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Woke up to a dry nappy and a dry mattress… then I got off the bus.
I was on a bus all along. And I was in a nappy. And on a mattress. I’d snuck it on without the driver noticing.
No, I was talking about Ernie all along. He’s 28 years old. And a teacher. He sleeps on a mattress at school.
He’s obsessed with the song “Bananas in Pyjamas†at the moment, which we have to play on repeat. The version on Alexa has two verses at least - the one my wife has on her phone that we play in the car is just one verse and about 30 seconds long. That’s a tough listen on the 13th go in a row. And starts to sound sinister.
If you don’t know this work then let me enlighten you
Bananas in Pyjamas are coming down the stairs
Bananas in Pyjamas are coming down in pairs
Bananas in Pyjamas are chasing teddy bears
Cos on Tuesdays they all try to catch them unawares.
Seems like jolly fun on the first read, right, but when you hear it a lot you start to read between the lines. The bananas have been upstairs in bed our preparing for bed and are still in their PJs, but now they are coming down stairs. Not one at a time, but banana shoulder to banana shoulder, so that if you wanted to try and run past them and back upstairs to possible safety, you have no chance.
The two sinister bananas are, the song admits, chasing teddy bears. Not for fun, mind you. You might think it’s just a silly game where fruit that has been given clothes, motion and consciousness play tag with soft toys that have also charmingly come alive. No, the evil bananas are attempting to catch the teddy bears without them realising. There is no consent here. Consent is the last things the bananas want. They want to catch the teddy bears off guard.
And yet perversely, presumably to shit the teddy bears up, (if the sight of two animated cock-shaped food-stuff, dressed ready for the bed that I think we can assume they will be dragging the bears to, is not scary enough) the bananas have set this purge of the teddy bears in the calendar to one specific day. They are not going to catch them too unawares by the third or fourth Tuesday. Even if your head is full of fluff you are eventually going to put that together and work out what is happening. Oh it’s Tuesday, it’s bed time, the bananas have put on their pyjamas, looks like we’re about to be chased, captured and have both ends of a pair of bananas inserted into whatever orifice they can find.
Let’s not get on to the zucchini in bikinis that are behind the bananas and joining in the bear hunt. They are, at best, the Ghislaine Maxwells of all of this. Finding the bears, encouraging the bananas to go for them, putting on scanty swim wear to engorge the bananas further.
I know that a lot of people are trying to cancel inappropriate children’s literature at the moment, but how we are not starting with this, I don’t know.
Remote RHLSTPs are always a pleasure, but it was especially fun to catch up with the effortlessly witty and smart Jo Caulfield. We chatted about (amongst other things) messing up your one line on a TV show, a drama student taking method acting too far, living in squats, how Dolly Parton gets it right, when to throw out your cereal bowls, the hell of playing zoom quizzes with your family, an unlikely alliance with Neville Southall and how and why Jo got banned and reinstated on Twitter.
Or wait two months for the podcast.
Thanks to Ian Oxygen for paying for this bonus RHLSTP with the incredible James Acaster
