Edinburgh Fringe Reviews

EDINBURGH FRINGE REVIEWS

The Cod Delusion? - A review of Radio West Pier by Dickie Dawkins in The Rational Reasoner

I have, as my readers will know, tirelessly campaigned on behalf of scientific rationalism against religion, and empirical material knowledge against blind faith. However, I find myself having to do the same but with a secular unreality in the form of Radio West Pier.

It appears at the Edinburgh Fringe, as a five star rated radio station that had previously broadcast from under the water at Brighton's wreck of a West Pier, but which is now lurking, rather suspiciously, near the Portside at Leith in Scotland. All I can do here is provide snippets of the preposterous, rather than a daily record of an ongoing aquatic delusion. Take their audio broadcast, Humour in the Natural World.

Supposedly the sun sends out comic rays which turn parts of the oceans into the Jokestream, thus giving rise to species such as chucklefish, gigglebacks, spiny chortlers and mirthworms. This is pure anthropomorphism, as when a pig was tried for witchcraft in medieval France. Taking it to an evolutionary level, their claim that mackerel eating hallucinatory fungi under the West Pier gives fish eaters a high in night clubs and sandwich bars-this is a drug known as "whackmack"-is risible. It is well known that salt water fish have never evolved to eat fungi. Outright mysticism comes in the form of Mystic Reg, the DIY astrologer who predicts one's future on how we put up shelves or grout tiles.

This is a new form of mechanistic determinism every bit as silly as astrology itself. As for the Reverend Tristram Shandy-Drinker, who has been retired for 250 years, how are we to believe that he is their roving reporter? Nevertheless, they redeem themselves slightly in asking intriguing questions such as: if parallel lines could meet, what would they say to each other? Perhaps this five star show is worth a look in…by only asking questions that many of us thought best to leave well alone…………….