Back in the mid 1980s a comedy sketch based TV series that portrayed the day-to-day life of a TV broadcasting company was a massive success in Portugal. Just like now, the country economy was in trouble and the IMF was “invited” to step in. People were being challenged and comedy played a part in the doom and gloominess relief.

I specially remember one of the sketches which I’ll try to briefly explain. The setting was a cool pop music programme presented by two beautiful girls. They were interviewing a pop singer with this very posh accent. The humour was subtle and built around the “clichés” of those kind of interviews.

The sketch ends with a twist when, at the interview wrap up, the guest asks where can he collect his pay. The hosts look surprised and one of them breaks the bad news to the guest: the interview is not a paid one.

In shock, the pop star accent suffers a sudden and dramatic change from posh to cockney. On top of that, he becomes aggressive towards the girls and shouts to them: “So, you’re telling me that I had to wake up at 5pm to catch the coach and come all the way from Seixal to this studio and I’m not being paid?!… “.

It was hilarious and I perfectly remember having thought: “where the bloody hell is Seixal?”. For someone like myself, born and raised in central Lisbon, that choice of place served its comedy purpose: unknown and sounded pretty, pretty dodgy…

Fifteen years later I was living there and I now have a pretty good knowledge of its geography 😉