Sweet Sixteen

It was sixteen years ago today, Sgt. Bye taught the cast to play. And so on. Yes folks, today marks the sixteen anniversary of the first episode of popular science-fiction sit-com Red Dwarf being broadcast. It was a cold Monday night in February, and 4.8 million people, depressed at their lack of Valentines cards, tuned in. And a number of them were quite baffled when all but one of the cast died halfway through, and then one of them somehow came back. Oh, and there was a humanoid cat as well.

This monumental occassion deserves to be honoured. Here are some of our suggested methods of celebration:

• Dine on a feast of sprout soup, followed by sprout salad and, for dessert, sprout crumble.
• Bake a cake in the shape of a spaceship. Or, alternatively, a big red pencil.
• Invite 169 of your closest friends round, and kill them all with a lethal blast of Cadmium II.
• Attempt to read Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers without imagining Chris Barrie doing all the voices.
• Dance around your bedroom to Danny John-Jules’s version of Tongue Tied.
• Now that the show is past the legal age of consent in Britain, try inserting your penis into the hole in one of the DVDs.
• Re-read every single article on this site. Even the really rubbish ones.
• Watch the first Alien film, and be amazed at how similar the sets are to the ones in Series III-V.
• Read every single edition of the Programme Guide from cover to cover.
• Come up with some conspiracy theories about why Rob and Doug split up.
• Watch Re-Mastered, as a penance.
• Get pished.

Or, just do what most people are doing – watch the Series IV DVD. Hooray!