December 22, 2010

Horse 1134 - East London Sesame Street

Rainy day,
Keeping the sun away
On my way,
To where the air aint sweet
Can you tell me how to get
How to get to Sesame Street?
How to get to Sesame Street?

OK, you know how it should sound but what would happen to the eponymous street if the TV show was cast not in an idealised New York City, but in a more dreary place such as East London?

For a start you can recast most of the human cast as Cockneys. Instead of having happy jobs like teachers and doctors, they could spend a great deal of time down at the Post Office collecting their dole payments on Giro Day.

Hooper's Store is now the Lamb & Flag. The Fixit-Shop becomes a Pawnbrokers, Ernie and Bert are "them dodgy geezers" and Oscar would live in a Dustbin, surrounded by empty cans of Skol and Tennants Super. No wonder he's so grouchy all of the time - so would you be if you lived amongst a pile of dustbins.

Cookie Monster is obviously some sort of heroin junkie with an attack of the munchies. No-one walks around yelling "Cookie, Cookie, Cookie, Cookie!" unless they were on something. This does however explain why there's a 10 foot pigeon and a hairy elephant living down the street though.

Grover who's had more jobs than I've had hot curries, would be recast as an Eastern European migrant without a work permit. He's had many jobs as a waiter, a pilot, doctor, elevator operator, detective etc. and the reason for this is to evade the immigration officers.

About the only character whom I'd see any improvement in though would be Don Music. He'd most likely be playing songs on his piano after doing gigs at the Hackney Empire. I can very easily see him mining the repertoire of Chas and Dave and inserting those immortal words "Have a Banana" into everything. I can even picture Bill Bailey taking the part.

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