Mark Watson Makes The World Substantially Better
- 13 February 2007, BBC Radio 4, 6.30pm
An irreverent (and sometimes surreal) look at lust
Welsh stand-up-turned-radio-presenter Mark Watson has a touch of Ross Noble about him. Maybe it's the lilting accent and the over-enthusiastic, constantly self-interrupting delivery method. Maybe it's the surreal humour, full of non-sequiturs. But, from a shaky start, reliant on mucky puns, his show develops into a likeable look at the seven deadly sins.
This week's topic: lust. So male guests wear lipstick and write mushy poems to audience members, a song's composed about an intelligent woman whose interests and IQ mean nothing to the man trying to get her into bed, and Watson does a ropey Cilla Black impression. He also attempts to illuminate the theme with a story about a woman next to him eating a similar meal on a train ("she was doing a cover version of my lunch"), but his laconic Australian sidekick Tim Minschen tells him that the story's completely irrelevant. It's a section of the show introduced by a jingle that has a compliant audience singing along to the words: 'turning point, turning point, the bit where we confront our essential hypocrisy.'
The show possesses a kind of surreal cleverness, liberated from the task
of having to express an actual point. Next week: pride.
Jess Holland
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