It seems that giant effigies of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand are to be burned this Saturday.
Edenbridge Bonfire Society is the organisation responsible for this 1970s portmanteau horror film-esque carry on, and they have a long track record of publicity-seeking star-encrusted pyromania. Previous victims have included Love Rat James Hewitt, Enemy Of The West Saddam Hussein (no Smash Hits 2nd place ‘most evil’ ranking behind ‘spiders’ this time) and Jacques Chirac.
Their website insists “we do not celebrate a spirit of intolerance” before relating with lip-smacking, grammar-defying relish how their effigy of Hewitt was “OVER 25FT TALL THE BOTTOM OF THE BAG HE IS HOLDING OPENS AND SIMULATED GOLD FALLS OUT THE BOOK CATCHES ON FIRE THEN HIS PRIVATE PARTS EXPLODE HE THEN BURNS IN AN ORGY OF FIRE AND FIREWORKS”.
Sadly the website’s quasi-Richelieu roll call of unbelievers and the unclean doesn’t stretch back beyond 1996, though presumably Edenbridge have been up to this kind of thing for decades. Even though it still hasn’t brought back their apples.
Who, however, might have made it onto the pyre in that fated, and feted, decade, the 1980s (that’s 1980-1989)? From the unambiguous attitudes suggested by their more recent choices, it’s a safe bet the Society went for…
1980: Darth Vader
1981: Ken Livingstone
1982: General Galtieri
1983: Michael Foot
1984: Arthur Scargill. Or Frankie Goes To Hollywood
1985: The Rainbow Warrior
1986: Diego Maradona. Or, if they were really fond of Maggie, Michael Heseltine
1987: Michael Fish
1988: Ayatollah Khomeini
1989: Jive Bunny
Simon
November 5, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Were they struggling a bit in 2006, nine months after Celebrity Big Brother as it was? Obviously not as struggling as they were in 1999 – maybe they couldn’t decide on what a 25 foot Millennium bug should look like – but an odd choice for instant current populism nonetheless. And that’s before we get to the moral issues raised by bringing up Anne Robinson’s long since beaten alcoholism.