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. I’ll always remember when my friend Andy jumped off a wall and cut his head open really badly. But in my........

© The Guardian