Norwegian, um, comedy

It's still obscure to me exactly what the Norwegian Quart Festival celebrates, though in trying to find out, I discovered that a-ha is still topping the charts in Norway, Germany and Estonia. The big news out of the festival on Wednesday was a Norwegian "radio comedian" who made a bit of a splash.

Animal rights activists are furious after a Norwegian comedian attached an engine to a dead pig and used it as a boat. Kristopher Schau and his colleagues also tried blowing up rats and hamsters with helium to make what they called "organic balloons". The animals exploded and the remains splattered over the audience at the Quart Festival in Kristiansand, reports Nettavisen. After the boat stunt, Mr Schau told the audience: "This is one of the greatest things I have ever seen."

So the next day, how does one top pigboating and organic balloons?

At a new show on Thursday, Schau soaked the pig [apostropher: yes, the same pig] in petrol before setting fire to it while making a flaming speech against sausages, saying "We are talking about squeezing pig's tissue into the pig's own guts, then cooking it and giving it to children," Schau said.

The entertainers had originally planned to serve the barbequed meat to the audience. "But then we got a list from the local medical centre with all the diseases one could get by eating this meat, so we decided against it," said Schau. On Thursday the rest of the show consisted of putting a white BMW at sea, voting on the festival's nicest penis and the annual enema competion. "The show on Friday will be gigantic and it will be better than anything we have done before," said Schau.

Guess it takes a lot more work to be outré than it used to.