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Irish Examiner

Colm O'Regan: I've dreamt up the ultimate TV mash-up, an apocalyptic muppet show

There is nothing more boring than listening to someone else describe their dream. But stick with me because we could both make a lot of money out of it. I think I've dreamt the ultimate TV mash-up I was in the award-winning show 'Silo' and being chased by armed guards up a back stairs. (The basic premise of Silo is that there has been some sort of chemical/nuclear apocalypse and what's left of humanity has to live in a giant vertical underground city and there are LOTS of stairs.) But between the levels, in the basement of every floor, as I was being chased, I spotted …DOOZERS. Yes! The tiny little muppets from Fraggle Rock. They built delicate structures made out of radishes. The Fraggles would then eat them. In one episode, Mokey Fraggle persuades the Fraggles to stop eating the Doozers' buildings as it is unfair on them. But then the Doozers keep building until there is no room left to build any more. It turns out they need the Fraggles. There's a pHD to be written about the symbiotic relationship between the Doozers and the Fraggles. But I don't have time for that because I need to work on getting Apple TV to pay for my new show post-apocalyptic muppet show called Silo Rock. I'm not the first to dream up a stone-cold classic. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Paul McCartney's Yesterday are well documented. But also, James Cameron said he came up with the character of the Terminator during a fever dream he had on the set of 'Piranah 2: The Spawning. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan after a dream while out of his bin on opium. And he would have finished it earlier, only someone visited him and interrupted him while he was trying to remember his dream. Which is a lesson to all of you. Don't interrupt me when I'm describing my dream. It could end up on the Leaving Cert Course. I think I'm most impressed by Giuseppi Tartini, who composed a Violin Sonata in G minor – nearly 17 minutes long – because he dreamt the devil played it to him in a dream. And what's more, he felt he could never get it as good as what the devil played him, and it threatened to drive him insane if he continued to search for it. I'm not saying he made that up, but that's the kind of origin story for a piece of music that sets it apart from other violin sonatas that might have been on the go at that time. Dreams inspire many other diverse works. 'Tintin in Tibet' is often said to be the finest of the Tintin books and was the result of nightmares Herge was having that he was having about trying to stay married and also have a mistress. Do not try this at home. The guitar riff in the Rolling Stones satisfaction, the Periodic Table, benzene, the sewing machine -which together all sound like elements in a particularly mad dream- all are said to owe their existence to dreams. The one that resonates with me the most is Mark Benioff of Salesforce dreaming up a software interface. He has possibly the most matter-of-fact description of a dream ever. 'I could see this app that looked like Amazon and it said 'Contacts', 'Accounts', 'Opportunities', 'Forecast Reports', as tabs.' A younger me would have rolled their eyes at this. But as most of my non-Silo Rock dreams are purely about admin, I can identify. I once had a dream where I put on a wash that was only half full, and just after I pressed start, found a whole other bag of laundry. Dr Frankenstein never did anything as nightmarish.