Alfred and the Dead Boy

I’m guessing a lot of you have seen this hilarious advert for road safety on TV recently. I think the basic message is ‘if you’re out driving, don’t take the crumpled and fractured corpse of the kid you hit last year with you because you’ll probably get distracted by it and crash into a lamp-post or something’.

Truly, this is the comic double act for our post-PC age! As you can see in this advert, the corpse is very much the Joker in the pack, while the terminally depressed suburban dad is the ‘straight-man’, reacting with side-splitting expressions of grumpy dismay every time the irrepressible pile of shattered bones and lacerated pink skin manages to appear in the most inconvenient of places.

Oh look! There he is - causing a stink up in the office! Goodness me! Who’s that making sure he brushes his teeth properly, even though he’s all grown up? Uh ohhhh! Who’s about to appear inside the fudge-cake at his son’s third birthday party?! This is the best ‘comedy of embarrassment’ since that thirty-second clip Ricky Gervais made for Comic Relief where he called a black man in a wheelchair a ‘nig-nog crip-spaz’ (LMAO).

Like ‘The Office’, this advert brings comedy right into the arena of the everyday. We can all relate to it – who amongst us hasn’t looked under the desk when we were about to masturbate to some hardcore pornography, only to find a dead child staring at us, putting us off our stroke? Certainly not me, and I’m usually quite conscientious about cleaning up after myself!!!

One is reminded of such classic knockabout duos as Del Boy and Rodney and Steptoe and Son, when enjoying this depiction of a couple of blokes, hard up on their luck, one of whom is being constantly dragged away from success and happiness by the other. You might say there is even something a little tragic about it, something which adds a note of melancholy to our relentless guffaws and splutters.

Given that British comedy is in a terrible state at the moment, with Horden and Corno attracting appalling reviews and nose-diving ratings and Mock the Week still being Mock the Week, wouldn’t it be wise for some savvy TV commissioner out there to take this brilliant partnership and give them a 6 episode sitcom or sketch-show? I propose that the title be something snappy – but witty - like ‘Alfred and the Dead Boy’.

Just think of all the scrapes these two could get into! For example, Alfred has to go on a double date with his boss’s daughter and her mate, but all his non-dead and adult mates are all busy – cue Alfred, smiling through gritted teeth as he props up the Dead Boy’s tuxedo clad corpse with a wooden spoon, and throws his voice to make it seem as if the Dead Boy really fancies both the girls. There is a hilarious moment when the Dead Boy falls face first into one of the girls’ bowl of soup, BUT IT ONLY TURNS THEM ON MORE! "I love a man with a strong stomach!" she coos, biting her lip, which is a source of rich amusement for the audience, who know that Dead Boy actually hasn’t got a stomach, or a liver, or teeth, or at least 74% of his reproductive organs! At this point, Alfred tugs his collar and grimaces as if to say ''Crikey o riley!''.

Another scene would see Alfred playing five a side football with his mates and their kids, and doing pretty well in the process. Only problem is, one of the kids hurts their ankle doing a sliding tackle and Alfred’s team is down one player! Luckily, Alfred knows just who he can stick in goal to keep a clean sheet… that is, unless you throw said sheet over his multiple exhaust pipe lacerations!

The possibilities are endless – Dead Boy the draft excluder, Dead Boy wins 50 quid for Alfred at the Human Statue contest, Dead Boy’s rigor mortis strengthened forelimbs used to carnally satisfy Alfred’s disconsolate wife! As you can see, Alfred often could use the Dead Boy to his advantage, but obviously there would be a lot of episodes where Dead Boy turned up at precisely the wrong moment as well – spread eagled atop Alfred’s face as he’s trying to conceive another child, for example, or on top of the lectern when he’s making an important speech at his company.

I can see no possible objection to this idea, except perhaps that it’s ‘unrealistic’. Well, you know what? I think that the manager of a hotel being incredibly rude to his guests and openly slurring the nationality of a group of Germans a bit ‘unrealistic’ too! Enough said!