THE SITCOM SCENARIO

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my many years as a Life Enrichener™, it’s this: everyone finds the prospect of living with a Genie, or an eight-foot bear, or a genocidal robot to be entertaining until they actually have to knuckle down and commit to that living situation. It’s, in fact, much easier to sit back and let the finest writers in Hollywood (or alternatively, West London) apply that oh-so-amusing series of events to a formula that’s proven to work; twenty-two minutes of canned laughter with a contrasting dynamic of likeable characters and an abundance of heterosexuality.

​

But for those of us who refuse to pay for a television license, that just isn’t a viable option. So, when I found myself living alone in 2017, for reasons that were ultimately dismissed by Crown Court, it became readily apparent that I had only one course of action; emulating the household dynamics that situation comedies have been doling out for literally decades without so much as a “you can’t take a grizzly bear to prom, that’s going to cause quite a few complications.”

​

So, in April, I invited a young man named Anwar to live with me in my bungalow in Kent. He kept saying he wasn’t a Genie and that I was a racist, but I knew he was just observing the Genie code. The next few weeks were spent desperately trying to break through Anwar’s icy façade and unlocking the key to my three wishes. I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d use the wishes for, but the first would definitely be for the ability to grow a beard. Some say it should be for world peace, or AIDS, but I’d rather be known the world over for my great beard-growing abilities. I couldn’t find his magic lamp anywhere, but then I am fully blind in two of my eyes. Anwar eventually moved out in late May, taking off in the early hours of the morning while shouting “I can’t live like this, I just can’t fucking live like this.” Must be some sort of Genie mantra, I figured.

​

Later in June, I thought I’d give the anthropomorphic animal roommate dynamic a go, but as it turns out there are no bears on the British south coast – most likely a consequence of Brexit. So instead I settled for a raccoon, which is scientifically proven to be the closest thing to a grizzly bear (it’s true). I remember when, late at night, me and Jerry would just lie awake talking about our inner most thoughts, feelings, and hopes for the future. Well I would talk anyway; Jerry would just sort of gurgle and writhe around like Steve Buscemi trying to eat a pretzel without using his hands. I laughed at first, but even I have my limits. Once the NSPCA got involved I had to say goodbye to Jerry, which quite frankly angered me. Oh sure, using dead hamsters as bait for necrophiliac hamsters is apparently fine, but housing rabid raccoons is pushing it a bit too far? Politics.

​

When it came to hosting a genocidal robot in July, I was quite frankly fed up. Nothing could get any worse than scooping up raccoon faeces, but I still couldn’t find the motivation to have wacky, twenty-two-minute adventures with GX-15, the minority-hating omnibot. Is this what John Sullivan or Larry David imagined when they penned their magnum opuses? It wasn’t a healthy situation, what with the endless race hate and whatnot, so in the end I just said, “with all due respect, GX-15, it takes all sorts to make a world.” He, or it, didn’t take that so well and promptly burst into flames. I didn’t laugh really, I couldn’t. It had been a long four months.