My friends Burley, Palmer and Gunn and I recently invented a family- friendly game that combines our two greatest interests, pizza and the paranormal.
Taking the gist of the original spirit-medium's tool, the Ouija board, we've added a taste of Italian cuisine and called it The Lou-iji Board.
We've already scripted the advert which we intend to be five times more annoying than the classic MB Games ad for Operation - you remember, the one with the architecturally coiffured mum whose dubbed- over voice asks: "Can I have a go?"
Our ad is even better. It goes like this: A 1980s open-plan front room. Four children dressed in bad clothes are crouched around a pizza-shaped Ouija board. They have their fingers on an upturned glass which seems to float magically around the board, over an alphabet of shaped cardboard pizza toppings such as anchovies and peppers.
A mother, in mourning dress, but grinning inanely nonetheless, overlooks the game.
As does the spirit of Lou-iji, a spectral Italian chef, who rises, with the aid of terrible 1980s video effects, through the centre of the board. To the tune of Joe Dolce's Shud Up A Ya Face, he sings:
"What's-a matter you?
"HEY!
"Lost your dear Papa?
"HEY!
"Need to change da will?
"HEY!
"Contacta da dead!
A cod Italian voiceover announces: "Lou-iji board! It's-a da great new occult game from NB Games for all-a da family."
Then a group of smiling ghosts, one of them headless, enter the room through the walls and join the grinning kids. Kid One asks: "What's it like on the other side - are there really fields full of lollypops?" All the ghosts nod eagerly in the affirmative.
Kid Two wants to know if puppies "grow on trees in the afterlife". Again the ghosts cheerily nod.
Now mum wants in on the action. Waving her husband's last will and testament, which has some questionable entries clearly circled in red pen, she asks, with a giggle: "Can I have a go?"
Everybody makes a mock tut and laughs. The cod Italian voiceover announces, "Lou-IJI board. It'll keepa da spirits up!"
A blink-or-you'll-miss-it subtitle flashes on the screen, reading: "Not suitable for the under-threes or the recently bereaved."
The fact that we've already written the advert before launching the product might suggest to you that we don't have faith in the Lou-iji board. Far from it. There's just one technical hitch to smooth out before we unleash the other world on the living public. We don't know how to turn it off.
Product testing started well. We had originally intended that the board be made of dough that the players shaped and baked themselves. This turned out to be unimaginably boring to undertake so instead we took a photograph of a large Domino's pizza, cut it out and stuck it to some cardboard.
Using a marker pen we drew the numbers 0-9 and the letters A-Z around the pizza.
After pouring ourselves a mood-setting pint of Chianti each we sat down around the board and proceeded to knock up any passing members of the spirit world. Imagine our surprise when, after an hour's play, the room was packed with ghosts.
Among the spooks vying for space on the sofa were Florence Nightingale, Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakir, Van Gogh, Matisse and Andy Warhol, Sasha Distel, the entire Light Brigade (of charging fame) two men claiming to be Dick Turpin, Lady Jane Grey, Brunel, Satan the great dark lord of the underworld, Rod Hull (but not Emu) and, somewhat surprisingly, TV presenter Phillip Schofield.
With so many dead historical figures - with the possible exception of Schofield - in one place, you'd imagine a fabulous party to simply burst into life - if you'll excuse the pun. But being dead isn't all it's cracked up to be. Whoever said you shouldn't meet your heroes, especially if they're dead, was right and the whole affair was somewhat miserable.
We couldn't think of any interesting questions to ask. Sasha Distel refused to comment on whether he was bullied at school for having a girl's name, Van Gough tiresomely pretended to be deaf and when we asked Rod Hull if in retrospect he'd would have considered cable TV he stormed out in a huff. Well, we thought it was funny.
A week or so later we still can't get rid of the ghosts. It's like Truly Madly Deeply at my house, only without some blubbering thesp playing the cello.
Biggie and Tupac insist on catching the bus to work with me and make obscene rhymes about local transport providers First.
When I got home last night Satan had eaten the batteries of the TV remote control and Van Gogh had stencilled a sunflower border all around my living room, which is so mid-90s I could've cried.
I've been in touch with the local priest and he says as soon as he sorts out the mess caused by some local kid who's been doling out fish sandwiches and walking on Henleaze Lake, he'll pop round.
In the meantime, he advised, why not pass the time with my unwelcome guests by inviting them to play a nice board game.
Taking the gist of the original spirit-medium's tool, the Ouija board, we've added a taste of Italian cuisine and called it The Lou-iji Board.
We've already scripted the advert which we intend to be five times more annoying than the classic MB Games ad for Operation - you remember, the one with the architecturally coiffured mum whose dubbed- over voice asks: "Can I have a go?"
Our ad is even better. It goes like this: A 1980s open-plan front room. Four children dressed in bad clothes are crouched around a pizza-shaped Ouija board. They have their fingers on an upturned glass which seems to float magically around the board, over an alphabet of shaped cardboard pizza toppings such as anchovies and peppers.
A mother, in mourning dress, but grinning inanely nonetheless, overlooks the game.
As does the spirit of Lou-iji, a spectral Italian chef, who rises, with the aid of terrible 1980s video effects, through the centre of the board. To the tune of Joe Dolce's Shud Up A Ya Face, he sings:
"What's-a matter you?
"HEY!
"Lost your dear Papa?
"HEY!
"Need to change da will?
"HEY!
"Contacta da dead!
A cod Italian voiceover announces: "Lou-iji board! It's-a da great new occult game from NB Games for all-a da family."
Then a group of smiling ghosts, one of them headless, enter the room through the walls and join the grinning kids. Kid One asks: "What's it like on the other side - are there really fields full of lollypops?" All the ghosts nod eagerly in the affirmative.
Kid Two wants to know if puppies "grow on trees in the afterlife". Again the ghosts cheerily nod.
Now mum wants in on the action. Waving her husband's last will and testament, which has some questionable entries clearly circled in red pen, she asks, with a giggle: "Can I have a go?"
Everybody makes a mock tut and laughs. The cod Italian voiceover announces, "Lou-IJI board. It'll keepa da spirits up!"
A blink-or-you'll-miss-it subtitle flashes on the screen, reading: "Not suitable for the under-threes or the recently bereaved."
The fact that we've already written the advert before launching the product might suggest to you that we don't have faith in the Lou-iji board. Far from it. There's just one technical hitch to smooth out before we unleash the other world on the living public. We don't know how to turn it off.
Product testing started well. We had originally intended that the board be made of dough that the players shaped and baked themselves. This turned out to be unimaginably boring to undertake so instead we took a photograph of a large Domino's pizza, cut it out and stuck it to some cardboard.
Using a marker pen we drew the numbers 0-9 and the letters A-Z around the pizza.
After pouring ourselves a mood-setting pint of Chianti each we sat down around the board and proceeded to knock up any passing members of the spirit world. Imagine our surprise when, after an hour's play, the room was packed with ghosts.
Among the spooks vying for space on the sofa were Florence Nightingale, Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakir, Van Gogh, Matisse and Andy Warhol, Sasha Distel, the entire Light Brigade (of charging fame) two men claiming to be Dick Turpin, Lady Jane Grey, Brunel, Satan the great dark lord of the underworld, Rod Hull (but not Emu) and, somewhat surprisingly, TV presenter Phillip Schofield.
With so many dead historical figures - with the possible exception of Schofield - in one place, you'd imagine a fabulous party to simply burst into life - if you'll excuse the pun. But being dead isn't all it's cracked up to be. Whoever said you shouldn't meet your heroes, especially if they're dead, was right and the whole affair was somewhat miserable.
We couldn't think of any interesting questions to ask. Sasha Distel refused to comment on whether he was bullied at school for having a girl's name, Van Gough tiresomely pretended to be deaf and when we asked Rod Hull if in retrospect he'd would have considered cable TV he stormed out in a huff. Well, we thought it was funny.
A week or so later we still can't get rid of the ghosts. It's like Truly Madly Deeply at my house, only without some blubbering thesp playing the cello.
Biggie and Tupac insist on catching the bus to work with me and make obscene rhymes about local transport providers First.
When I got home last night Satan had eaten the batteries of the TV remote control and Van Gogh had stencilled a sunflower border all around my living room, which is so mid-90s I could've cried.
I've been in touch with the local priest and he says as soon as he sorts out the mess caused by some local kid who's been doling out fish sandwiches and walking on Henleaze Lake, he'll pop round.
In the meantime, he advised, why not pass the time with my unwelcome guests by inviting them to play a nice board game.
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