Spider-Man, Incredible Shrinking Man, Doctor Octopus . . . at no point in any science-fiction superhero story does radioactivity cause anyone to die a slow, lingering death
The big event of the year, as far as my seven-year-old son was concerned, was the opening of Spider-Man 3, to which I dutifully took him. All the 21st-century CGI wizardry can't disguise the Sixties B-movie premise of the whole bloated franchise - that a radioactive spider will, if it bites a nerdy college kid, impart the ability to behave roughly like a spider with a strong sense of law and order. In the postwar world, radioactivity was invariably given transmutational powers, causing invisibility (if you're Ray Milland) or shrinking (if you're the Incredible Shrinking Man) or growing (if you're Godzilla). It's ironic that science fiction tends to treat science like medieval magic, with "particle physics" turning someone into Sandman, "nuclear fusion" turning someone into Doctor Octopus, "solar radiation" turning people into the Fantastic Four, and fallen comets being made of evil goo. At no point in any superhero story does radioactivity cause anyone to die a slow, lingering death from organ failure.
Looking for a sign
I have spent the past couple of months on tour with Hugh Dennis, and have so far visited 32 theatres and arts centres up and down the country. Sat-nav has totally ruined one of the great touring rituals - driving helplessly round and round a one-way system, looking for signs to the venue. In city centres, stage doors are often in completely different streets from the theatre address; and many theatres have been subsumed into larger developments. The beautiful Everyman, in Cheltenham, is approached through a vast supermarket loading bay. I have played there twice and have no idea what it looks like from the front. In Nottingham, the duty manager carefully explains to us that we will be told to leave the stage in the event of a fire - as if we were likely to stay there, like the band on the Titanic, until swallowed by the flames. In Colchester, health and safety says no alcohol is allowed backstage, yet all the window sills have stickers reading "Caution: Asbestos". Maybe drunken actors have a tendency to drill through window sills during the interval. In Leeds, we play the City Varieties, a historic place still doing exactly what it was built to do more than a hundred years ago. The management is trying to get Lottery money to help refurbish this pop-cultural gem, but has been told that if the application wasn't in last year, it has no chance, as all the money is now being diverted to the Olympics. You do wonder whether Gordon Brown's too-clever-by-half creative accounting is going to come back to haunt him at No 10.
Booked out
I have a week off from touring, and I want to read a book. However, I have been put off bookshops since I went into W H Smith to be confronted by an entire section labelled Abused Childhood Memoirs. There are shelf-loads of these almost-identical books, each with its sad-eyed child staring out from the cover. It's the flip side of the tabloid ferment about paedos and abuse; in the privacy of their own homes, millions of people are choosing to immerse themselves in vicarious tales of child cruelty and misery. Maybe my dislike of this genre is guilt at my normal upbringing. No publisher would want a book called Sleepy: the true story of a boy occasionally shouted at by his mother because he didn't like getting up.
Strangled prose
For all its alleged liberal bias, BBC News has willingly adopted the terminology of the American right. The phrase "pro-life" rather than "anti-abortion" is standard, and "climate change", a euphemism dreamt up by the Bush administration, has usurped "global warming". Even the Guardian has been colonised by American phraseology. I have recently seen "protesting the cuts" and, even worse, references to things being "named for", instead of "named after". If any British paper starts aping the New Yorker, with its bizarre and erroneous habit of writing "co-operate" as "coöperate" or "co-ordinate" as "coördinate", I will do something drastic. It may involve a radioactive spider and strangulation of an editor with webbing.
Punt and Dennis are touring until 27 May. A new series of "The Now Show" starts on Radio 4 in June
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
