice simply because the organisers thought she was prettier, along with the bit about the ’live’ fireworks displays that were created with CGI beforehand then cut into the live TV images being transmitted around the world; are both hilarious, but hardly surprising. As some commentators have said; China are trying to present an acceptable image of their country for western audiences to digest, and when so much of our media output in the west is faked or subverted, why shouldn’t they adopt a similar approach? The problem seems to be just that the Chinese aren’t very good at it.

Perhaps more worryingly, there are reports of a British TV journalist being arrested and ‘roughed up’ by Chinese police, and having his equipment confiscated, for merely being nearby when someone unfurled a Tibetan flag.

The most worrying for me though are the reports of large groups of locals being – ahem – shanghaied into attending Olympic events to fill up empty stadia. I saw a terribly sad TV report from a journalist who had interviewed some of these unfortunate souls at the fencing event. I mean; who the fuck wants to go and see fencing?!

REM – King Of Comedy
Ed Harcourt – Shanghai