Scan Magazine | Humour |
Columns
IS IT JUST ME…
By Mette Lisby
Who has noticed a new and alarming trend? I have recently watched a slew of trailers for TV shows, on everything from literature to travel destinations to history, where a host looks into the camera and, in a remarkably cheerful way, boasts that “I’m gonna look closer at this book/location/topic and I know absolutely nothing about it!” How did this become a selling point? Something to take pride in? A quality in and of itself? Call me old-fashioned, but I’d much prefer to have someone who knows something about the topic telling me about it. If anyone should roam the world in complete and perpetual ignorance, I might as well do it myself, thank you very much. But knowledge and experience have apparently become ‘boring’ and ‘not fresh’. Today’s TV commissioners want someone with a ‘curious’ take. I remember when experts managed to be both experienced and curious – fabulous storytellers who’d invite us into their field of expertise with passion and enthusiasm.
Sir David Attenborough springs to mind. In today’s TV productions, Sir David would be replaced by a fresh-faced 20-somethingyear-old wandering around the Serengeti, at some point meeting a large mammal with the excited outburst: “This could very well be an animal! I have no idea which one! I know nothing about nature!” Granted, there’s still enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm is reserved exclusively for the “I don’t know anything about it” part – not for the passion of dedicating oneself to actually learning about a topic. You can almost tell that they pitch the host to the TV station with that one quality: “He knows nothing about it!” “That’s clever,” you can see the TV executive squint, with a feeling of security, probably because he knows nothing about it either. This is me guessing, of course, about the circumstances surrounding the commissions. To be fair, I don’t know anything about that
Nature
100 | Issue 114 | July 2018
Mette Lisby is Denmark’s leading female comedian. She invites you to laugh along with her monthly humour columns. Since her stand-up debut in 1992, Mette has hosted the Danish version of Have I Got News For You and Room 101.
By Maria Smedstad
to conjure. Not only that, but the toiletbuilding itself was home to several adders. We donned wellies and stamped through the grass, staring straight ahead so as not to accidentally eyeball a wolf or a moose.
One thing that I really like about Britain is the fact that nature here is not generally out to kill you. That’s not to say there are no dangers, however. But on the whole, the British countryside is mild and tended – sweetly rolling hills, dotted with lambs, lush valleys and well-trodden footpaths (usually with a pub at the end). To a foreigner, Britain really can feel like one big garden. Nature in Sweden is slightly different. Our family used to own a summer house in the woods, a rickety old cottage where we would spend our holidays. It was a fantastic place for a kid, although not without its challenges. For example, there was no electricity or running water. Instead, there was a pump in the garden, spewing forth rusty, frog-peppered water, and an outdoor toilet, attached to a small barn across the road. The nearest shop was… actually I have no idea where it was – the woods seemed endless.
specific situation. Which means I’m totally the right person to be talking about it! Hang on… actually that makes me qualified to have my own TV show!
Luckily all beasts remained in the shadows, which was just as well, because one thing that the experience taught me was that trying to tell a venomous adder from a harmless grass snake by torchlight is really not much fun at all.
It should be pointed out that my family was perhaps not the most natural of nature-dwellers. I remember hanging out of the car window, as we randomly cruised down dirt tracks, looking for mushrooms for dinner. Then there were the night-time visits to the loo. The surrounding woods were pitch black and teeming with all the monsters that a child under ten was able
Maria Smedstad moved to the UK from Sweden in 1994. She received a degree in Illustration in 2001, before settling in the capital as a freelance cartoonist, creating the autobiographical cartoon Em. Maria writes a column on the trials and tribulations of life as a Swede in the UK.