Synopsis
A shameless and very literal attempt to work a Channel 4 journalist and a community member into the script.
Location
In the street, or in the lobby of a building. Somewhere in Europe.
Characters
Dawn, Ian, Jonti, A Journalist, An Interviewee.
Story
Dawn and Ian are walking along, Jonti filming them.
Ian: …like that dog with three legs.
Jonti: I made a documentary about a guy with one leg who was a champion salsa dancer. Well, the idea was to get him to be a champion.
Ian: How did he get on?
Jonti: Well he got the most points in the finals but he was disqualified because he didn't have matching shoes, having only one shoe you see.
Dawn: You know, I really feel that I could have healed him.
Ian: If he's lost a leg he can't grow it back.
Dawn: I mean I could have healed him spiritually.
They accidentally walk between a journalist (holding a video camera, tape recorder, or notepad) and an interviewee, interrupting the interview.
Interviewee: ...buffalo buffalo buffalo...
Ian: Well that won't help him walk.
Dawn: No, but it would help him dance.
Journalist (in background): Excuse me!
Jonti swings the camera round. We see someone holding a camera looking at Jonti. Jonti pans the camera round to see a surprised Interviewee.
Jonti: Ah. Sorry. I didn't realize you guys were there.
Jonti pans back to Dawn and Ian.
Jonti: Sorry, guys, I think we just interrupted…
Journalist (off-camera): What are you lot up to?
Dawn and Ian turn to speak to the Journalist.
Dawn: I am finding my long-lost family.
Ian: We are.
Dawn: All twenty seven of them.
Interviewee (incredulously): Twenty seven???
The Joneses turn to the Interviewee.
Dawn: Our father was a sperm donor.
Journalist: Tell me more.
Jonti: Hey, hey, hey, I have the exclusive rights to these guys' story!
Dawn gets out the piece of paper with the names on.
The journalist doesn't say anything.
Jonti: Right, then.
Jonti pans back to the Interviewee to steal them as The Joneses are being stolen from him.
Jonti: So what were you guys talking about?
Dawn: Their names are….
Interviewee: Well I am a leading morphological linguist and I was explaining Chomsky Grammars using the longest meaningful sentence in the English language that consists only of the repetition of one word: "Buffalo buffalo buffalo…"
Dawn is reading names.
Ian (to the Interviewee): Surely that's American?
Interviewee: "…buffalo", American English, yes. I'll have to start again now: "Buffalo buffalo…"
Ian: What's the longest sentence in proper English?
Interviewee: "…buffalo", um-
As the Interviewee pauses to think, Dawn reads out another name:
Dawn: [NAME]
Interviewee: What?
Dawn: I said [NAME].
Interviewee: That's *my* name…
Jonti pans to the Joneses for a reaction shot, then to the Journalist.
Jonti: Media rights. Mine.
Journalist: I was interviewing here first!
Jonti: I have seniority!
Journalist: You do not!
Jonti: I bloody well do!
Journalist: Look, let's be reasonable about this. Joint interview?
Jonti makes an exasperated noise. The camera nods then pans back to the Joneses and the Interviewee.
Ian: What about the buffalo?
Fade out.
[ The next episode would be an impromptu joint interview with the Journalist and Jonti fighting to ask ever more extreme questions until they work out that the Interviewee is a pathalogical liar and is neither a linguist, leading or otherwise, nor a Jones. ]
