When did you last experience a boring Sunday afternoon? If you’re over 16, probably not since you were last 16 and stuck at home, raindrops sliding down the window pane, nothing on TV until five o’clock, nowhere to go because everywhere is shut. But boredom, says Phill Jupitus, has become an endangered emotion. Now that we have smartphones, at a gentle swipe, the touch of a button, we have access to any amount of diversion, 24 hours a day. We need never find ourselves with nothing to do, nothing to read that takes our fancy, no one to talk to. He’s not happy about this. In Being Bored: The Importance of Doing Nothing (produced by Luke Doran) he looks to Tony Hancock (and his ‘Sunday Afternoon at Home’ sketch), Reggie Perrin (who once, out of petulant boredom, orders ravioli for every course at his local Italian) and the Boring Conference to explain why we should be cherishing and preserving that sensation of frustration, futility and general fed-upness that are boredom’s peculiar characteristics.
Kate Chisholm
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Boredom has become an endangered emotion, says Phill Jupitus in his new Archive of 4 documentary. Time to bring it back
issue 26 November 2016
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