When I was 12, the antics of Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and co were an invitation to jump out of trees.
These days, I see something deeper in their refusal of filtered perfection.
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My name is Tom, and I am an idiot.
I’ve been an idiot almost my entire life, ever since I was old enough to think it was funny and interesting to be one.
So there was something sentimental for me in watching Jackass: Best and Last.
It’s a final swansong for a 26-year project that is the finest document of idiocy and the Freudian death drive the modern world has seen.
Jackass debuted in 2000, when I was 12 years old. I was already obsessed with professional wrestling.
I’d watch grainy VHS-quality videos of Mick Foley matches in awe, as he would jump headfirst into barbed wire, get repeatedly hit in the head with steel chairs or, famously, be thrown off a five-metre steel cage and through a table.
So when Jackass appeared, it was like manna from heaven for my friends and I.
Now we had less impossibly jacked, more down-to-earth heroes to look up to.
Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and Bam Margera all seemed like the kind of normal dudes you’d see at a local skate park or cracking jokes at a house party, only American.
Of course, we ignored all the show’s warnings not to imitate it, and immediately started recording ourselves doing stunts.
