Michael Moran
Win tickets to the ATP finals
Bebo is the “other” social network. When teenagers are tired of being exhorted to buy their mates’ CD on MySpace or being “poked” by their mums on Facebook, they hide on Bebo where only other disaffected teens can find them. Next week though, the 40 million-strong cult will try to boost its mainstream appeal with its own reality show.
The Gap Year is exactly what it sounds like: Six young people, many of whom who are all old enough to have left university already, will nevertheless travel the globe enduring all of the classic “student abroad” hardships of lost passports and debilitating stomach-aches while we vicariously enjoy all the pleasure of being the proud parent of a peripatetic undergraduate with none of the concomitant expense. The entire circus starts next Wednesday on Bebo so there’s ample time for web watcher readers to sign up and make friends with each other.
If your idea of entertainment doesn’t involve the sight of callow scrub-bearded youths experiencing a spiritual awakening at Machu Picchu, perhaps you might be diverted by the rather lower comedy of Straight to Video TV. Two agreeably daft young men with a deep knowledge of dance music allied with a keen sense of the ridiculous and sufficient charm to negotiate the loan of a camcorder perform a variety of cheeringly vulgar skits and songs that mark them out as a comedy force of tomorrow.
The scatological reworking of An English Country Garden they perform as Jamaican Sweat Band will tickle anyone with even the most casual acquaintance with modern Reggae and whereas we’ve seen comically inept breakdancing before, it never quite stops being funny. If you enjoyed the work of Goldie Lookin’ Chain or The Chuckle Brothers, you would do well to usher younger family members out of earshot and log on now, before BBC Three snap them up.
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