It’s pretty rare that even after all this time (“always”), Harry Potter fans can still be surprised by new information.
Well here’s one for you: apparently, the curse that left Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers either dying, leaving, or becoming otherwise incapacitated to do their job at the end of one year was inspired by the Spinal Tap drummers bizarrely, repeatedly dying.
Spinal Tap is a weird one to explain. They’re a parody 80s band that spoofed heavy metal bands, but also released music, shot a mockumentary, and performed at Glastonbury Festival in 2009. To me, a Spinal Tab noob, it kinda feels like when you start saying a dumb phrases ironically (“lol”) and then it accidentally becomes part of your lexicon. When did Spinal Tap stop being a parody and just become a band, you know?
Anyway, a running gag of the band is that their drummers would die in increasingly bizarre ways. One died in a gardening accident that authorities said was “best left unsolved”, another spontaneously combusted on stage, a third sold his dialysis machine for drugs and is presumed dead, and so on. One is believed to either be dead or playing jazz in Japan, while another’s fate is firmly sealed: he died trying to jump over a tank of sharks on a tricycle. Not a great move, living-wise, but I suppose you can afford to take risks when you’re a fictional character.
Anyway, the QI Twitter account – which tweets facts that are “quite interesting” – references some long-forgotten bit of trivia, where J.K. Rowling claimed her DADA curse was inspired by Spinal Taps’ drummers.
According to J.K. Rowling, the curse of the Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers was inspired by the Spinal Tap drummers regularly dying in bizarre circumstances.
— Quite Interesting (@qikipedia) March 14, 2018
And as it turned out, they were utterly correct.
Sad but true. https://t.co/qLm9qYyEiM
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 14, 2018
QI replied, thanking Rowling for confirming the fact (was it not confirmed beforehand?), but now the entire thread is people making Spinal Tap jokes that I absolutely do not get, but you might.
https://twitter.com/speakeral/status/973998625306107905
Beware the Stool of Doom!
— Michael McKean (@MJMcKean) March 14, 2018
So why didn’t the series go all the way up to 11?
— Richard Molloy (@BoozerBoss) March 14, 2018
“It wasn’t his own vomit. It was somebody else’s vomit…. You can’t really dust for vomit.”
— Rob Blackwell (@robblackwellAB) March 14, 2018
Ahhhh yes. Jokes that we all, as Spinal Tap fans, absolutely get. Love it.
