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44. Chat

Tapehead no 44

“She started talking about my boss,” remembers one of the mothers on this week’s Oprah Winfrey Show, in a tone of total amazement.

“And I didn’t think she had any memory of him at all.”
“Why ?” asks Oprah, straightforward to the end.
“Because she was in the womb at the time?”
“Right.”

Besides watching television, there’s nothing (repeat nothing) that Tapehead enjoys more than a nice bit of Womb Regression.

Advocates of Womb Regression on Oprah insist we start laying down memories from as early as six months after conception, and that our experience in the womb and the nature of the birth formulates our personalities and shapes the way we live our lives.

Disciples of Womb Regression Therapy include a woman who overhead (from the womb) her mother discussing whether to abort her on the phone. There was, therapists claim, no other way she could have known abortion was ever discussed.

“The unhappiness in her life,” concludes the therapist, “is based on the intense hate she absorbed in their mother’s womb…The baby was marinated in all the mother’s anger.”

Marinated baby: yum yum.

Gary claims he was ready to be born when he was ripped and cut out in “a C-section delivery.”
“Just when I was starting to go down the birth canal, they cut me out.”
That is annoying, don’t you find ?

In later life, Gary says, he’s always “had difficulty… completing things…like filling in forms an signing cheques.”
(Who hasn’t ?)

In a filmed therapy session, he thrashed around naked, moaning,
“It’s strangling me, it’s strangling me,” in a baby’s voice, fighting an imaginary umbilical chord.

Now, some readers might find the sight of grown men, naked (and bearded), curled up foetally, blabbing an crying like hysterical babies, disturbing, unpleasant, or, frankly, pathetic.

But to Tapehead, there’s no more gratifying sight.

The moral of this week’s column is: mothers – if they don’t get you in the womb, they’ll get you in later life when you have your own kids.

All praise, Channel 4: Ricki Lake (Mind Your Own Business, Mum) is here.

This week, mum-bashed young mothers include one whose four-year-old beat up a teacher and another who stands accused of taking her baby to a pool hall when it was six weeks old.

Young mum Valencia wins no favours from the howling audience by stepping out wearing a little black dress tight enough and foxy enough to make even Lisa Bonet look frumpy.

“That ain’t gonna work girl!” screams one woman in the audience.
“I got it goin’ on honey,” Valencia insists, emphasising all her charms, “but I got a brain too.”
“Where was yo’ brain, when y’all was having four kids by 24.”
“Check yo’self. I’d like to see you look as good as I do after you have four kids.”

A wonderful exchange of views. Ricki herself laps it up, obviously having the time of her life. But them, in Tapehead’s eyes, Ricki Lake is the sassiest, raunchiest, most natural TV host in America.
Swoon along.

Tapehead’s plan is that we send Knowing Me, Knowing You to the Americans in exchange; show them what a really smooth chat show host looks like.

This week’s packed show includes a dead guest (“rest in peace. Ah-hah”), a beauty contest, and a session of Question Time.
“I will remain impartial throughout…I will remain Pontius Partridge.”

“Knowing Me, Alan Partridge. Knowing you, the Liberal Democrat candidate. He’s a practicing lawyer. He sits on Chalfont Council’s education committee. And he’s black. Ah-hah.”

Finally, in the Miss Norwich Grand Final, contestant number four is Maria MacNulty.
“Maria is an Irish Roman Catholic. She tells me that before each beauty contest, she says a quick prayer. She has a 36″ bust. Ave Maria !”

Ave Alan !

ends

Ricki Lake: 5pm-5.50pm, Wed, C4
Oprah Winfrey: 5pm-5.50pm, Thu, C4
Knowing Me, Knowing You: 10pm-10.30pm, Fri, BBC2