Alas, the great Alan Partridge never got to make Inner-City Sumo, despite his famously desperate pitch to BBC TV commissioners. ‘We take fat people from the inner cities, put them in big nappies, and then get them to throw each other out of a circle… If you don’t do it, Sky will.’ Nor did we ever get to see Cooking In Prison. Arm Wrestling with Chas and Dave. Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank. Or — the ne plus ultra — Monkey Tennis. Some ideas, it seems, are just too strange for telly.
Fortunately, there’s a place for them on YouTube. Plenty of people have uploaded videos of themselves playing tennis with monkeys. You’d be surprised at what prisoners are cooking in prison. Chris Eubank made an online advert for Hostelworld. And where I live, lots of people use their cameras to film endless variations on Inner-City Sumo every Friday and Saturday night.
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