“You’ve been in the house too long,” she said
I am alive and playing catch up. I’ve crawled to the keyboard if only to escape the hellish whirligig that is British daytime television: a sickening calliope designed by Hieronymus Bosch. It invades even my fitful dreams as I grip the sweat-drenched sheets.
24 hour news is so repetitive and endlessly recycled that I’d awake thinking I’d been asleep for only seconds to find I’d dozed for an hour. I’m definitely getting old as music television is less like entertainment to me now than what I imagine those disorientation techniques they use to train the SAS to be. Is it mandatory that every Euroclub anthem video feature uncountable women all with their sweaty arses hanging out? Must every R’n'B number feature “J-Lo”, “LL Cool J”, Mariah Carey or some unholy combination of the three? There’s a song on continuous rotation on one of the channels called “I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)” which is a cultural and historical (not to mention musical) car-crash of such proportions that it needs to be reviewed not with harsh words but with anti-tank weapons.
Then there’s the adverts. I realise that sofa-bound Britain needs cheap finance fast but is the market really that big to sustain so many cheap finance companies? Would you be tempted to take a loan from a company whose ad campaigns are fronted by an ex-cricketer with an opening gambit of “I know nothing about loans”? And I’m completely fascinated by the advert for athlete’s foot treatment, Lamisil Once. If this once-only, fire-and-forget footrot torpedo is so spectacularly effective as the ad claims, then why are Boots selling it in a buy-three-for-the-price-of-two deal, as my partner reports?
And that’s just the daytime shift. Did anybody see Deadringers last night? Bloody hell. My daughter’s Year One class can write a better scripts and do better impressions. An “Ooh, Betty. The cat’s done a whoopsie…” Frank Spencer impression slotted in there would have actually improved the show. I’m going to start two lists, one of reasons why the television licence fee is theft and one listing why it isn’t. I expect the first to be John Holmes to the second’s John Prescott.
Anyway, what did I miss?
Update: For some reason the links aren’t showing properly at the bottom of this post in IE6 (the browser’s fault? WordPress? The Earth’s magnetic pull? Who knows). If you want to read the comments for this post, click the “permalink” link.
Posted on May 23rd, 2006 at 4:13 pm
| See also • You’d only spend it on sweets • The Money/Mouth Interface • BBC2: All white on the night |
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Filed under A few administrative notices, Pooterism |
Are you sure you meant to link to John Holmes the porn star, rather than John Holmes the diminutive, smug and self-satisfied contributor to The Now Show?
Quite sure.
Come on, Oscar. Are you meaning to tell me that I need to spell it out?
Hey, I know I don’t really comment much but just wanted to say great blog, top quality. Dead Ringers this series is utterly aweful, I downloaded the first episode, what a waste. I remember season one and two i was dying it was so funny. I don’t know about the music channels in the UK but here we have a few channels that only play hip hop videos and there’s a lot of variety, but to be sure, the major hip-hop/rap hits are not very diverse.
You must have caught the endless loop on BBC News 24 about some rapper pouring “Crystal” (sp?) champagne over some bird’s arse on a video (or was it the lyrics?).
That hastened your recovery methinks.
Got it now. Sorry. Was skim-reading. Serves me right.
Update: For some reason the links aren’t showing properly at the bottom of this post in IE6 (the browser’s fault? WordPress? The Earth’s magnetic pull? Who knows). If you want to read the comments for this post, click the “permalink†link.
Or, of course, start using a proper browser rather than the hideous, non-conformist (in a bad way) nightmare piece of junk that Microsoft manages to justify spoon-feeding to the ovine masses.
DK
Oh, I completely agree. I’ve finally deleted the IE icon on the Quicklaunch bar and am weaning myself on to Firefox loveliness.
Speaking of daytime TV and ads, Carol Vorderman should really be shot - as my mother used to say - with shit, for convincing short-sighted crones who trust her (such as my mother) to take out personal loans. I shall never forgive her for that. Never.
Now - assuming you’re over the worst - stop watching telly and get on with your work. Your country needs you.
Mwah.
Yes, but it is not the length, but how you use what you’ve got, surely.
And, in Prescott’s defence, all the women he has slept with have done so for free, unlike Holmes, whose bedpost notches were almost invariably of the professional kind.
Cheers, Andrew. Way to go torpedoing the rosey glow of self-satisfaction constructing that metaphor gave me. Killjoy.