Tapping into Eternity

Things look bleak for light entertainment. Bruce Forsyth has collected a lifetime achievement award from the Royal Television Society and dropped a rather unpleasant bombshell.

He doesn't plan to retire.

I imagine that when he made the announcement it was greeted by roars of silence followed by one solitary handclap, and that would have been from Wee Jimmy Tarbuck pissed on free lucozade and glad not to be the most irrelevant dinosaur in the room. His agent's face will have sagged lower than Ulrika Jonsson's nipples since he was counting on Forsyth, having received a lifetime achievement award, taking the bloody hint and ending his reign on prime-time tat. "People have been asking me for ten or fifteen years if I'll retire, it's getting to be an old question- I'm nearly as old as the question!" chuckled Bruce to an ocean of despondance. No Bruce, you can sleaze over Tess Daly as much as you like, noone is going to look at your stuttering fizog and see a sprightly fifteen year old gearing up for his GCSEs. Due in no small part to the cavernous wrinkles that line every feature, wrinkles so deep that tourists ought to be offered plane trips into them in order to fully appreciate the geography.

Bruce is 81. "But I still feel 30" he declares with gleeful insanity. This is bad news, because by my calculations that means there are 2.7 Bruce-years to a human's single year. Even if he retires at Bruce-age 65, that makes him over 175. That's 94 more years. We're not even half-way!

There's only two options open to us. Kill ourselves or leave. As the saying goes, will the last person to leave the country please turn out the light.