For some reason no channel shows these Comedy Central Roasts - or any Roasts, for that matter - in the United Kingdom, which is a little surprising because all-out p*ss-taking as a form of expressing love and friendship is far more a British attribute than an American one, one would have thought. Except for one thing: in England we would happily take the mickey out of someone in public for faults of character, mannerisms, and the odd misjudgement, but in the American version there really are no holds barred. The most egregious public faux pas, the idiotic past relationships or marriages, the crimes committed - *nothing* is held to be out of bounds for the proper Roast. However, I can see that the Comedy Central Roasts generally concentrate on comedians, and after all, how much mischief can a comedian really get up to?
This one is different.
The Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a room full of people who have between them plumbed the depths of human behaviour in terms of drink, drugs and, most spectacularly, sex, and rip the sh*t out of each other for it. When you consider that this Roast is about Pamela Anderson, her ex-husband is Tommy Lee and her closest friend is Courtney Love, the sheer quantity of character flaws and devastating incidents that are up for grabs for all present to take fullest advantage of is almost beyond conception - from the quantity of flesh remaining in Pamela Anderson's silicon, to the amazement of Courtney Love's debut as a stand-up comedienne - not that she's funny, but that she's standing up. And the Big Three aren't the only ones to get the treatment. Eighty-two year old Bea Arthur got up on stage at one point and read a portion of Pamela's novel that involved, well, an act not legal in all 50 states, let's say, and for the remainder of the evening she had to sit and endure jokes about her having a penis.
Talk of the male organ does bring me to the down sides of the show - there were far too many references to Tommy Lee's apparently inordinately impressive equipment, and there certainly was a tendency on the part of all the Roasters to talk more about Lee and Love than about Anderson herself, certainly as the evening went on. And the other downside was that Pamela didn't do that great a job with her Riposte, which had some good lines that unfortunately died on the stage - although the audience and the participants were being so raucous that they simply may not have heard them properly.
Overall, a reasonably hilarious showcase of really, really offensive comedy. Watch it if you can, as long as you have a broad mind.
