My Big fat Greek Water Torture

I’ve seen the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding seven times - it’s not a statistic I’m terribly proud of.

It’s a result of travelling round Australia with my, then future, wonderwife (to clarify, she’s always been wonderful, the ‘wife’ bit wasn’t confirmed at the time), and spending much time aboard Greyhound coaches, each of which was equipped with a telly to amuse passengers as it whipped them thousands of miles across spectacular(ly featureless) countryside.

Traversing the country by making some 70 such journeys in a ten-month period, we watched a stash of on-board, (and I use the term loosely), “entertainment”, and were unfortunate victims of the drivers’ reluctance to change the video tapes. Our hearts would sink when the screen flickered into life and a jaunty Greek bouzouki twanged melodiously, heralding the onset of two hours of contrived gags and cutesy overacting. Being a captive audience though, it was as impossible to ignore as water torture.

That said, when I saw MBFGW was on TV the other night I couldn’t help but feel a warming sense of nostalgia and a peculiar bittersweet feeling as, terrible though the film is, it’s inextricably linked to an exceedingly happy period of my life.

It’s a pleasure/pain thing – probably much like listening to your favourite Beatles song being sung by a particularly untalented busker, or watching Caroline Quentin plunging over a cliff in your brand new car.

Other such cinematic porridge witnessed en route included Special Agent Cody Banks and some crap film with Paul Newman pretending to be a wheelchair-bound cripple. These films were bouzouki-free, though were still exceedingly kak.