Brass Eye finally made it to air, ‘with its satirical teeth slightly blunted but still intact’ as a jaw-droppingly brazen and self-absolving Channel 4 press release put it, early in 1997 and it was every bit as funny as it was exciting. It was a slap in the face for a media that wasn’t yet a third as bad as it has since become, and it also had silly jokes about Peregrine Worsthorne attracting wasps. Firmly convinced that there would never be any repeats or commercial releases, I fiercely guarded my off-air recording of the series and the surprisingly lacklustre original trailer; presumably they just hadn’t wanted to give away too much about the content. Shortly afterwards, it was joined by a longer edit of the last episode with the excised ‘Horrorcaust’ board game sketch intact, which somebody sent anonymously to the editorial address of the fanzine I was responsible for at the time. In fact, features on and references to Brass Eye were all over that fanzine. I was pretty much obsessed with it. At the time, I thought it was the funniest – and most important – thing that I had ever seen and maybe would ever see. Except…
...and if you like the sound of that, you can find my review of the Brass Eye documentary Oxide Ghostshere. Time to shatter a few myths indeed...
