Melancholia (2011 dir. Lars von Trier)

Pale bride lures planet to destroy Earth with her wonderful baps.

4/5

Battle Royale (2000 dir. Kinji Fukasaku)

Grange Hill meets Jurassic Park under Tory social policy.

3/5

Limitless (2011 dir. Neil Burger)

Like Woody Allen, minus wise-cracks, doing Fight Club.

3/5

REVEALED: The truth behind Wacaday’s demise

By Slick Nick | @Poppeelings

Twenty years after it left the nation’s television screens, Wacaday still remains in the hearts and minds of the twenty and thirty-somethings that woke up to it all those years ago.

But why did it suddenly disappear without a trace, leaving a gap in the UK’s cultural psyche in 1992?

Until the advent of the internet, no one knew the truth, nor were particularly interested. However, small communities of file sharers and collectors began springing up when episodes of Wacaday started to become hot binary code for nostalgia hunters. People began to exchange their own theories about why the show, which ran for eight years, ceased to exist.

Gone but not forgotten: Wacaday

Pop Peelings has secured an exclusive preview of a new book written by with the show’s producer, Richard Wilkes, who also wrote the lyrics to the second verse of the classic Wacaday theme song. ‘Men And Mallets: The Wacaday Legacy’ will be published in November this year and is hotly tipped to be a bestseller.

In it, Wilkes speaks of a phenomenon made possible by the insatiable drive and determination of its host, Timothy Mallet, who was hellbent on filling the sizable shoes of Roland Rat with the highest quality television of the 80s.

He worked furiously to get the first series out, even demanding his own mother make the original stuffed mallet by hand, one stitch at a time.

Mr Mallet saw the creation of the Wide Awake Club as a means to inspire under privaleged children to a better life in post-Thatcher recession hit Britain, essentially a Hitler Youth for the Ninja Turtles generation. It worked. At its peak, the Wide Awake Club boasted over 21 million members. Ex-members included Sid Owen (Ricky Butcher from Eastenders), Paul Gascoigne and prime minister David Cameron. They are interviewed extensively in Wilkes’ book, along with a host of other celebrities.

The demands of the show soon took their toll. Six series a year and each featuring Mallet’s patented brand of gonzo journalism within a different country is no easy feat to say the least. One heart-breaking chapter details his capture and brutal torture in Burma at the hands of government soldiers suspecting his anarchic spectacles and hawaiian shirts as the uniform of a spy. Defiant through and through, Mallet remained tight-lipped throughout the 48 hour ordeal, apart from screaming his well-known catchphrase ‘bleugh’ each time a finger was broken or a testicle electrocuted.

Hell: Burma '89

Mr Mallet always had an acute anxiety around children, revealing in a later chapter of ‘Men And Mallets’ how this paedophobia, as it’s officially termed, may have been caused by watching a pirate copy of The Exorcist at a birthday party in 1984. Perhaps this is why he wanted to degrade and humiliate children on live television, as well as cause physical damage to their craniums with his sponge mallet. When the court cases started after distraught parents caught their children acting out the wacaday quiz with real garden tools, not even colourful shirts and travel trivia could save Mr Mallet. He was finally pushed over the edge.

He turned to drugs.

‘Tim’s energy wasn’t simply the blind desperation for a paycheck and a foot on the career ladder like so many children’s entertainers perpetuate,’ writes Wilkes in chapter 185. ‘His cocaine use reached legendary proportions during the later years. He was so high once he tried to buy a bus ticket using a wad of fake prop plasters from the Wacaday quiz as currency.’

TV executives thought bringing in a co-host, Michaela Strachan, would aleviate the pressure from Mr Mallet so he could focus on dealing with his demons. The plan backfired. Mallet saw her as a threat to his ideology and territory, and went out of his way to make life unbarable for her at all times. Mrs Strachan gives a heart-breaking testimonial in chapter 359 about her time on Wacaday:

‘He was awful. He kept calling me Challenge Anneka, after Anneka Rice who he was obsessed with, and thought I closely resembled. I failed to see the likeness, and this only riled Tim further.’

Bullied: Michaela Strachan in 1988

‘At his lowest point, before we went live in the mornings, he’d burst into my dressing room with white powder all over his face, screaming obscenities.’

‘ “Oi, Challenge Anneka!” he’d holler, clutching his genitals through the open fly of his surf shorts. “I’ve got something you can find, right here. The clue is it’s massive and swings between Timmy Mallet’s legs. Where’s your go kart and helicopter?!” ‘

Having alienated all those close to both himself and the show, Mr Mallet soon found himself on the receiving end of several court injunctions, banning him from coming within a hundred miles of Anneka Rice and any television studio in the British Isles. He had hammered the nails into his own coffin, effectively ending Wacaday and his entire broadcasting career by 1992.

A short-lived foray into popular music happened soon after, with Mr Mallet seeking to broaden his fanbase beyond 6-8 year old school children on their summer holidays. It failed. The world simply wasn’t ready to hear about women’s novelty beach attire through song.

Breakdown: Living rough in 1998

What is life like in 2012 for the man that gave us Wacaday?

Mr Mallet does not hold back, taking up the final 746 pages of ‘Men And Mallets’ with a damning indictment of an existence filled with student unions, old Anneka Rice photographs taken from the bushes outside her bungalow and grieving over Magic, the deceased Wacaday cockatiel.

Despite its tragic demise, one might wonder what impact Wacaday may have had on contemporary Britain if it was still broadcasting. Would we have so many teen pregnancies? Would we have so many young men being stabbed in the stomach or shot in the head at close range? Would we have had mass rioting in 2011? Would Peter Andre still be on television sets across the nation? We will never know. But what is clear and undisputable is that Wacaday may be gone but it will never be forgotten.

South of The Border (2010 dir. Oliver Stone)

Fox News antidote sees Vietnam vet discussing angry Hispanics in crowded rooms.

3/5

The Corporation (2003 dir. Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott)

Like Michael Moore’s blubber getting stuck in pages of high school psychology textbook.

4/5

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (2011 dir. Tom Brady)

Like an even less funny Boogie Nights, with added semen.

1/5

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945 dir. Robert Bresson)

A middle aged Ferris Bueller lookalike accidentally marries a dying slut.

2/5

13 Assassins (2010 dir. Takashi Miike)

A dozen lads with half-finished haircuts bond over multiple stab wounds.

3/5

Rashomon (1950 dir. Akira Kurosawa)

Whilst laughing for no reason, four peasants disagree over plot.

4/5

Wild Strawberries (1957 dir. Ingmar Bergman)

Miserable old Swede breaks space time continuum whilst recounting dull life.

4/5

I Spit on Your Grave (2010 dir. Steven R. Monroe)

Educated liberal makes life hell for republicans in Barack Obama allegory.

2/5

Kurt & Courtney (1998 dir. Nick Broomfield)

Posh documentarian chats to down-and-outs about the death of grunge Christ.

2/5

Papaya, Love Goddess of The Cannibals (1978 dir. Joe D’Amato)

Island temptress halts construction progress by distracting key project stakeholders with fucking.

2/5

The Birth of a Nation (1915 dir. D. W. Griffith)

Like a Michael Bay-directed Fox News history piece employing TOWIE make-up techniques.

4/5

Channel 4 finally secures rights to Frankie Cocozza autopsy

By Slick Nick | @Poppeelings

After a lengthy bidding war involving ITV2 and ITV4, Channel 4 has now been confirmed as the network that will be able to broadcast a live autopsy of hairy hellraiser Frankie Cocozza.

The X Factor reject is still alive, reports have confirmed, though with his lifestyle of excessive drug use and vaginal penetrations, many believe it is unlikely he will reach thirty.

Producers are hoping to involve Gunther von Hagens in the show. The German eccentric warmed the hearts of viewers recently by hacking up dead bodies and lining the studio with their internal organs on live television. He is reportedly asking for a fixed six-figure fee and a month’s supply of sausages.

Scalpel at the read: Gunther poses with his wife of 19 years

Rumours suggest the programme will be shown in three 2-hour episodes, the first two being the dissection itself and the third episode a spin-off hosted by Peter Andre and the cast of The Only Way is Essex.

Mr Cocozza, 27, garnered a huge fanbase after failing to hold even a single note on 2011′s series of the primetime singing contest.

He said: ‘The careful observers out there will know that I cannot sing or offer anything else in the way of employability, so I am grateful to Channel 4 for giving me the opportunity to contribute to medical science.’

‘Maybe after I am gone, scientists will finally know the secrets to how babies are made.’

Chuffed: Cocozza poses for fans outside a Brighton job center

Eden Lake (2008 dir. James Watkins)

Spawn of white van men ruin quiet weekend away for two Guardian readers.

2/5

Fast Food Nation (2006 dir. Richard Linklater)

Burger guru struggles to create ways to market a shit platter to kids.

3/5

Schizopolis (1996 dir. Steven Soderbergh)

Backed by effete college rock music, wanking office drone pays tribute to Godard without budget.

2/5

Knuckle (2011 dir. Ian Palmer)

Inbred handyman types throw hands in rural areas for a decade.

3/5

The Meteor Man (1993 dir. Robert Townsend)

African American bargain bin Superman tribute sees lifelong gang rivals bond over gardening, and Darth Vader voice man come to terms with retardation.

1/5

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006 dir. Ivan Reitman)

Supergirl collides with pre-menstrual tension and bargain bin CGI.

1/5

A Complete History of my Sexual Failures (2008 dir. Chris Waitt)

Permanently flacid scruff seeks sympathy from previous fuck partners.

3/5

Tyson (2008 dir. James Toback)

Heavily built raper takes feature length interview on his face-punching heyday.

2/5

Oliver Stone makes progress on John Terry biopic

By Slick Nick | @Poppeelings

Oscar-winning film director Oliver Stone is reportedly half way through writing the screenplay to an epic movie based upon the life of disgraced Premiership footballer John Terry.

The film will be financed by Dreamworks studios with a budget of around $200 million, with principle photography set to begin in September 2012.

Hollywood veteran Stone already has a number of titles under his belt that deal with the trials and tribulations of humans that have caused significant pain and suffering to others. Previous subjects have included Alexander The Great, who enslaved half the world, George W. Bush, who masterminded the illegal Iraq oil wars of the noughties after a rigged election win and Fidel Castro, whose shady politics saw his entire nation of Cuba go without all-American imports such as Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s for fifty years and counting.

Beast: The famous 'baby kidnapping' incident of 2011

Stone’s latest epic, simply titled ‘John’, will tell the story of the England captain’s early beginnings stealing lunch money from fellow school pupils at Barking’s Facepunch High School in the late 1980s, through to his rise to power of one of London’s most feared crime organisations – Chealsea FC.

It is rumoured that scenes depicting Mr Terry’s various known assaults will be ‘some of the most violent ever filmed’ according to Empire magazine.

Stone has chosen not to focus on the countless married women that have shared a bed with the racist footballing hero, saving the stories for the ‘Terrynova’ film, a potential sequel.

The Hollywood legend has assured the film community that he will do everything in his power to ensure that ‘John’ is given an 18 certificate by the BBFC as ‘no children should have to see this monster’.

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The nation will be getting behind Mr Terry in his campaign to lead England to victory in this year’s European championships.