Memetic Mutation/Radio

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • "Hello to Jason Isaacs." This meme initially comes from Mark Kermode's (and Simon Mayo's) habit of... saying hello to Jason Isaacs (a former classmate of Kermode's) on their film reviews show. Now this meme hasn't spread a lot on the Internet, but it seems to be appearing in increasingly bizarre situations in real life. See for instance:
    • Someone saying hello to Isaacs in their marriage speech.
    • Someone else, having met Kermode in a hospital, actually saying hello on the tannoy.
    • A sign in the rally to restore sanity.
    • A writer at the Tonight Show with Jay Leno is apparently a fan of Kermode's show and has been including the sentence in a few graphics.
      • Said writer sent an e-mail to Kermode and Mayo and can be heard here (with the images included).
    • Then an engineer working for Google (UK) joined in. So as of February 10, 2012, when you type "Jason Isaacs" on google.co.uk, this is what comes up.
    • The words "Hello to Jason Isaacs" have been uttered on Swedish radio.
    • Jason's been greeted on Cycling Magazine.
    • And of course, Jason Isaacs's mentioned this happening to him.
  • The Goon Show gave us "You've got the dreaded lurgi", "He's fallen in the wa-ter!", "It's all in the mind, you know" and many more.
  • Not the hall closet!
  • Paul Harvey... good day!
    • And now you know... the REST of the story! [1]
  • Feminazis. [2]
  • "Ladies and gentlemen, don't tell a soul, but the secret word tonight is 'meme', 'M-E-M-E'"./Groucho Marx: Really?!/Announcer: You Bet Your Life!
    • "And now, here he is: the one, the only, (Studio Audience: GROUCHO!)"
      • ("Is that bum still in town? Oh, that's me!")
  • The Adam and Joe show on BBC 6 Music gave us "STEPHEN!!"
  1. Title Drop at the end of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story, a radio show in which the host would share a story of someone or something fascinating, denying one key detail until The Reveal at the end. The phrase is often used in Real Life whenever one shares a long story with someone else.
  2. Rush Limbaugh's favorite term.