Caught In The Net: The surreal IRA

While Caught In The Net has a fantastic social life, on the odd occasion we’re at home crying our eyes out because nobody likes us, we love watching a spot of foreign telly.
It’s therefore with much excitement that we recently stumbled upon mediahopper.com, an online portal to 1,220 TV stations from 132 countries.
Tearing ourselves away from Channel 6’s Boy’s Night for an hour, we managed to catch a decomposed body being fished out of a Nicaraguan lake (100 Noticias); the end of a thrilling 0-0 draw between the Azerbaijani equivalent of Kildare County and Monaghan United (AZTV); a mustachioed Albanian woman informing us that, “Britney Spears nik eshte me seksi," (Vizion Plus TV); and a Russian music channel whose slogan – we jest you not – is “in order that blood comes from the nose in the world of showbusiness,” (Special TV).
Worthy of slightly more sustained viewing is the UK’s E-Music Television, CNN India and LC2 which does a neat line in Beninese hip hop.
From there it’s but a mere mouse-click to mothership.somethin-else.com/hit40uk1000 where you can discover what was number one in the UK on the day you were born. If you’re Hot Press cover star Wayne Coyne and came into the world on January 13 1961, it’d be Johnny Tillotson’s ‘Poetry In Motion’.
Fresh from ‘fessing up to inventing Pete Doherty as a media stunt, former KLF man Bill Drummond has come up with another wizard wheeze called The 17.
“All known music has run its course,” reads the www.the17.org mission statement. “It has all been consumed, traded, downloaded, understood, heard before, sampled, learned, revived, judged and found wanting. Dispense with all previous forms of music and music making and start again. Year Zero now.”
After listening to the new Pink album we’d tend to agree with him.
Having thrilled us in the past with such epics as What Have The Brits Ever Done For Us?, Irish Lyons Tea Celebrity Team and Dail Reshuffled, the www.langerland.com folk are back with The Rising. Recasting Dev, Padraig Pearse, Michael Collins, James Connolly, Roger Casement et al as members of The A-Team, this moving tribute to the heroes of 1916 also features cameos from Charlie Bird, Maggie Thatcher, Slobodan Milosevic and Jodie Marsh who confesses to a three-in-a-bed romp with those randy rebels.
Which just leaves timed for quick visits to www.bitterwaitress.com (the online equivalent of spitting in someone’s soup); www.tomcruiseisnuts.com (Katie, it’s not too late to escape); and www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=oid%3A48601 (the hardest way to make an easy living).