The Threat of the “Fun House”
In the late 1980s myself and many
of my Young Conservative peers rushed home from school emboldened by an era of
Thatcher, privatisation and Bros to eagerly switch on our TVs for the latest
offerings from the media starlets of that era. A particular fancy caught my
delight as it did others. I am speaking of course of ITV’s fun loving game-show
“Fun House” which was such a mainstay of all our childhoods. I well remember
the first time I encountered The Fun House and its own janitor of lunacy, the
ubiquitous Pat Sharpe. A cacophony of upbeat house music assaulted the senses entirely distracting me from the Findus Crispy Pancake my mother had lovingly
prepared. Sharpe duly bounded on set, his highly coffered mane bouncing
back and forth between each and every deep bass-line in the manner of other
such stars of the time such as Public Enemy or Coolio. Once enthralled by the
obscene level of sensory input Thatcher’s Children were apparently meant to
endure a set composed of dayglow and infamy which was clearly inspired by the
Acid House “raves” that were so popular in the outer reaches of the M25 back
then. The “fun house” may well be long gone but the long shadow it casts over
our culture and my generation’s mindset looms large and serves not only as a
footnote to our past but a warning as to our future.
Once seduced by the bombardment
on the senses by Sharpe’s carnival of villainy the viewer was supposed to sit
down and concentrate on this “family” entertainment. Each “team” consisted of a
girl and a boy selected from normal common or garden state schools throughout
the land. In retrospect the signals were there for all to see. Each and every
impressionably child-on-the-street youngster was ushered into a world of
hedonistic cruelty by the much mulletted Sharpe and his pair of able sidekicks
– the “twins” Melanie and Martina Grant. The kiddies in question (and believe
you me gentle reader I did not envy them of their fifteen minutes) were soon
enough sedated by the bombast of quick-witted humour, psychedelic fabrics and
anarcho-socialist politics that polluted the senses like rats in the sewer. In
this way the “fun house” served as a counterpoint to the solidly heroic, family-values friendly and utterly ace kid’s game-show Knightmare which transmitted during a similar
period. All of a sudden British children under the age of twelve who happened
to be viewing ITV for twenty-five minutes on a weekday evening were meant to
believe that life was a game, that drugs were cool, that twin sisters living in
sin were something to aspire to and emulate, and that in the words of THAT anthemic theme song it was “a real crazy show/ Where anything can go.”
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| Is this the kind of future Sharpe wants for your children? |
The fun house ceased transmission
in 1999. In truth the New Labour government’s authoritarian politics signalled
the end for Sharpe and his live-wire broadside to the status quo. However during
this internet era we are daily reminded of the lasting effects of “the fun
house” and everything it continues to represent. Peruse, if you will, the video
embedded below:
Are these the actions of a man
who loves Britain? One can only shudder at the idea of Sharpe leading the
troops storming the Normandy beachheads during D-Day clad in such vivacious attire. Indeed the whole parade as demonstrated above can only mean
one message is permitted: That Britain should surrender and that everything we
hold dear should be laid down at the behest of our Nazi Overlords. It is a
tragedy of Quisling proportions. But what of “the twins” in all this? I know
for my part their continued pouts and machinations only ever fuelled the sexual
development of a certain South London schoolboy circa 1991. Their close abiding
warmth and tactility chimed with the growing “gay” rights movement and “women’s
lib” demos that clogged our streets and thoroughfares during the twilight of
the Thatcher dawn. The clear signs of physical “involvement” were there for all
to see (and I know I for one responded as I was meant to as a healthy growing
youngster back then.) By propagating the filth implied by each blonde and
demure lady-sibling caressing the other, weren't the TV execs in charge in
effect saying all of this is okay? I know for a fact the next item on the
agenda of the Polly Toynbee’s of this world - so encouraged by the success of
their “gay” marriage crusade - is incestual civil rights. The members of the
Guardian Trust can think of nothing better than cheering along a parade of
surely damned brother-sister couplings and their deformed offspring along Old
Compton Street during a sunny day in July. And that is what is so dangerous for
us as a nation and a culture when we choose to ignore a danger such as Sharpe
and the “fun house” that he chose to popularise during those crucial years of
culture war turmoil. For my mind Britain can’t be “a real crazy show/ Where anything can go” it can’t be a “quiz and a race/ A real wacky place”
you can’t “use your body and your brain/
If you wanna play the game.” And if
you do? Well the never-ending parade of teenage abortions and teacher strikes
and campaigns against Free Schools tell their own tale. But what of Sharpe
himself? So depressed by the success of the conservative fight-back against the
evil he chose to purport he now lives a sad ghostly existence on daytime radio,
sinking further and further back into a pitiable pit of his own malevolence in
a bedsit in North London with nothing but his past glories and late night Noam Chomsky podcasts to keep him company. As he reaches for his next fix of internet
pornography or crystal meth does he feel pity? Or does he feel anything at all?
Or rather does he face the abyss of liberal minded despair that transpired to
transform this country’s streets into no-go areas of gang violence and
Greenpeace activity? As we as a nation rally and recover in the time of Cameron
and Osbourne can at least take crumb comfort that Pat’s “house” is not so fun
anymore; no it is not fun at all!
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