It’s very funny, and very, very silly. Fake news—a report on the under­ground sport of Church Fight­ing—is leav­ened with a healthy dollop of puerile filth, like the trailer for block­buster musi­cal Dr. Screwlit­tle & His Suck-​Me-​Suck-​You (from the makers of Kiddie Fid­dler on the Roof!), or the scene in which an unfor­tu­nate serf is made to fel­late a dragon. Go and have a listen.

Glaswe­gian read­ers may remem­ber Innes as ‘that Angry Ger­mans man’, famed for his S&M-riddled per­for­mances in Nazi uni­form at top nitespot Optimo, singing that rous­ing child abuse/WWII anthem, Mount Florida’s Yo La Kinski:

[Click through to the site to listen to the audio]

At last, some­thing to fill the gaping void in the comedy sched­ules left by Little Britain: I Am Not An Animal. Writ­ten and directed by Peter Bayn­ham (who has has a hand in almost every­thing funny on the tele­vi­sion since 1995) and voiced by Simon Pegg, Julia Davis and Steve Coogan, it tells the story of a troupe of talk­ing animals.

Bio-​engineered in a sin­is­ter vivi­sec­tion lab, the poor loves are doomed to live a life of loft-​apartment luxury, with Heat mag­a­zine as their cul­tural barom­e­ter and an end­less supply of Chi­anti fuelling dreams of vis­it­ing London. By the close of the open­ing episode, the gang have been freed by bungling animal rights vig­i­lantes, left to find their way in the world.

As you might expect from a long-​standing Chris Morris col­lab­o­ra­tor, the humour veers between sledge­ham­mer bum-​gags - two ‘My poo smells of sugar puffs’ scenes in one episode - and tickly little feather-​duster sub­tleties, as in the tit­u­lar nod to The Ele­phant Man.

The char­ac­ters are won­der­ful, too. There’s Philip, a pompous intel­lec­tual horse, with end­less gad­gets allow­ing him to live the humanoid life. And Mark - my fave - the closet case spar­row with designs on the pop charts and an obses­sion with shoe trees. And a slutty self-​styled femme fatale bull­dog bitch, Winona, who has a crush on ‘the actor Tim Robbins.’

God, it’s just fab­u­lous. View a short clip, right here.

Just in case you’ve already lost your edge, I should explain that the LCD Soundsys­tem song, which you can listen to here, is a won­der­ful dead­pan mock­ery of a cer­tain type of music fan. The sort who makes lists, who insists on their long famil­iar­ity with the most obscure artist the moment they rise to promi­nence, and who makes sus­pi­cous claims to being present at key events in music his­tory. As the title sug­gests it also mourns the inevitable pas­sage from cool to over-​the-​hill, while, of course, mock­ing the notion of cool itself, best expressed by this little line:

I’m losing my edge to the art-​school Brook­lynites, in little jack­ets and bor­rowed nos­tal­gia for the unre­mem­bered eighties

It is, with­out doubt, the best comic song of the cen­tury so far, if only because of the neat trick it plays on the lis­tener: you have to be the sub­ject of the satire in order to under­stand it, the joke is truly on you, me and us. And it makes you dance like a bastard.

Anyway, here are the groups and artists men­tioned in the song, in the order which they appear, stripped of the wit.

• Can
• Suicide
• Cap­tain Beefheart
• Daft Punk
• Larry Levan
• The Beach Boys
• Modern Lovers
• Niagra
• This Heat
• Pere Ubu
• Outsiders
• Nation of Ulysses
• Mars
• The Trojans
• The Black Dice
• Todd Terry
• The Germs
• Sec­tion 25
• Althea & Donna
• Sexual Harrassment
• A-Ha
• Pere Ubu
• Dorothy Ashby
• PIL
• The Fania All-​Stars
• The Bar-​Kays
• The Human League
• The Normal
• Lou Reed
• Scott Walker
• Monks
• Joy Division
• Lower 48
• The Association
• Sun Ra
• Scientists
• Royal Trux
• 10cc
• Eric B. and Rakim
• Index
• Basic Channel
• Soul­sonic Force
• Juan Atkins
• David Axelrod
• Elec­tric Prunes
• Gil Scott Heron
• The Slits
• Faust
• Mantronix
• Pharaoh Sanders
• The Fire Engines
• Swans
• Soft Cell
• The Sonics