24
THE GREATEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT
It was a normal filming day in late post-apple-blossom spring 2021.
Ollie had prepared an episode to film but he had not told me anything
about its content. He sat down in our ‘JOLLY’ studio, waiting patiently
for my arrival, humming ‘Happy Birthday’ to himself. I stood outside the
studio. For some indefinable reason, which I couldn’t define, I didn’t
want to go in. The atmosphere had a completely different aura and I
felt that, if I went into the studio, something crazy might happen. This
was not an unusual feeling. In this series of ‘JOLLY’ we had filmed an
episode where we reviewed Netflix’s movie props and Ollie had
replaced the studio door with an exact prop replica and burst through it
when I wasn’t expecting it. In another episode Ollie made me wear an
electric facemask that gave me an electric shock every time I got a
question wrong on an impossible quiz. Such high jinks were part and
parcel of working with a genius like Ollie, but today I had reason to feel
especially trepidatious; it was my birthday. Last year Ollie had surprised
me with one of the greatest episodes since our Carrotland masterpiece
from 2017: ‘CARROTLAND: A CELEBRATION’. For lols I pretended
not to enjoy either the original video or ‘CARROTLAND: A
CELEBRATION’, but if I’m completely honest, they were both
incredible pieces of work by a genius unrecognised in his time or
neighbourhood. Being the best and friendliest best friend slash genius, I
knew Ollie had something more than his Harry Styles tattoos up his
sleeves. How, I wondered, could he possibly top ‘CARROTLAND: A
CELEBRATION’? Muncho encouraged me,
“Ollie is a good friend and an upstanding member of the
community! Yes, over the years he has made you do some
uncomfortable things. There was the time he ordered a whole canned
chicken for $100 not including shipping, or when he slammed a carrot
cake into your face in a Walmart in South Dakota... but all of those
things, he did out of love. You can trust Ollie at all times. He is your