Previously, on Pagan Idol:
two weeks to go
week zero
week one
week two
week three
week four
week five, part one


WGMY 104.1
week five, part two

...crushed beetles and the frog’s hind leg. Alternatively rub the cauterised stump in clockwise circles over the affected area and drink the contents of the glass in one – you can add honey to taste. That’s all from me. Stacey?

STACEY: Dan there with the pick of this weekend’s voodoo hangover cures. Can you vouch for any of them, Dan?

DAN: Oof. Not so far.

STACEY: Only yourself to blame. It’s eight-seventeen; keeping the lights low and the volume down, let’s talk to Haqqisaqq, Inuit god of vengeance and public relations.

HAQ: Good morning.

STACEY: Haq, the new late-night flavour of Pagan Idol kicked off with a double-header.

HAQ: That’s right, Stacey. We had two spectacular challenges, requiring the contestants to draw on quite different skill sets.

STACEY: That first challenge has proved somewhat controversial. Despite the late-night timeslot the subject matter has drawn heavy criticism from family-values campaigners and conservative pressure groups.

HAQ: I’ve heard their concerns. As is so often the case, it’s clear most of these comments come from people who didn’t actually see the show they’re complaining about.

STACEY: They’re hardly alone in not having seen it. This week’s ratings put you thirty-first for the timeslot, just behind Tyne Daly’s Gingivitis Odyssey and ten places behind America’s Bulgingest Hernias.

HAQ: In response to the complaints, let me offer some background. This challenge was all about communication. The successful candidate for godhood will demonstrate an ability to get their point across in a variety of ways, whether by modern media or via more traditional channels.

STACEY: And we were looking at the latter.

HAQ: Indeed. In many cultures, we have this figure of the shaman, a person with great knowledge both of this world and the worlds beyond.

STACEY: We’re familiar with Inuit and Native American shamen. We could expand that to include Voodoun priests, Polynesian mystics, the N’ganga of central Africa.

HAQ: These people seek to establish communication between this world and the spirit plane, even the gods, whilst in a state of trance. Sometimes these trances are self-induced. At other times there may be outside agents involved.

STACEY: Pharmaceutical agents.

HAQ: On occasion.

STACEY: In short, this challenge was all about drugs.

HAQ: It was about the judicious employment of certain organic and organically-derived compounds as a component of ancient cultural practices.

STACEY: No need to be coy, Haq. As the show’s voiceover pointed out, the traditional hallucinogenics and deleriants used by the Pagan Idol contestants were entirely legal.

HAQ: And derived from natural plant and fungal extracts. What’s more, the precisely-controlled doses were administered by qualified ethnopharmacologists under very safe conditions, and viewers were warned in unambiguous terms not to attempt this at home. Pagan Idol was in no way presenting this as a glamorous lifestyle. The groups’ claims are quite without foundation. On the contrary, I think the whole issue was handled very responsibly.

STACEY: I can’t argue with that. A voiceover explained the careful mental preparations each contestant had undergone and made explicit the unwelcome side-effects of their hallucinations. All this to lingering close-ups of participants twitching, drooling, babbling and vomiting as powerful psychotropics cracked their minds like a chef cracks eggs and then emptied the slippery contents into the fathomless abyss that is the nightmare whisking bowl of realities.

HAQ: So with all the tears, the spasms, the ululations, I don’t think any viewers could have been left thinking this might be a carefree way to spend an evening.

STACEY: While we’re on the topic, did any of the addled contestants actually succeed in communicating on the spirit plane?

HAQ: Several got through to the Psychic Switchboard. Letitia got a great deal on daemonic familiar insurance. Felix consolidated his karmic debt into one regular monthly payment. Then we went to a break while stagehands mopped up the vomit.

STACEY: After the show’s recent difficulties, you might be interested in this cutting from the Ultima Thule Illuminator. Their veteran critic Patricia Paget covered the episode in her column. She writes: “Far from being the exploitative train-wreck TV some had feared, this was responsible, fascinating, even ground-breaking live footage of a little-understood phenomenon.” Looks like you’ve made a fan.

HAQ: The cognoscenti have praised the show’s boldness in exploring this matter. The Official Inuit Pantheon refuse to shrink from the big issues, and that bravery is what Pagan Idol is all about.

STACEY: Of course, this wasn’t the only brave move made by the Inuit pantheon. As we mentioned, there were two challenges in this week’s show.

HAQ: Let’s just take a moment to reflect on the success of -

STACEY: And the bravery came in the order in which these two challenges were tackled.

HAQ: I think we -

STACEY: Because in the hands of a less courageous pantheon, participants might have contested Sniiqattaaq’s Harpooning Challenge first, and then got monged out of their gourds on potent hallucinogenics.

HAQ: So it might not have been the best preparation for a test of precision and composure. But no-one said it was going to be easy. It’s supposed to be a challenge, after all.

STACEY: One that might have been beyond even experts, for by that point the contestants were in the grip of a dreadful shared hallucination. An imaginary thousand-strong swarm of outsized molten-metal dragonflies were weaving, darting and snapping at the contestants’ noses with needle-sharp teeth.

HAQ: And from here, Stacey, the contestants were just making trouble for themselves. When throwing a harpoon, you need the other arm free to provide balance. By constantly swiping at their faces they were always inviting the odd wayward shot. As Sniiqattaaq himself tried to explain.

STACEY: Before diving for cover behind his autocue, because all at once the air was thick with lethal barbs whistling in every direction.

HAQ: Now that’s rather an exaggeration -

STACEY: Over a hundred harpoons hurled in that single chaotic minute, and how many passing even close to the target? Face facts, Haqqisaqq, this had disaster written all over it.

HAQ: They say hindsight has twenty-twenty vision.

STACEY: Hindsight certainly has both its eyes.

HAQ: And that’s an important point; no contestant sustained serious injury to a body part they didn’t have a spare of. Which is no hindrance to a successful career as pagan deity. Just look at Odin. Or Tyr, or the Aztec god Hurakan, or our own Torngasak. Losing an eye or a hand, an arm or a leg was nothing to those guys.

STACEY: What about losing five members of one’s immediate family?

HAQ: It was their choice to sit in the front row of the audience. We extend our sympathies. But it’s heartening to see that Felix, aspiring god of the actress Rosanna Arquette, has vowed to battle on in their memory. What a trouper.

STACEY: One contestant we won’t be seeing more of is Marisa. Though unscathed physically, the prospective goddess of beekeeping suffered a vivid and comprehensive psychic meltdown and has been withdrawn to a maximum security clinic under medical advice.

HAQ: The entire Pagan Idol community is saddened by Marisa’s continuing palpitations, incontinence and anguished squeaks about the giant onrushing porcupine with the revolving face made of disappointed crystals. We wish her a speedy recovery.

STACEY: I suppose it would be fatuous to note that her departure means viewers were yet again denied the chance to take part in a moneyspinning phone vote.

HAQ: Yes. Yes it would.

STACEY: Haqqisaqq, thanks. Dan, are you up to giving us the weather?

DAN: Ugh. I’ll do my best. Dense fog over low-lying ground, gradually giving way to...

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