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Ireland: Acid Trips Of The Medieval Dead
The Sunday Independent (Ireland)
Sunday 13 Aug 2000 Subject: Ireland: Acid Trips Of The Medieval Dead Source: The Sunday Independent (Ireland) Pubdate: 13 August 2000 Acid Trips Of The Medieval Dead TV Review By Declan Lynch They were all on drugs, apparently. All those unfortunates who were burned as witches during the Middle Ages were all unknowingly on LSD. This was the conclusive finding of Secrets Of The Dead, Channel 4, which showed how a natural fungus called ergot would contaminate the rye, and make anyone who ate the rye bread behave in a most peculiar fashion. Ergot is the fungus from which LSD is derived. They found that the soil and climatic conditions in Salem, for example, were ideal for acid-fanciers around the time witch-burning was in full spate. So all that ``possession'' by the Horned One, with its weird undertones of sexual hysteria, arose from natural causes. It was something in the rye that turned women into witches, with their crazed visions, ``evil writhing'' and an inexplicable fondness for Pink Floyd. They were all tripping, man. And 300 years later, at open-air festivals, people took this stuff for fun. DIEGO Maradona was most certainly on drugs, especially cocaine, from the early Eighties until the present day, when a near-death experience forced him into treatment in Cuba. Kicking the Habit, Channel 4, got access to the great man as he sought to cleanse his body and spirit. The result was a humdinger which made you wonder what Maradona was like on drugs, if he is so exuberant under his own steam. In a scene which has instantly ascended into TV legend, he and his buddies had a barbecue on his day off the rehab programme, to watch Boca Juniors playing River Plate on the telly. Boca Juniors have been Maradona's team since childhood. He still watches their games wearing a replica shirt, like any demented fan, only more so. Maradona favours the all-action approach, berating the television, hurling himself across the room in despair or ecstasy, throwing himself into the pool when Boca score and emerging from the water chomping on a cigar. And this is Maradona clean and sober, with one-third of a heart. ``You'll pay for this you sonofabitch!'' he howls at the referee. He goes up close to the television, roaring at the people on the screen, calling them sons-of-bitches and whores who are breaking his balls. And for this they will pay. Not today, not tomorrow, but some day they will pay. And this is on his rest day during a programme of renewal and recuperation and detoxification. But it also showed that some essential spirit in the man is unquenchable, even if he looks like the guy who came fifth in the Fat Maradona Lookalike Contest at Butlins. There is something wonderful in this scabrous age about one of the all-time greats making a complete fool of himself in this fashion, still a fan driven ga-ga by the antics of his team and sundry whores and sons-of-bitches over whom he is powerless. He retains a healthy sense of paranoia, and an unhealthy one too. And he sends his regards to the people of Scotland, Wales and Ireland ``the two Irelands''. He's no chump either. He reminded us that if you're talking about disgraceful Argentines, Maradona is way back in the queue. And he stands by his decision to open fire on several sports hacks, as we all do. DRUNKS are having a good run too. RT=C9 now screens an extensive range of quality programmes in the middle of the night, when viewers are almost 100 per cent drunk, or generally in the arena of the unwell. Decent family men are thrown films with Tom Cruise in them to fill their evenings, while the drunks are served movie magic such as Cool Hand Luke and Raging Bull. No way would they expect their valued drunk clientele to watch what respectable men are routinely given, like ITV's Real Life documentary, in which ``cameras follow people on a Friday night out in Doncaster''. The one completely drug-free zone was TV3's coverage of Witnness. It was co-hosted by Pat O'Mahony, perhaps because most of the viewers were as old as Pat, and were watching the crowd scenes with beady eyes to see if their children were behaving as badly as they did at Lisdoonvarna. There was very little in the line of crazed visions or ``the evil writhing''. That's all gone now.
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