Raise our hands to the heavens! Prepare
celebratory feasts! Slaughter your
firstborn! For once again some naive
newcomer in the Disability Programmes
Unit has fallen prey to the cunning
machinations of that hilariously anarchic
genius Nabil Shaban, and has handed
him a wad of money to work his small,
weird and outrageous wonders with.
If there's only one programme you can
watch this week, let it be Outside
Edge: The Alien Who Lived in the Sheds
(BBC2. 11.20pm), a mischievously
hyperactive piece of investigative
journalism, ripe with narrative intimacy,
riven with righteous speechifying,
riddled with smart cartoons; insanely
surreal and ridiculously ribald.
In brief, disabled actor' Mr Shaban
travels back in time to 1978 in an attempt
to figure out the mystery of Squiddly-
Diddly, an alien who apparently once
inhabited a shed on a common between
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Guildford and Woking. As anyone even
slightly familiar with Mr Shaban's oeuvre
might well expect, The Alien Who Lived
in the Sheds snaps taboos in half like
gingerbread biscuits, and then constructs
a deliciously edible chalet out of them.
One of the almost innumerable
highlights involves a mind-boggling
musical re-enactment of the Roswell
Incident with Shaban, painted silver and
wearing only a small nappy, lying on his
back, singing throatily and waving his
legs around in a crazy can-can. But what
of the alien? Yes, we do eventually find
out all about him, and the true story of
Squiddly-Diddly is actually more strange,
chilling and poignant than anything your
average imagination could ever hope to
conjure up.
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