THE STAGE IS EMPTY EXCEPT FOR A CHAIR AND A TABLE DSR, A FILM SCREEN USL AND A PROJECTOR DSL.

HOUSE LIGHTS GO DOWN AND A BLISTERING WIND SOUND EFFECT COMES IN.
GRADUALLY LIGHTS COME UP ON STAGE AS BEN ENTERS...

BEN: And so I ask, is this how it begins?
Is there no Big Bang? No Hand of God?
No curtain up, no "Let the play commence"?
No morning bell, no starter's gun, no bully off, no champagne swung?
No, for the beginning is begun by a table, a chair, two questions and a cough.
Thus the table....thus the chair.
The questions are these - ORANGES...which came first, the colour or the fruit? And if they named the fruit after the colour, how do they taste to people who are colour blind?
And the cough, thus....Aheeem!
So, with the beginning thus begun, I must begun!

WE SEE A PARTY HOST TURN VERY SINISTER AFTER WHICH BEN EXPLAINS HIS ROLE IN THE STORY . . .

BEN: I was investigating the case of the cannibal party geeks from hell. I'm a cop. This is my bus pass.
I had just been transferred to the murder squad. Previously I'd worked on the Odour squad. I'd arrive at the scene of a crime with my fully trained sniffer dogs, find out what smells there were, go back to the Odour board at the station, match the smells with the criminal and solve the case. Not very exciting and I wanted more glamour so I joined Murder. The trail of the cannibal party geeks had grown cold though - where had they escaped to? So I was given another transfer, this time to Philosophy Division.
You see Cop Department thought that if we could just solve the great mysteries of the universe - why are we here, what is the nature of time - then surely minor mysteries like murders and burglaries would seem easier to crack by comparison. That was the theory, anyhow. My new partner was a strange man. He was an Aquarian which meant he didn't eat meat or vegetables, just water. He had a scar over his left eye and a mole in his back garden. We set to work. I would send a chicken and an egg through the post to him to see which came first. I had a room where I kept an infinite number of monkeys working on an infinite number of typewriters. Well, you can imagine my disappointment when one morning they came up with this..."to be or not to be, that is the questiob£@*&&*()&(*%%^£$%@£". Actually I was going to marry a philosopher, but she said Nietzsche, I said Nietzsche - either, either, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, well we called the whole thing off. But I knew there were plenty more fish in the fishmongers. I ended up going out with a wartcod, possibly the ugliest fish in all the oceans, but she did have a great personality, OK?

AFTER SEARCHING FOR A BETTER JOB, HE FINALLY SETTLES ON ONE. . .

I became of news reporter for a local TV station where I reported on stories where violent death had occurred.

FX OF SIREN, LIGHTS, CHAOS ETC

REPORTER: Yes, well here at the scene, Bob. Here - I'm sorry, I can't quite hear what you're saying. I'm sorry? I think it's because I have my finger in my ear.
That's better. Yes, here at the scene, the police have just led away a suspect in the shooting, he had this statement to make to waiting reporters as he was being led away.
"Mama", he said, "I just killed a man."
When asked how he'd done it he said, "I put a gun against his head, pulled the trigger, now he's dead." "He's dead." "Mama," he continues, "life had just begun," these are his words Bob so we're not sure whether he's referring to his life there, the life of the man he just killed or indeed life as a holistic concept. "But now I've gone and thrown it all away. Mama, oo oooo oo." I think we can assume, Bob, that the suspect is of Italian descent. Why? Well the continued use of the word Mama - and oo, isn't that Italian for where? "I didn't mean to make you cry, if I'm not back again this time tomorrow, carry on, carry on. Nothing really matters." And that's where the statement ends. So back to you in the studio, Bob!

LIGHTS CHANGE

BEN: Carry On, Nothing Really Matters. It was of course the existential Carry On film written by Samuel Beckett in his big gaga writing phase of the late sixties. Only 6 minutes long and not that many great tit jokes in, but it was my favourite of the Carry On oeuvre, and I was interested into why the suspect had mentioned it in his statement.

BEN MEETS A DEMON WHO ACCOMPANIES HIM TO HELL. . .

BEN: As we descended all I could think of was a T-shirt my friend Damien used to wear. "My parents went to Hell and all I got was this lousy 666 birthmark"

LIGHTS GO RED. CARMINA BURANA SWELLS

The Demon left me at the top of an enormous winding staircase that wound down, down as far as the eye could see, and who knows, maybe a bit further down after that too. I gazed into the abyss, and waddayaknow, the abyss gazed into me also.
Now, Dante had the right idea about Hell in that it's made up 9 circles of the damned, but he got the details slightly wrong. Why don't you join me now as I go through the circles of the inferno...

BEN: The first circle of Hell consists of disembodied cartoon character voices trying to latch onto a three dimensional body in which to escape.

ROGER RABBIT: Ppppllease help us! We haven't done anything wrong.
DROOPY: Oh dear.
ROADRUNNER: Meep meep!

BEN: But I could do nothing for them, being the illegitimate love child of Shaggy and Velma from the Scooby Doo Gang, I myself was only two-d.
The second circle is full of naughty dogs who steal sausages...
In the third circle are located all those who bought betamax video recorders - they are the damned indeed.
The fourth circle consists of all those people who say cheer up it might never happen.

CHEERY MAN: Cheer up, it might never happen!

BEN: It has happened! I'm in Hell!
The fifth circle is the punishment zone where people are forced to listen to instruments of torture such as the accordion and the xylophone. Also they have to chew tinfoil, listen to people scrape fingernails down blackboards and have sellotape attached to their arms and have it ripped off constantly - aaah!
The sixth circle is home to just one man. While he was alive, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said that Hell was other people, but when he died, he found that Hell was just himself, alone, forever!

SARTRE: Hallo! Excuse-moi!

BEN: The seventh circle is just too foul to describe, but let's just say it involves skidmarks, vampire spiders and your mum licking a hankie and wiping your mouth with it, in front of all your mates!
The eight circle is the place where people who pick their noses in public are punished - by having bogies stuffed back up their nostrils forever!
But down I went to the deepest, darkest circle of the Inferno where the most horrible wretches ever to bear the name human being reside -
STUDENTS DURING RAG WEEK!!!! AARGH!!

BEN IS TAKEN TO MEET THE HEAD HONCHO WHO HAS A MISSION FOR HIM. . .

BEN: We walked down corridors of uncertainty, past vaults of horror and waded through streams of consciousness until we arrived at a great gothic building halfway between heaven and hell. The demon pushed open the mighty oaken doors and we entered a huge central chamber. The walls were stacked high with books, high as high as the eye could see, and who knows, maybe a bit higher after that as well.

DEMON: Now this young man is the Chamber of Truth. All the answers in the universe are here and every reason for everything can be discovered in this room. It all fits together to make up an internally consistent universe. and to be honest it's all got rather boring, and it's time things changed. And when I say things, I don't just mean in the plural but in the total and you're the one who's going to change things for us. Why you? Well you have a natural entropic aura - your weltgerenschafenstang is disruptive so if I send you back to the world now after you've so-called died, you create a logic feedback up there and squeals of randomness will emanate from your being and move throughout the universe. And you'll be doing this not for the sake of good, you understand, or evil, but for the sake of difference. You see right there in the middle of life there's an if, isn't there - half way between the 'l' and the 'e' - IF! Most people don't realise they have this choice at the heart of their existence, but you'll go back and get them thinking "if tables had knees" "if the sky was purple" "if oranges came in lemon flavour". All because of you. All the laws of time and space could change and everything that had previously been taken for granted would now have to be taken with a pinch of salt. That is, if salt still exists. Now off you go, and good luck. Or rather, no luck...

BEN ATTENDS A RELIGIOUS CONGRESS. . .

BEN: I went into the cabaret bar where the Hare Krishnas were relaxing over a few drinks. About a foot and a half over them, actually - great at levitation, the Krishnas. Anyway, this was the book they were selling at the time - the Hare Krishna Joke Book: "we put the 'om' in comedy", "suitable for ages 0-8", sorry "0-infinity". Well let's try a few.

BEN: Knock knock.
Who's there?
Harry.
Harry who?
Hare Krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare.
Hare Rama, hare Rama, Rama Rama, hare hare.
Probably lost something in translation.
Devotee 1: I say I say I say. The Great lord Sri Krishna has no nose.
Devotee 2: Oh? How does he smell?
Devotee 1: He is smell.
Throws up more questions than it answers, that one.
Q: How many devotees of the Lord Sri Krishna does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The lightbulb can't truly change until it too comes to know Krishna.
And finally...Why did the Lord Sri Krishna cross the road?
Life is transitory, and in crossing the road, the lord Sri Krishna was showing that we all must make a crossing within ourselves to gain true enlightenment...and that punchline goes on for another five pages.

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