About as edgy as Banksy: Joe Rogan's Netflix special reviewed

My resolution this summer was to see how far into the Olympics I could get without watching an event. It’s harder than you think. Especially when you’ve got kids calling constantly from the sitting room: ‘Dad, Dad, it’s Romania vs Burkina Faso in the finals of the women’s beach volleyball and there’s been a tremendous upset…’

Rogan is marketed as an edgy alternative to the mainstream media. He is about as edgy as Banksy

I jest. I actually do know what happened in the finals of the women’s beach volleyball. It was the first thing I watched because that was what was on when I walked into the room and broke my duck. Italy beat the long-standing champions the United States, which delighted me enormously. One of the things that had most annoyed me about the Olympics when I wasn’t watching was hearing the American national anthem on autorepeat, from the TV room, as they won yet another gold.

Later I got briefly very excited that a nice English woman I had never heard of before, and whose name I have since forgotten, won the 800 metres in spectacular fashion. I also got mildly diverted by the Team GB girl Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix – who, after a few shaky attempts, got beaten to the medals by the near perfect-scoring Chinese in the diving – mainly because her dad is the French bloke who presents First Dates on Channel 4. And that’s it. That’s all I saw. Did quite well, didn’t I?

The Olympics are presumably a good time for all the networks to bury bad TV. Maybe that’s why Netflix chose to release Joe Rogan’s alleged comedy special right in the middle. Rogan is a former US sports commentator (mixed martial arts) who has somehow managed to parlay his minor celebrity and blandly amiable jockishness into a multi-gazillion dollar career as the world’s biggest podcaster.