The TV Thing

You learn quickly that no amount of channel surfing will find you anything worth watching on television, and particularly at 10.30am. It's either hospitals, property or worse, the evil soul scraping bags of shit that pass themselves off as, well, what are they called? Normally a couple are brought on, looking slightly under the national average for decency, and begin to unravel the worlds ugliest story of betrayal. But by the looks of it these people don't know what betrayal really is. They just want to be on telly.

Then, a big shouldered barbarian girl is brought on from back stage to argue with a man who is either her father, her lover, or both. She sits on one side, he on the other. A safe distance. In between is a minimum wage security man with an earpiece. Presumably he’s there so the producer can prompt him to intervene at the right time, either to break them apart or force them together.

But I'm still watching, albeit with the sound down. For another man, with patterns etched into his skull, is about to be brought on. This could mean trouble. His name must be Goober as he appears to have been assembled using loose scraps of plastacine with flavour-sucked gobstopper-eyes.

Then, a group of people which doesn't even cause a blip on the evolution radar, tells another group of knuckle draggers they're not fit to be part of their family. Fair enough. And hell, at the very least this is real life. Real life at its darkest and best with the hairy bits and grazes exposed. It's not even the lowest form of entertainment. No, this is reserved for supermarket magazines which depict soap opera as real life. Full scale news features by journalists who I personally know spent loans and lost relationships putting themselves through university, writing columns on what a particularly character should do now after his girlfriend with the big tits (appearing this Christmas in Panto in Prestatyn) declared herself a lesbian. Weeping now seems so futile.

This is the new deal. Entertainment at base level. Tomorrow the new series of Big Brother starts, but hell, at least we can gamble on it. Apparently producers have placed 100 "Golden Tickets" into Kit Kats, one of which will entitle a member of the public, who probably just wanted something chocolaty, to enter the Big Brother Celebrity birthing cage. Interesting idea, it just means I can't have Kit Kats for the next month.

Until then...