Pre-Christmas Cracker

With the rush to get everything squared away before wasting a week with all this festive nonsense there hasn’t been time to think of much else. Still, amongst all the chaos I got to spend one day last week down on the south coast at the holiday home of an actress friend, helping her sort through the accumulated storage boxes filled with a jumble of publicity photographs and contact sheets, scripts and contracts.

It was a shame we couldn’t have done this earlier in the year. Back then, stepping out onto the wooden deck and down the short flight of stairs, straight onto the wide swath of sand, we could have stood there at our leisure, bathed in the heat from the summer sun. Instead, wrapped in thick jumpers and fleeces, we clutched mugs of hot tea to help stave off the bitter cold as we briefly gazed out across the calm waters of the English Channel, then hurried straight back indoors.

The night before More4 broadcast the penultimate episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s seventh season. This has been an astonishingly good year, what with the incidents of vehicular fellatio, the unsightly bare midriff leading to the image of Christ weeping a tear of piss, the clubbing of the black swan, and Larry David in ladies’ underwear, but the real highlight has been the Seinfeld reunion and The Table Read was an absolute masterpiece.

As filming the episode got closer Julia Louis–Dreyfus and Jason Alexander were sniffing around as to why Cheryl had been cast as George’s ex–wife in the reunion episode then, after abusing the loan of a pen, Alexander and David continued their rancorous one-upmanship. With cameos from the actors who played Estelle Costanza, Kenny Bania and Newman, the Seinfeld reunion script referenced many of the pickles David has gotten himself into during the previous seasons of Curb, and there was even time to craftily parody Michael Richards’ unfortunate meltdown at a comedy club three years ago.

For most sitcoms that would be more than enough material to be getting on with, but the episode also managed to include a maître d’ that expects to be tipped every time he meets Larry David, and LD reluctantly befriending the nine–year–old daughter of a Seinfeld staffer who has “a rash on her pussy”, which leads to all kinds of trouble. It all pretty much kicked off with an unwelcome Marty Funkhouser telling Jerry Seinfeld a spectacularly tasteless joke.

So when you’re home for Christmas, in the warm embrace of friends and family, and there’s an awkward pause in the conversation, this could be the perfect remedy. Of course if you’re easily offended now may be the time to go to Google and look for pictures of cute kittens. Otherwise, enjoy...