Dear British telly,<\/p>\n
We have Oti Mabuse<\/a>. And we shan\u2019t return her unless you pay up. I vow this now or my name isn\u2019t Kevin Bakhurst. <\/p>\n I mean, my name isn\u2019t Kevin Bakhurst<\/a>. My name is not important. <\/p>\n (Note to my assistant: when you\u2019re putting my dictated message into the ransom note, please remove my name. Also, use those cut-up magazine letters, like in a ransom note on the telly. Note to self: could we turn the making of ransom notes into a TV show, possibly hosted by Mary FitzGerald from How Do You Do?)<\/p>\n Where was I? Oh yeah. We have the Strictly Come Dancing dancer and Dancing on Ice judge Oti Mabuse. Ha ha! (Make sure you use particularly evil fonts for the \u201cha ha!\u201d bits.) Ha ha ha! (Bigger and more striking fonts again here, please.)<\/p>\n In your face, British telly. You think you\u2019re so great with your vastly superior budgets. Well, who\u2019s laughing now? Me, that\u2019s who, sitting here in the RT\u00c9 shed<\/a>, dictating this on to an old-fashioned wax cylinder while wearing fingerless gloves and darning the arse of my trousers.<\/p>\n Yes, you\u2019ve probably been wondering where Oti Mabuse is. Well, she\u2019s with us and we won\u2019t send her back until you give us \u20ac50. Actually, hold on a minute. (How much is our news budget? Seriously?!) Make it \u20ac60 and some vouchers, please.<\/p>\n Also, while I\u2019m on to you, how do you stop Oti Mabuse from dancing? She keeps dancing. She shimmies and sashays and boogies and grooves. In fact, she grooved right into the big butterfly net we used to catch her. It was almost like she wanted to be caught and British terrestrial telly has no money either. And she kept knocking my balaclava off with her syncopated hand movements. \u201cStop dancing, Oti Mabuse!\u201d we cried, but it was in vain. Oti Mabuse really loves dancing.<\/p>\n In fact we found the only way we could contain her was to put her on a panel alongside other dancing judges. She was quite at home there. We put her sitting behind a desk with a literal Karen, albeit one from Dublin, a muppety guy with wavy arms who speaks REALLY LOUDLY and then really softly and then REALLY LOUDLY again, and a smooth grouch who\u2019s surrounded by people who boo him. I think this is a fetish he has.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Dancing with the Stars week 1: New head judge Oti Mabuse collides with Brian Redmond in fun returnOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n We keep her distracted by making different celebrities dance for her. Of course, I mean \u201ccelebrities\u201d and I mean \u201cdance\u201d. Most of them are celebrities only in the loosest sense (in the sense that all of us are celebrities in the eyes of Jesus) and none of them has hip joints or knees or knows any music that isn\u2019t a long, keening moan. This is Ireland, after all. Personally, I have the mobility of a Star Wars figure or a member of Westlife. <\/p>\n On the plus side, the dancing keeps us all warm, so we don\u2019t have to put the heating on any more. Indeed, we\u2019re simultaneously broadcasting all these shenanigans out to the people as Dancing to Keep Warm<\/a> with funding from Bord na M\u00f3na (\u20ac20).<\/p>\n Of course, getting a huge bunch of celebrities and dancers into a warehouse to contain the Oti Mabuse situation brings its own problems. <\/p>\n Jennifer Zamparelli<\/a> turned up alongside her child, Laura Fox<\/a>, attracted, as usual, by the bright lights. I\u2019m warning you now: do not leave your window open and lights on if you don\u2019t want Zamparelli and Fox flittering about. <\/p>\n The duo descend two big flights of stairs that look expensive but really only exist because when they finally cut the electricity<\/a> here at Montrose, we could no longer use the lifts. They\u2019re both very glamorous, but, truth be told, I knitted their dresses out of leftover Christmas tinsel.<\/p>\n The line-up includes all the types of celebrity. There\u2019s Niamh Kavanagh<\/a>, a celebrity who was once on the Eurovision<\/a>, all dressed up in the colours of a Neapolitan ice cream. Eurovision is a competition we used to enter when we could still afford long-distance calls. (Is Europe still a thing, by the way?)<\/p>\n There\u2019s also Michael Fry, a very funny comedian from the internet. I\u2019ve never seen the internet, but if the descriptions are anything to go by it\u2019s basically a really small television powered by clouds. This sounds like witchcraft to me, so I\u2019ll stick with my can on a string (RT\u00c9 Player).<\/p>\n