"So, Professor Enklund, I'd like to thank you and your team for taking a break from developing of a cure for cancer. Did you watch EastEnders last night?"
Hurrah! I am not a cultural Robinson Crusoe! There are others out there who think as I do - and they are prepared to let the brainwashers know that we are still here, and fighting!
I have just watched some limp-wristed, seven stone, beauty-spotted, oops-chase-me type defend the recent output of BBC Breakfast.
This glycogenic pile of Judy Garland records was editor of the aforementioned and had been hauled out of his Laura Ashley-decorated gantry to hear viewers' complaints that Breakfast was no longer a news programme but was, instead, now packed with trite, consumerist rubbish and plugs for mindless BBC programmes.
To illustrate their points, some "highlights" from the programme were shown which included a feature on "How to hang out your washing" (seriously!) and "How to make a cup of tea" (I couldn't have made that up). These were followed by a string of clips of the presenters saying things like "Did you see EastEnders last night?" and "Did you see The Apprentice last night?"
Just on a point of clarification, "How to make a cup of tea" is NOT news. It is a public service announcement for the brain damaged. As for asking me what I watched on the box the night before, my response is: "Mind your own business, you nosey twat! If I had wanted to watch 'How Clean Are Your Pants' or 'Prison Cell Makeover' I would have fucking watched them (oops! I'm supposed to have packed in swearing). The fact that I didn't surely indicates that I have a brain and walk upright.
If I was, on the other hand, one of those types who cancelled his child's chemotherapy treatment to get back to watch 'Sing Or We Shoot' then I would know about it already. Either way, your question is bleedin' redundant!"
So, what did Mr Mincealot say in response to this criticism? He said that viewing figures had been growing steadily and people didn't want to wake up to something depressing or bleak. Oh really? Well, get married, Ponce, and see how you feel when you roll your head across the pillow to see the curlered and face-packed troll lying beside you each morning!
As a seasoned hack, there is nothing more guaranteed to get me reaching for a rifle than these "good news fairies". This may come as a bit of a shock, Quentin, but the world can be a cruel, nasty and violent place. Polyanna programming is just plain lying. It is for people who can't face reality and so
immerse themselves in soap operas or are addicted to so-called reality TV where other people can live their lives for them. If there is an armed and Aids-riddled psychopath on the loose outside my home I would kinda like to know about it instead of skipping out of Pither Towers tra-la-la'ing, having just watched an item on "How Cuddly Are Kittens?", only to be hacked to death and infected on my drive!
We're back to Thatcher's Britain again, I'm afraid. The reason all this shite is on the box is, over the last 10 years, newspapers and broadcasters have recruited armies of brain dead but mega-cheap, daddy's-got-a-Bentley fluffies who pose as journalists.
They have no idea what constitutes news and, more disturbingly, care even less but are prepared to work for virtually fuck all (oops, there I go again) in the hope that they will eventually get their fizzogs on the telly and eventually go on to front Blue Peter or be asked to open a supermarket. There is no such thing as "public service broadcasting" anymore. "The Market" is, as elsewhere, all powerful.
"Justify your slice of the licence fee by getting ratings to match those of "How Heavy Are My Bollocks".
"But Sir, we're a news programme which isn't supposed to have testicular weight features on its schedule."
"Well, call it a 'news magazine' programme, then. That way you can get away with having some birds on who get their tits out and a few features on the etiquette of throwing up outside nightclubs."
News dies a death as these talentless, vacuous, fashion-obsessed farts graduate to production and editing and relentlessly chase viewing figures, so sending programming on an ever-accelerating dive down the proverbial TV toilet.
Editors are supposed to lead and set the agenda, not follow the lazy, uneducated, ephemeral and trite wants of the Spice Girl generation.
I feel better for that. Just one more day and I can have a drink - hurrah! In the meantime, "good news fairies" can go to Grantham.
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Shaggy Blog Stories
1 comment:
Good to see you've picked up the same hymn-sheet as me, Reg. Mrs Orkney-bound often has to restrain me in the mornings as I lurch suddenly with violent intent at Bill Comedancing, Dermot Pleasedwithmyself or Sandra Notasgoodasnatashawhichissayingsomething. . . and as for Penfold on the "business" "news" or the lame attempts at humour from the dwarves who present the sport - aaaaaaaarrrgh!
Then there's the weather and the BBC's attempts to remind us all that nowhere matters so much as London, the south of England and maybe Devon and Cornwall where everyone from the aforementioned goes on holiday to take the piss out of the locals and send property prices through the roof.
Why slant the map so that Scotland and Kent seem to be of comparable size - Scotland is not much smaller and a whole lot better looking than the whole of England. The Orkneys (self-interest, I admit) are the tiniest speck, usually totally obscured by a white disc telling us exactly how quickly the roof on our house is being blown off. The Isle of Wight, on the other hand, (in reality about half the size of Orkney) is a great, fat, smug blob off the south coast, while I swear I caught a glimpse of my mother's house near Dartmoor on this morning's forecast as the camera dawdled lovingly over the south-west peninsula before swinging north to accelerate past Wales and cut out just before reaching Northern Ireland.
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