guesswork
This piece is in the form of what I call a ‘splice’, that is, a media combination. In this case, the sound track from the 1950’s American games show, ‘What’s my line’ (against which the poem is recorded) should be heard as a continuation of the text. The question might be asked who the ‘unfunny’ jester is, with the host explaining why the panel must be blindfolded. We must use of our knowledge of recent events to unmask the actual person of the ‘jester’.

‘What’s My Line?’
Your host for a plethora
of universes existent and
quantumly conceived,
Wally Bruner,*
against all
odds…
‘Get over it!’
with running
hair dye the
unfunny
jester
sang
7 february 2021
*The host for the show at this time was not, in fact, Wally Bruner (who was the host when I watched it during my childhood), but John Daly. The guest in this episode was Salvador Dalí, and for that reason there is a very brief clip at the start of the programme which features a performance of a dadaist sound poem. This particular episode was recorded in 1952.
The background to the reading is the episode in which Dalí appears.