IN 2020, THE Year of Bad News, the universe has decided to give us one good thing.
The Den is coming back and we can all take comfort in the fact that it’ll be just the same as we remember it, with the ultimate goal of messing and winding up Ray D’arcy.
The show will return to our screens this Sunday evening and TheJournal.ie got the inside scoop on what to expect from The Den in 2020 from Zig and Zag.
The pair spent most of the pandemic their home planet Zog, which Zag said “is like the New Zealand of planets”.
“They’ve kept it [coronavirus] very minimal, everyone wears masks and because we’ve got fur we’re not as prone to the virus so it’s been quite cool,” he explained.
Here’s what else we learned:
Zag: ”Dustin has promised us that he has all the Covid safety precautions in place in the studio.”
Zig: ”Dustin’s organised all the perspex for us – or “purspex” as he calls it. We’ve got all these sheets of perspex in between where we’re working and everything.”
Zag: ”I think it was a job lot though, I don’t think it’s because of safety, Dustin’s strange that way. He’s always up to something.”
Zig: ”It says Supermacs on all the perspex.”
Zag: ”When RTÉ asked us to come down we didn’t know there was going to be a second lockdown and we kind of forgot that Donald Trump would be possibly elected again. The thing is with Donald Trump, he used to like illegal aliens because we interviewed him once, but he’s kind of changed.
“He’s flip-flopped on that now, he definitely flip-flopped but I think he flip flops on everything. He just does whatever he thinks.”
Zag: “We like Mr Biden because he’s from Meath or somewhere isn’t he? Or he’s from Louth…We do like the Irish ones.”
Zig: ”If Biden wins we should have him on The Den. I reckon he would do it, we’ll get him on soon, let’s do that.”
Zig was hired to do the “bip” noises in the self service check-out machines.
“He can see the barcode from underneath and as soon as it goes over he just bips,” Zag told us.
Zig has also been collecting cornflakes shaped like Leo Varadkar.
“We’re going to be bringing that collection in so that’s the first half hour of the show taken care of,” he said.
Zag: ”It’s an hour long live TV show from 6.30 to 7.30 every Sunday and the cool thing is it’s almost like a Covid-free zone because we’re not really going to talk about Covid, it’s just going to be talking to people live on the show, doing competitions, ringing up people on the Zoom. It’s just going to be lots of fun really.”
When asked whether they’ll be trying to modernise The Den, Zig says “No”.
“It’ll be just like it was, it’ll be like you just turned it off yesterday and you turned it back on Sunday it’s just going to be the same,” he said.
Zag: ”That’s why we’re doing it live, it’s just like the cameras on, we’ve only got one camera like the old days. So it’s live and in your face and anything can happen and there’s four of us on screen and it’ll be crazy. Ray will be trying to do something and we’ll be going off on a tangent somewhere it’s just going to be loads of fun.”
Zig: ”And the great thing is, we don’t have scripts or anything like that, it’s just like The Den was in the old days. Plug ourselves in and see what happens.”
The lads said they want viewers to send them photographs and videos and to let them know what kind of things they’re doing these days to keep life fun. They’ll also be running competitions and the birthday roller will be making a return so if you have a birthday coming up soon they want to hear from you.
Zag: ”Keep an eye out for Ted, he comes in he attacks Ray, we want to keep this whole show a Ted free zone. Security’s a lot tighter now because of Covid but also because of the threat of Ted.”
Zig: ”I don’t know if we can tell this secret but there’s a chance that Christmas might need to be saved and we might just be the guys that might have to do it. Because we’ve done it before a few times, we might have to do it again, that’s all I’m saying.”
Zag: ”Yeah because we’re on on the 20th of December, that’s our last show and that’s going to be a kind of Christmas special thing so that’s only five days to go, but we’re going to make sure everything’s in order. And hopefully we might even get Santa Claus the man himself in studio.
“Don’t worry about it, I think it’s going to be okay. The Den, we’ll look after it.”
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