Emptying the dishwasher this morning – it is located close to my Man Cave – for some reason I decided to seek the accompaniment of whatever was on telly. Switching on, I immediately felt pangs of regret. It was as if I had entered Hell.
I had left the crystal bucket on BBC 1, after watching England’s battering of a lifeless and disinterested France, at least in the first half, in the worthless Third/Fourth Place World Cup match last night and to my amazement there was a programme called Prayer and Reflection featuring a room full of Muslim men – no women, obviously – in the Belfast Islamic Centre, as a bloke babbled away, praising the mythical Allah for everything from providing clean water to the afterlife. It’s absolutely barking, although to be fair it’s probably only marginally more barking than the nonsense being preached at our local CofE church just down the road. I switched to BBC 2.
It was Sunday morning but the show was called Saturday Kitchen Best Bites and at just after 10.00am the guests are on the piss while tucking into a fish dish. I had no idea who any of the guests were – I am guessing celebrity chefs? – but who watches this? It’s people cooking and eating and talking about “flavoured” and “compound” butter. No thanks. What was on ITV?
Love Your Weekend with Alan Tit was the answer, according to the caption on the box. That’s the caption, but actually it was the celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh talking to people doing gardening and there was Matt Baker, who I haven’t heard of for years since he presented the BBC’s leaden One Show. My God it’s dull. What was on Channel 4? Dull? Hold my coat.
It was Sunday Brunch hosted by Tim Lovejoy, who older readers may recall once hosted Sky’s Soccer AM. Lovejoy sounded the same, with his faux cockney accent, but he didn’t look it, given the effects of male pattern baldness. It comes to us all, Tim. He was joined by celebrity chef and fellow slaphead Tom Kerridge, who was standing in for Simon Rimmer, the scouse slaphead celebrity chef (I don’t know why: I don’t care), plus no less than five guests who watched Kerridge cook and occasionally made semi-humorous comments. I recognised one of the guests, not from his face, but his squeaky, irritating voice, TV funnyman (except that he was not in the least bit funny) Joe Pasquale. There was, I noted, three hours of this before celebrity chef Jamie Oliver came on to – have a fucking guess – cook things. Who watches this stuff?
Clearly someone does, otherwise the TV companies wouldn’t be producing the programmes, but I would think your life must be pretty grim if this is the best way to spend your time. It certainly wasn’t the best use of mine on this beautiful midsummer’s day.
This was just the mainstream channels, mind. There are hundreds of others where I could have watched Dinner Date, apparently a reality dating show in which people cook things, The Bill, which stopped being made 16 years ago, The Vicar of Dibley, which is as funny as a burning orphanage and across a number of channels something called Tipping Point, which I had never previously seen but looks terrible. The description of the show on Wikipedia is extremely lengthy but, in my view, hilarious:
“The machine consists of two shelves with 80 counters (including the Double and Mystery counters) filled on the top shelf and the bottom shelf with flat circular shapes made of thick, solid plastic (with metal SFX added in post-production); the upper shelf slowly extends and retracts, whilst the lower one is stationary. The rear face of the machine is divided into four drop zones, each of which contains a pegboard similar to those found in pachinko machines. Contestants answer questions to win counters, then choose a drop zone and press their buzzer to release one counter at a time into that zone. The goal is to have the counters land flat on the upper shelf so that its retraction will cause the counters to push others over the shelf’s front edge, leading them in turn to push still others off the lower shelf and into a collection trough referred to as the “win zone”. Contestants win £50 for each counter that drops into the win zone during their turn. Any counters that bounce out of the machine and land on either the floor or the lip of the win zone during a turn are still credited toward that contestant’s score.”
I must admit to losing interest in that description, but it turns out the whole thing is based on one of those machines you find in an Amusement Arcade, and a brief glance at the show suggests it’s every bit as exciting.
I suspect that one day, perhaps soon, when I have lost my few remaining marbles and I am propped up in an armchair in a care home, I will welcome daytime television because clearly it must be aimed at people like that. It’s TV made by the brain dead for the brain dead, TV to get you through the day when there’s nothing else you are capable of doing. If such a place existed – and of course it doesn’t – it would be the ideal preparation for the descent into Hell.
Watching far less telly than I ever did, despite paying more and more to watch so much less, encouraged me to hit the off button and to do something useful, like hang the washing out or better still reading a book. Doing nothing is better than watching this crap. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything worse. I’ll do nothing next. Daytime TV can wait.
