Vasco da Gama, episode #5 (or, “How Green Was MacSnoopeigh”)

     If you’re Scottish, you might want to give this episode a miss.

     I’m not saying that it will offend you. What I’m saying is that I’m concerned that there’s a chance it could offend you if you’re Scottish, of Scottish heritage, or just happen to like wearing kilts. Apparently (and I didn’t know this until fairly recently) I have some Scottish blood in me. It tends to pool just below my ankles. If I stub my toe, it bruises in a tartan. This probably also explains why I’ve always liked porridge. Or maybe it doesn’t.

     One thing this episode of Vasco does explain is why the producer of the Vasco sitcom, F. Scott MacSnoopeigh, is as feckless as he is. I didn’t have to make MacSnoopeigh’s father Scottish. All I had to make him was loud, violent, abusive, and generally offensive in each and every way. Or, as Rob Vincent puts it, “the time-honoured classic avuncular figure of the unbearable Scottish dad ... no wonder Fleance [MacSnoopeigh] and Prospero [his brother, introduced in Vasco episode #4] messed up”. Ian McKay, who played MacSnoopeigh Junior, remembers MacSnoopeigh Senior as "essentially a vaguely Scottish Vasco". Yeah, that pretty much sums it up...minus Vasco's squid fixation, of course.

     So, if you’re Scottish, and you’re offended—clap your hands!—er, and, um, I apologize. But I’ll also offer an excuse.

     I’m offering an excuse because I’m Canadian, and that’s what we do, and because I grew up when being Canadian meant deferring to anything with an accent from the British Isles. And I do mean anything. Seagulls who’d never been within 1000 miles of Cape Breton, much less Great Britain, knew that all they had to do was screech something that sounded like “I say, I say” near a Canadian, and he’d give them half his lunch. In my day, Canadian public discourse was infested with truculent blowhards who used their greater Britishness as a shield for their ever greater ignorance. Among them were a few real dyed-in-the-plaid-wool Highland loudmouths. The Scots weren’t necessarily the biggest of the dunces, but for sheer volume, you couldn’t match them. So, any resemblance between MacSnoopeigh paterfamilias and any Scots living, dead, or Mary, Queen of, is purely coincidental—unless you happen to know who Jack Webster was, in which case, draw your own conclusions.

     Now that the apology’s over, off with the hair shirt, and on with the rest of the notes. This is the first episode of Vasco that doesn’t open with an “episode” of the Vasco sitcom. Count this as a sign of things to come…as well as a sign of progress. It’s also the episode of Vasco that features the largest amount of unscripted material. I forget whether the two improvised scenes in this show—one where Vasco pitches a not-so-original script idea, and Old Man Mac S’s rambling exploration of socioeconomic theory via the seven-ten split—were in the original plot outline, or whether they were last-minute additions to fill time. I suspect, since it’s just Ian McKay and me in both scenes, that it’s the latter. Ian would have been there for the editing session, and would have shared the joy of finding out that the show was running short.

     I’m running short of things to say, so I’ll let you get on with clicking the link below and listening to…

Vasco da Gama, episode #5

     Sorry again to Scottish folks everywhere. If it’s any consolation, there aren’t any bagpipes in it. Oh, yes—and you now also know the correct spelling of MacSnoopeigh’s family name. It’s pronounced “MacSnoopy” but spelled “MacSnoopeigh”. Things like this are vitally important for your enjoyment of a radio program, aren’t they?