Tuesday 2 December 2008

 

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests


Cult viewing

Wednesday, 30th January 2008

Jonestown (BBC 2); Moving Wallpaper & Echo Beach (ITV); Harry Hill's TV Burp (ITV) 

‘Shut up and drink the Kool-Aid’ is an American slang phrase — tart, cynical and funny — used for telling people to get on with something they must do but would prefer to avoid. It refers back to the mass suicide of 909 members of the Jim Jones cult in Guyana in 1978. Jones had plenty of cyanide, but he thought it would sluice down more agreeably if diluted with the nasty but very sweet soft drink mix. Whether this was because he wanted to make his followers’ last moments on earth marginally less horrible, or because he thought that it would persuade the children to drink up, was not explained in Jonestown (BBC2, Sunday), but it was one of the few things left unsaid.

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