We recently had a fun and informative evening exploring ‘Room 101’.
It was a chance to exile your top peeve or worst nightmare from our world forever. We tried to persuade those present to banish these hates to oblivion in Room 101.
Room 101 was the torture room in George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” which contained “the worst thing in the world”, that is a person’s ultimate breaking point. For Winston, one of the main characters, this was rats.
George Orwell named Room 101 after a room in BBC Broadcasting House where he would sit through tedious meetings during World War II. When the original room at the BBC was due to be demolished a plaster cast was made by the artist Rachel Whiteread and displayed in the cast courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from November 2003 to June 2004.
The BBC television programme “Room 101” ran from 1994 until July this year when Frank Skinner announced it had been axed. The first celebrity to appear on it was Bob Monkhouse who condemned French to Room 101. When Anne Robinson took part years later and banished Wales, the controversy this caused led to an investigation by the BBC Standards Commission. They viewed her comments on the programme as “bordering on racism”.
Our own suggestions proved less controversial but led to much discussion and laughter, including:
.affected accents (whether highbrow or not)
.wind farms, the use of
.excessive use of vehicle reversing alarms
.call centre scripts
.extremely early Christmas tat displays with muzak
.spray pumps in plastic bottles which you can’t twist open to get the last bit
.snakes
After voting there was a tie with 7 votes each for call centre scripts and Christmas tat. We were most entertained by Jane’s dancing Christmas tree!!
