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THE COURT OF KING CARACTACUS

By Phil Hall | September 10, 2007

There’s a minor, under-the-radar Net game that appears to involve miming the lyrics of Rolf Harri’s annoying novelty tune “The Court of King Caractacus”(if you never heard the song, consider yourself lucky). One Daz Xander Devine appears to have the best version of this oddball Net endeavor, and watching him is both a joy and a puzzlement.

The joy is having the photogenic Mr. Devine clearly enjoying himself as he goes through a seemingly endless skein of hand gestures to tell us about the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus, the boys who powder their noses, and the “fascinating witches who put the scintillating stitches in the britches of the boys who put the powder on the noses of the faces of the ladies of the court of King Caractacus.” It clearly is not an easy feat, given the inane repetition of the song’s nonsense lyrics and the speed of the Rolf Harris recording. Yet Mr. Devine (without breaking a sweat or losing his smile) flies through the action in one take (he appears to have videotaped himself in an Orson Welles-worthy tilted angle shot within a room belonging to someone who loves “South Park” and cheesy pin-ups).

But the puzzlement is clear: why the hell would anyone want to do this? Several YouTube denizens tried to match this accomplishment and failed terribly. Surely there are better things one can do with a video camera (educational videos and amateur porn are two possible strategies).

Still, this deserves to be seen at least once. Watching this more than once would qualify as deviant masochism.

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