Duped By Ali G.

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I should have picked up on all the clues my host dropped during the taping of a television show I was recently a guest on. Just looking at him is clue number one. One would have thought that having watched the MTV Europe Music Awards and having seen Madonna's "Music" video, I would have remembered the bright yellow jumpsuit, stretch Tommy cap and over-the-top goggles of Ali G. (I think I just figured European club fashion was going through a real bad phase.)

Listening to him talk is clue number two. Like a white British version of Snoop Dogg, his slang and accent are known very well by his fans. (An Internet translator is available for those that need help understanding him.)

His questions should have been the final indication that something was afoot. (It hit me when he asked the public sex educator to my left, "Does impregnation by anal sex lead to gay babies?" that he couldn't be serious.) Instead of trying to regain composure, I should have kept on laughing when he asked all of us those insane questions. As it turns out, my instinct to laugh was correct.

The man sitting in front of me, unbeknownst to me, was not the host of a teenage documentary series in the U.K., as I had been lead to believe. He was indeed Ali G, a.k.a. chameleon comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, and on a cloudy day back in November, my three other panelists and I were taken for a ride not quite like any other.

I received an email from the Mission Year office. They had received an email from a producer who said she was working on a six-part documentary series geared towards teenagers for Channel 4 Television in the U.K. Her reason for contacting Mission Year was that she was currently working on an episode about sex and was looking for "a passionate and articulate, abstinent man in his early 20s." Apparently, some people in the office thought I fit the bill.

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