Only the British can build a Trojan Horse that looks like a holy cow .

Talking Trash

Trash television is all the rage this season. “Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire,” “Survivor” and “Big Brother” are attracting very large
audiences.  This has taken television critics by surprise as all these
shows have roots in British programs. Up to now the British have been known
almost exclusively for highbrow entertainment best suited to very slow
Saturday nights.

No more. The British are delivering a steady supply of trash television to
the states and we can’t get enough of this low-brow diet. Britain, a nation
of tinkerers who can literally tie the country up in knots using odd pieces
of string and day-old tea bags, is really quite at home with this kind of
programming. One recent show, “Bob’s Your Uncle” is a weird rites of
passage in which young participants named Bob or Bobbie wander around the
globe looking for long-lost uncles under rocks and in oversized martini
glasses in the one Western hotel in Burma.

Another show, “Nosy Parker”, shows retirees spying on young marrieds and
unmarrieds hoping to find cause to report them to the Sod Squad. This
lasted one week because it was keeping elderly in nursing homes up too
late, long past their 10 PM tranquilizers. A few even had heart attacks.

Closer to the maverick British heart is a show first called “Scrapheap
Challenge” which was then changed to “Junkyard Wars.” Teams of mechanically
minded and cranky Brits are given ten hours to build a plane that will fly,
a ship that can cross the Thames under its own power, and a robot that can
speak with a clipped Oxford accent. For example one team, the Brainy Bunch,
comprised of a Jungian analyst , a potter who builds her own kiln, a bar
tender, and structural engineer, faced off against  Spin, headed by three
washing machine repairmen from Peterborough. The challenge was to build a
flying craft that stayed up the longest. The Brainy Bunch decided on a very
complicated design, powered by Rolls Royce engines, while the Spin built
their motor from washing machine parts--and won. 

Other shows are already taped involve building muskets, nuclear weapons,
and sewer grates that capture only vegetarians.  The show that has caused
the greatest commotion to date is a grotesque takeoff on the Humpty Dumpty
fable. Called “Together Again” which prompted some viewers to think it was
a love story, the show challenged two teams to take a freshly slaughtered
cow and literally put it together again. One team, called “Sticky” was made
up of a hairdresser, a butcher, and a lapsed member of the Welsh bobsled
team. The other team, “The Immigrants”, was comprised of illegal aliens who
would get British citizenship if they won the contest.

It was no contest. The “Sticky” team drank beer for the first 8 hours,
figuring they could patch a cow together in short order. And they gave the
“Immigrants” a good run. The boozers actually built an interesting version
of the Trojan horse, covering the cut marks with plaid and hiding the
chops, steaks, and ribeye in the carcass, figuring the judges would never
look that close. But “The Immigrants” not only put Humpty Dumpty together
seamlessly, the team seemed quite set on putting the cow out to pasture.
Some viewers swear they saw the cow twitch, as if coming back to life.

So moved by the almost mystical manner in which the immigrants literally
breathed life into the reborn cow, thousands of viewers have suggested
“Humpty” become a national shrine. The Daily Mail has embraced this and
Prince Charles, hardly a typical trash television lover, has put his weight
behind the effort. 

Humpty has been moved to the northeast end of Hyde Park and is under
24-hour police protection. People are allowed to touch the cow which has
generated reports of spontaneous healing.

 “Holy Cow” has taken on a whole new meaning in Britain.