Regular tossr readers will know that I don’t usually post over the weekend, and as it’s Easter I’m afraid the weekend has come a little earlier and will end a little later, meaning there probably won’t be another post here until Monday night.

Until then, I’ve got another video for you to enjoy. But first, a bit of background:

Shirley Ghostman is the creation of Marc Wootton and the host of High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman. Put simply, he’s a fake comedy psychic passing himself off as the genuine article in the real world; think Ali G with added ectoplasm.

The show picked up a cult (ie. small) audience on the BBC’s digital channel BBC Three and as with most of BBC Three’s cult comedies, it transferred to the terrestrial channel BBC2 shortly afterwards.

Or at least, that was the plan.

Mere weeks before it was due to move over Wootton made an in-character appearance on popular talk show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross; an appearance which apparently clocked up record numbers of complaints due to his near-the-knuckle humour, and the promised BBC2 showing of High Spirits never materialised.

I urge you to watch the interview, as it’s an absolute masterclass in destroying your career:

Virtually every joke misfires badly: the gag about Kurt Cobain “shooting his mouth off”; the bit about Hitler liking Friends but hating fellow guest David Schwimmer; the part where he talks about having to kill his dad’s dog after he committed suicide (listen out for the obvious edit after the line about shoving all the pieces of Buckaroo up the dog’s arse; there’s an odd wave of laughter that sounds like it’s been overdubbed from another, more successful joke); the line at the end about chemotherapy which elicits an audibly negative reaction from some audience members. Wootton ploughs on, seemingly oblivious, but you can tell that Ross is acutely aware of the nose-dive that Wootton’s career is about to take.

Afterwards, the BBC issued an apology:

“Most viewers are aware of the style and nature of Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, but we realise the comments were clearly more extreme to some viewers for whom the spoof nature of this character was perhaps unclear.

Just because someone doesn’t find someone funny doesn’t necessarily mean it’s because they were offended; it could just be because they were shit. Obviously, someone is more likely to lodge an official complaint if they took offense (although sometimes I’m sorely tempted to raise complaints on the grounds that the programme I just watched was utter bollocks) but as is often the way, critics end up being tarred with the same brush: what’s the matter, Grandad, can’t take a bit of shock humour?

At present, Wootton’s name is curiously missing from the pages of Off the Kerb Management (although his name is still present in the drop-down box at the top if you go to the bulletin board page). Has he been removed from their books or are they disassociating themselves from him until a suitable amount of time has passed?

High Spirits is to receive a DVD release in a few months; however, Wootton’s current whereabouts remain unknown.

Apologies for the sound being badly out of sync, and the fact that it may take a while to buffer on connections slower than 2Mbps. Many thanks to whoever it was that uploaded the full show in the first place.