I’ve known Mal since we were about seven years old. I remember quite vividly looking in the mirror one morning and there he was, stood just behind my shoulder, nudging me out of the way so he could get a better look at himself. He’s been needling away ever since. I kindly agreed to do a bit of promo for him. Disregard Prior Prompt is celebrating its tenth series, and promises a full ten episode run. After the much ridiculed ninth series, I’m reassured by this return to form. Fans who staunchly defended the single episode season, lasting 14 seconds, are sure to be bitterly disappointed.
“We lost episode three, you haven’t seen it, have you?”
Amelia Smart
The show, which first aired on the Outernet in 1994, has been mired in controversy from the very start. DPP, an early adopter within the Outernet’s pioneering podcast community, developed a cult following with progressively more audacious segments that, more often than not, crossed the line.
Our relationship at the time was, to put it mildly, fraught. Not quite rivals, certainly not friends, and yet unable to escape each other’s orbit. I counselled restraint, but each warning only seemed to embolden him, as though it were expressive of some deeper resentment or envy against him; or worse, a lack of confidence.
One evening, he became enraged when I failed to hide my dismay as he headed out to interview a great white shark. I reminded him he couldn’t swim. He reminded me sharks don’t exist. We didn’t talk for years.
But it was that now-infamous interview with Jamal Haji Abdulkareem, the distinguished visiting scholar and celebrated civil rights leader, that did irreparable damage to the reputations of both DPP and Mal.
Much has been said over the years about what exactly transpired on 18 May 1994, in a flash Outernet new-build that was an early sign of the emerging dot-com bubble. I’m not sure we’ll ever know the full story, but I can say with absolute certainty that Mal idolised Brother Jamal and, despite over thirty years of complex litigation, probably still does.
I’m also in no doubt that DPP were grossly negligent and failed to put the necessary health and safety precautions in place.
“Pierre ruined us. All he kept saying was, ‘I was hungry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was him.’ There were burgers in the kitchen. I get that it’s part of his culture but, equally, it’s part of Brother Jamal’s culture for that not to happen to him!”
Maserati Mal on English Pierre’s conduct during the Brother Jamal interview
Often called the Huey P. Newton of the Giant African Land Snail community, Brother Jamal was in London to commemorate the Great Gastropod War of Independence. In Mal’s defence, Brother Jamal’s personal assistant had called several times in the days prior, rescheduling the interview time and location and making obscure, extravagant demands to be included in the rider.
An hour before the interview was finally due to start, Amelia Smart, the show’s longest-serving producer, saw Mal frantically trying to source a plug to buy some soaked dried bloodworms, having spent the morning calling everyone in the phonebook who might have some leftover dried river shrimp.
No one saw English Pierre let himself into the studio.
Allegations that Mal had accrued significant gambling debts and owed English Pierre an impossible sum of money; that both Mal and Brother Jamal were involved in a complicated love affair with Bridget Escargot; or even that Pierre was an agent of the French intelligence services have been discussed at exhausting length and denied by all parties involved. I see no value in the trade of conjecture and speculation.
There are many who will greet the news of DPP’s tenth-season announcement with elation, while many others, not least the Great African Land Snail community and its allies, will wonder: has the show learned from its mistakes? I hope so. I doubt it. But I hope so.
It suffices to say that I wish the show, Amelia and Mal all the best of luck.
They’re going to need it.
