Funny Ha So

Bit of a first last night. Saw a Japanese comedy programme that actually made me laugh loudly.

I’ll do a separate entry on Japanese TV one day because there’s quite a bit of mileage in it, but in the meantime I’ll tell you about “Gut’s”.

That’s their punctuation error not mine, by the way.

“Gut’s” gives members of the public the chance to win prizes by competing in humiliating slapstick challenges. The contestant doesn’t know the challenge until he opens a sealed envelope.

This week’s show featured a rather timid man who was kicked out of a plane with an instructor at 20,000 feet, and on landing was immediately pushed along a line of people dressed in nappies, all of whom custard-pied him really hard in the face.

After that dazed, confused and covered in flan, he was lobbed into a ring with two Kendo Nagasaki-style wrestlers, who set about bodyslamming him into the canvas. Finally, the wrestlers threw him through a hoop of fire.

The whole thing happened in the space of about 4 and-a-half minutes.

Trust me it was funny.

Best of the night though was contestant number 3. His challenge was ingenious and is an idea I’d love to steal.

He visited a series of po-faced Japanese psychic mediums and requested congress from beyond the grave with a number of famous people under the pretence he had to give them all a special message.

But unbeknownst to the stupid medium, once they had run through their “I am now possessed” schtick and contacted the “other-side”, the contestant’s challenge was now to make her laugh or react in order to highlight her as a fraud.

Consequently, when the medium said “what is your question, my child?” the contestant, clad in an all-black body stocking, would then stand up and proceed to do a series of hilarious strutting dances accompanied by bouts of Olympic-class gurning and general arsing about in attempt to make her laugh.

They tried it on three different psychic mediums. Two kept a straight face, but the third one cracked.

Trust me it was funny.