This comic doesn’t come close to showing how funny and brilliant this series is. I tried my best to get that across, especially with Andy’s monologue in the series finale. If you’re like me and have had enough with this endless stream of “Reality Stars” and “Celebrities”, this constant parade of people with no discernable talents or abilities grabbing fame and fortune, what Ricky’s character says in that show is both powerful and poignant.

I was able to find his dialogue on the internet and wanted to present it here. It won’t have the same impact that it would, if you’d watched the performance, but I believe the words and the point of his speech is so valid, I felt compelled to post it.

Here it is:

I’m just sick of these celebrities just living their life out in the open – why would you do that? It’s like these pop stars who choose the perfect moment to go into rehab; they call their publicist before they call a taxi. Then they come out and they do their second autobiography, this one’s called Love Me Or I’ll Kill Myself. Oh kill yourself then. And the papers lap it up: they follow us round and that makes people think we’re important, and that makes us think we’re important. If they stopped following us around, taking pictures of us, people wouldn’t take to the streets going, “Ooh, quick! I need a picture of Cameron Diaz with a pimple”. They wouldn’t care, they’d get on with something else. They’d get on with their lives. You open the paper and you see a picture of Lindsay Lohan getting out of a car and the headline is, “Cover up Lindsay, we can see your knickers.” Of course you can see her knickers: your photographer is lying in the road pointing his camera up her dress to see her knickers. You’re literally the gutter press. And fuck you, the makers of this show as well. You can’t wash your hands of this. You can’t keep going, “Oh, it’s exploitation but it’s what the public want.” No. The Victorian freak show never went away: now it’s called Big Brother or American Idol where, in the preliminary rounds, we wheel out the bewildered to be sniggered at by multi-millionaires. And fuck you for watching this at home. Shame on you. And shame on me. I’m the worst of all cause I’m one of these people that goes, “Ooh I’m an entertainer, it’s in my blood.” Yeah, it’s in my blood cause a real job’s too hard. I would have loved to have been a doctor: too hard, didn’t want to put the work in. Love to be a war hero: I’m too scared. So I go, “Oh it’s what I do.” And I have someone bollocked if my cappuccino’s cold or if they look at me the wrong way. Do you know what a friend of mine once said? They said I’ll never be happy because I’ll never be famous enough and they were right.