Funny People 2

I spent about three months travelling around South Africa in 2002 and watched a video of this on a Greyhound bus going from Kimberley to Cape Town. It was entertaining enough, and occasionally very funny, but what sticks in my mind is the way some of the black people who were victims of Jamie Uys' practical jokes were patronisingly presented as Stepin Fetchit-like morons.

A workman who thinks he has blown up a building, for instance, thinks he can undo the damage by turning a switch back to where it was. But if blacks were being given a sub-standard education, what did the whites expect? While I wouldn't expect old movies to be banned in the "new" South Africa, it felt weird to see this throwback to a less enlightened age being screened on public transport. (Oh, and on a lighter note, look out for a young Arnold Vosloo, later to find fame as The Mummy!)