The Zombie Angelus

My favourite Irish television ‘programme’ has long been the Angelus. Apart from its catchy and easily memorized theme tune, there’s that whole Irish Catholic zombie flick element to it. Maura is fumbling with the washing in the back garden, trying not to trip over a senile and incontinent Pomeranian, wondering whether she’s remembered to put her Lotto numbers on, when all of a sudden, Bong! Bong! and the Angelus zombie moves in and steals her brain. She stands there, dumbfounded, all activity in her frontal lobes snuffed out. And then we’re on to the Angelus zombie’s visit to Jamesie in the local Dunne’s Stores for a tasty second course. Mmm, brain. The one drawback when it comes to the Angelus zombie’s evil supervillain status is that his powers appear to last only a minute at a time. We never get to see what becomes of Maura and Jamesie in post-zombie aftercare, but if they were out roaming the streets and chewing on the brains of passers-by, well, I presume the spin-off series would have come out by now.

I have an Angelus spin-off series I’d like to pitch though. The anti-Angelus. It’s set in zombieland, where people stand around like those annoying living statues you see on Grafton Street and whose bottoms you feel like heating with a cigarette lighter. Anyway, six o’clock comes, the Bongs! start to ring out, and all of a sudden Maura the wall-eyed zombie runs into the garden for a minute to start hanging out the washing, and Jamesie the lobotomized freak decides to start checking out your groceries.

Terrifying.