What do you get when you cross a hip hairstylist with a banned Mexican cartoon character? Sapna Bhavnani as Speedy Gonsalez. The Speedy Gonsalez Show is the hairstylist’s answer to boring music-based reality TV. Here, she gets artists from the indie music scene to take on disguises for a riot in front of the camera. Each episode is about 5 minutes long and is uploaded on the group by the same name on Facebook at 9.09 pm every Monday.The first episode of the show was uploaded a week ago, and has Suman Sridhar (from Sridhar/Thayil) as Ms Sassy and her guitarist Arijit Datta as Blind Lemon Govardhan. The 4.5 minute video sees Bhavnani host the show as Ms Sassy, and Blind Lemon Govardhan perform not just the song but their characters as well.
The second episode has Ankur Tewari (from Ankur Tewari and the Ghalat Family) playing a French character who joins Gonsalez in drooling over women. “The idea is to show our talented musicians from the independent music scene, in a different avtaar. They can leave the serious performances for stage. With Gonsalez, they’re just having a good time,” says Bhavnani, who pulls off a brilliant drunk Mexican woman chaser.Since the videos are uploaded on Facebook, there is serious uncensored dhamaal that doesn’t get beeped out. The host and guests are seen taking swigs from bottles of beer, instead of sipping on tepid coffee. “The show is made in the true spirit of freedom of speech.There is no thought given to TRPs, neither is the script pre-written. It’s all impromptu. Of course, a bit of alcohol solves any kind of inhibition problem,” says Bhavnani. That’s what the 640-odd fans seem to be enjoying the most about the videos. Bhavnani intends to bring on Bipasha Basu. “Speedy is in love with Bipasha. She’s a good friend of mine too. So let’s see… we might just have her on the show soon.”