Satan (Old Harry's Game)

For other uses see Satan (disambiguation).

Satan is a fictional character from the BBC Radio 4 comedy series Old Harry's Game by Andy Hamilton based on the concept of Satan from various religions. In the series Satan is portrayed by Hamilton himself.

Satan was the overlord of Hell, and spent his time devising diabolical tortures for those wretched souls condemned to his realm. For example, he had a Pope enclosure in which the Popes who had been condemned to hell were consigned, and as a punishment they were all eternally eight months pregnant (occasionally one would give birth, but then the fetus would be shoved back in again). Other pits included the Pit with Demons Too Violent Even For Hell, the Pit of Famous Musicians (who were condemned to listen to a demon playing on a classical piano) and the Pit of People from the Bible. Satan had many demons under his dominion which he used to enforce the tortures; however, very few of them could ever have been considered intellectual giants.

Satan was once an Seraph, but after rebelling against God, was cast out of heaven and condemned to live in hell for eternity. Satan describes his rebellion as a "management restructuring exercise" and often laments the loss of his beautiful and dignified physical form as an angel.

When a human by the name of Professor Richard Whittingham arrived in hell Satan began to re-evaluate his existence and took to introspection and brooding. The Professor was a scientist who was killed in a car crash by Thomas Quentin Crimp. He led a reasonably blameless life, but was sent to hell because he did not believe in God. To begin with, the Professor believed that everything he saw in Hell was an illusion he was experiencing due to being in a coma following the car crash.

Satan struck up a relationship with the Professor, something which almost approached friendship. The Professor constantly tried to prove to Satan that humanity is not fundamentally evil as Satan believed. Due to his association with the Professor, some of Satan's demons, led by his henchman Gary, began a rebellion to overthrow Satan as overlord of Hell. Satan was almost tempted to allow himself to be killed and thus end his eternal existence, but in the end could not allow himself to be beaten by Gary and unleashed his Satanic powers, including an enormously powerful breath to defeat Gary. Gary was put on trial, at which the Professor became his advocate — much to Satan's annoyance - and which was attended by God (who almost regretfully informed Satan that he would have to stay on and run Hell for eternity because that was his job).

After Gary's trial and dismissal from his job, Satan began a search for a new assistant, and went through various demons, including a malicious dolphin, and an evil computer. During this search, a demon by the name of Scumspawn tried many times unsuccessfully to become Satan's assistant, because of his stupidity and nervousness whilst trying to impress Satan. However, Scumspawn was not entirely without guile and tricked the computer into falling into a bottomless pit. Satan recognising that Scumspawn could be quite cunning, eventually relented and allowed him to become his assistant. In later stories Scumspawn admitted to Thomas and the Professor that he was in love with Satan, in the widest emotional sense. Scumspawn's kindly and unselfish behaviour often irritates Satan, especially when Scumspawn attempts to mould Thomas into a better person, but he turned out to be a rather competent administrator.