[DanaC]

I've recently got back into Ideal (BBC sitcom). I loved the first two series then fell off it (probably had essays to write) and somehow in the few minutes my head was turned away they've snuck up to series bloody 5!

Here's a clip if you're interested. The central character is a small time pot dealer (Moz). The action all takes place in and around Moz's flat in Salford (town of my birth, so I feel a particular affection). His main supplier is your friendly neighbourhood policeman (Moz's best friend who is, as it happens, shagging his bird on the sly). It's mainly fairly straight comedy...but occasionally gets a little surreal. Cartoon Head is a very strange character.

I like this programme because without ever giving in entirely to gritty realism, and containing as it does a very strange and heightened version of the world, it's nonetheless one I recognise. The nick-names are sooo typical of where I come from. Strange and exaggerated as they are, these people remind me an awful lot of the crowd I used to hang with back in Bolton: Nutty Paul and his girlfriend, Little Anji, Nervous Pete, Mad Sharon, Fingers, Maximillian. Happy (well, alright, not so much happy as bloody miserable and sinking down into a mire, but you get the point) and strange days. Playing with powders and pills.

Moz's flat is so much like the flats we'd loll about in. Nutty Paul's basement flat mainly. The comings and goings of it. I recognise this world.



This is from an early series, before it started to get really strange.



And this is also before it got really strange. Psycho Paul is ace in this. The one who looks a little like one of the Beatles.