Stinking Pile of Poo

Big Brother previews, Channel 4
NI Wags, BBC1, Friday
Eastenders, BBC1, Monday

I knew it wouldn't last. The sun is still great, and I was still in uncharacteristically good form, and then it happened. Day-dreaming through the ads on Channel 4, I was jerked rudely back to reality by the appearance on screen of a big eye, and the nasal intonation of that Geordie git saying 'Nine dayyyyys'. Yes, Big Brother is back.

Even worse, the opening night is being hosted by Justin Lee Collins and Allan Carr, of The Friday Night Project Fame. Funny, funny guys who I love dearly. Sullying themselves by association with such a stinking pile of poo as Big Brother. Bah.

What makes it worse is that the weather has been so good lately I have been hatching plans to stay in Belfast each year until October, and then go off with my rucksack in search of sun until March. But Big Brother may drive me away. Yes, I know it's winter in Australia at the minute. I don't care.

Well, I finally did it. After two weeks of avoiding it by the simple means of spending Friday nights in the pub, I watched NI Wags. 

It was a very sad programme, and I fear that a word count of less than 5000 will not allow me to do it the injustice it deserves. It wasn't quite as bad as the WAGs on The Weakest Link last week, but it was close. 

Loud women, all tanned orange and with their hair ironed to perfection, giggled their way through the North's equivalent of VIP parties and said, totally without irony, that it took two hours to do their hair before going out, 'and that's before even starting on my nails'. How do these people keep this level of idiocy up? Is it an act? Are they are having us on? Surely no-one can be that much of a cliché? 

But sadly I fear I am being too generous.

And WAGs? Hello? One of them was going out with a Glentoran player. Who, incidentally, was voted NI's sexiest bachelor at some awards thing somewhere in a field. Yeah right. Apart from the fact Mr Glentoran was about five feet tall and must have weighed all of nine stone dripping wet and wearing concrete slippers, NI's sexiest bachelor could actually be found in Lavery's last Friday night. Yum.

And once again, I am annoyed at Eastenders. Yes, it's Chelsea again, or, more to the point, the lazy way scriptwriters of all soaps depict the evil that is the war on drugs. 

Chelsea was given drugs by evil Sean last week, as he was turning over a new leaf to be the babydaddy of Roxy's spawn. The next day, she was of course a slavering addict. And within two whole episodes, or about three days, she was nicking money from the till at work and then getting a kicking by a gaggle of feral girlies in the park (hee hee). 

Yes, that's exactly how it works. It's like Neighbours and Home and Away, where as soon as you see a character taking up smoking (the horror!), you know they're going to set the house on fire the same episode. Someone in a soap tries drugs once, or has a drink when they're upset, and within three episodes they're in rags on the Square, prostituting themselves for a can of cider (girls) or trying to beat everyone up in the Queen Vic (boys. And er, girls). 

Grr. The world is stupid. It had better be sunny today.

Eye Bleaching and Man Tits

FA Cup Final, BBC1, Saturday
Channel 4 News, C4, Thursday
Class of 62: 16 to 60, BBC2, Monday
Football, football, bloody football, as Ma Canning freqently says on Saturday afternoons, as Da Canning is doing that annoying man thing of flicking onto Teletext for the latest scores when poor Ma is trying to watch a cooking show.
 

This is what Eye on the Box feels like this week, what with all the goggleboxing going on in relation to this strange game of men kicking a ball around a pitch. (In shorts though. Although it has to be admitted that the shorts worn in rugby offer a higher perve factor, at least according to our photographer.)
 

The FA Cup Final (BBC1, Saturday) was a pleasant chance to watch the footie at home without having to get out of jammies, although why it started at 12.40 with a kick off of 3.00 I have no idea.

Now, I was happy at this, as I was able to go out from 1 until 3.20, before settling down on the sofa with my pickled onion crisps and Drumstick lolly, but for the love of Og BBC, we do not need two and a half hours of bloody build up before the match. It's called, like, overkill. No wonder Ma Canning starts pulling her hair out.
 

More football with the Champions League Final on Wednesday, and, as I'm writing this on Tuesday I obviously don't know what the score will be, but which I imagine will be immense fun. This one will certainly be watched in the pub and is likely to see me toppling off the no booze wagon in spectacular style – I have already booked Thursday off and will be answering no phone calls before 2pm.

And then there was Channel Four News last week, featuring many Rangers fans rioting in Manchester after their team lost the UEFA Cup. Or after a TV screen broke down, or whatever.

The scenes of these bellytastic, sunburned, topless oiks were quite fun to watch from the solitude of my sofa, although I do think C4 could have added the standard warning that "These scenes may cause some viewers distress". I have bleached my eyes twice and I can still see one guy's chest wobbling.
 

In other news, Cardinal Sean Brady said last week that soap operas are "undermining family life", leading me at first to think "And?", and then to ponder his words more carefully. With Roxy in Eastenders up the duff and not knowing who the da is (although, as Christian helpfully points out, at least she knows it's a choice between her sister's ex and the local psycho), Bianca, also in Albert Square, with her four kids all with different dads, and Eileen Grimshaw in Coronation Street doing her bit for repopulation, I thought at first the Cardinal had a point.

But then I saw the pattern in these cases. It's not about single mothers and feckless irresponsibility, it's about dads not looking after their own offspring. Although I doubt that's what the Cardinal meant.
 

On Monday night, I was surprised and impressed on a level not seen since our editor bought a round of drinks, as I was completely spoilt for choice for goggleboxing. There was some great stuff on, something which happens just enough for me to retain a pathetic faith in the medium of TV.

8pm saw Dispatches on the rise of Christian fundamentalism in Britian, something I'm always interested in finding out about in order to support my agnoticism, although, ahem, I didn't watch this particular ground-breaking study as I was watching Eastenders on the other side. I'm sure it was good though…

9pm on BBC2 had Class of 62: 16 to 60, the latest update on a group of women and what they've been doing since finishing school in 1962. The programme showed updates in 1983, 1995 and 2007, showing the women in a range of post school lives, from marrying in Switzerland and staying there until retiring to Italy, looking after a mother with Alzheimer's for 12 years and then taking a campervan around Europe, and one still looking after her son with Down's Syndrome, now aged 38.

It was brilliant TV – well-made, non-intrusive and even a bit sniffly and heart-warming. Why we have stuff like I'd Do Anything when TV can be like this I will never figure out.

Finally, David Tennant has recently been voted as the sexist male lead on TV, with 24 per cent of people saying one of the reasons they watch Doctor Who is for the eye candy. This should leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy at the idea that 24 per cent of the population agree with me, but actually has raised my competitive hackles at the idea of anyone else daring to go near him. Gerrroff!

Which is no doubt what Mr Tennant would say were he ever un/fortunate enough to meet me in a dark alley

Gyrating Oul Dolls and Hysterical Chefs

The F Word, Channel 4, Wednesday
Radio 1's Big Weekend in Maidstone, Kent, BBC3, Saturday
NI Wags, BBC1, Friday

This sunny weather is great. I have been skipping along the street merrily, not stabbing people when they bump into me and even almost smiling at a baby. (I draw the line however at being nice to those netball-bibbed charity muggers who line up in zigzags trying to ambush me along Royal Avenue. They will feel my wrath come rain wind or shine.)     

But, as it has been gleefully pointed out several times in the North Belfast News office, my writing tends to suffer when things are going my way. A TV page where I've spent the preceding week raging against the world and all the muppets and loser exes in it does, it has to be said, make better copy.

But fear not. No matter how loved up on the sun I am, some people will always be suitable for a good slap around the bake, Captain Hook style. Yes, Gordon Ramsay is back.

I'm writing this on Tuesday morning, ahead of the new series of The F Word starting on Wednesday night, but I'm already approaching levels of take-off not seen on this page since Chelsea from Eastenders got out of jail. This is mainly because even seeing Gordon Ramsay on TV, who makes me wish more than anyone else that I was allowed to swear in the paper, has me screeching at the telly like a demented harpy anyway, even before I listen to what nonsense is coming out of his shouty little mouth. But now he's taken it to even more levels of arrogance.

Not only did he say that restaurants should be fined for the environmental crime of using food out of season – yeah, not hypocritical at all Gordon, when you have a restaurant in Tokyo that imports foie gras from France and lamb from New Zealand – but he then started to slag off Delia for using tins and frozen spuds in her cooking.

"I can understand maybe if you're a student and you have 15 or 20 quid a week to spend on food, but for the rest of us—", he blabbered, showing all the more how pretentious and out of touch the modern chef is about the food we, the great unwashed, eat. When I was a student I had a fiver a week to spend on food; as a single gal I spend about £15 now, and Delia's latest series was about the only cooking programme I have ever seen that reflected how most people on a budget cook. We love Delia.

 

Gordon also said her approach was like kicking chefs 'in the goolies', leaving me slack-jawed in the struggle to know which statement to shout at the TV first – why is Gordon Ramsay so obsessed with his goolies, and that I'd happily kick him there for free.

Elsewhere, Madonna has been annoying me as well, particularly with her antics at the Radio 1 Big Weekend in Maidstone, Kent last weekend. Now, I'm all for women of 50 not having to act like women of 50 – if men that age can pretend they're 20, as this week's hideous displays of bare chests and man boobs (mits) have proven, so too should the gals – but Madonna really just needs to get out of all our goddamned faces. 

It was the gyrating with the guitar, the 'sexy' shoving of Justin Timberlake into a wall two weeks ago (personally I'd shove him under a speeding truck), the 'I'm 50 but I still look great because I don't eat anything but knitted lentils and spend eight hours a day working out' attitude. Go away, Madonna. I tire of you.

Finally, I haven't watched it yet, mainly out of concern for my stress and blood pressure levels, but boy have I heard a lot about BBCNI's latest pathetic offering for  us Northern plebs on a Friday night – NI Wags. Please write about it, pleaded one of the sports journalists in the office on Monday, still visibly in shock by how bad it was. Watch this space for next week. Vacuous millies twittering on about handbags and fashion? I am already cracking my knuckles in anticipation.

Derek's Bloody Dreams

Friday nights, BBCNI

Natalie Cassidy's Diet Secrets, BBC3

It's not often I agree with letters in the paper. Not the North Belfast News of course – we have quite a sensible readership in this neck of the woods – but the likes of the Tele, Irish News and their ilk. If the letters aren't from some mad religious type quoting three pages of the Bible, then they're listing every historical event from year dot as justification of why we should/should not accept/deny some new skulduggery from Stormont. It gets tedious. 

 Not so last week, as some goggleboxer wrote in, in wrath and enraged at BBCNI's output on weekend nights. No, it wasn't me, really. If BBCNI want to make and put on "local" programmes, the infuriated goggleboxer pointed out, fair enough. But show them on a bally weekday night or at some other time, rather than prime time on a Friday night.

This has long been a touchy subject of mine. Here be's me, having a nice quiet Friday night in, ready at 9 or 10pm to sit down and watch something decent. Something that other people were allowed to watch. But what would we get in Norn Iron? Give My Head Peace. Good Dog Bad Dog. Stephen Nolan on TV in Panic Attack, as if he's not annoying and obnoxious enough on the radio. 

Excuse me, but I'm going to shout here – WE DON'T WANT TO SEE LOCAL CRAP ON THE TELLY AT WEEKENDS. Or indeed, any other time. If you must make boring, cringeworthy, tedious crap like Derek's Dreams, show it at 2pm on BBC2 on a Sunday when sensible types will either be just crawling out from under their hangovers, or settling down to watch Easties. Grr.

More grr with Natalie Cassidy's Diet Secrets (BBC3), yet another programme looking at fad diets and the skinny celebrity craze. I started watching this all sympathetic towards Natalie – as Sonia in Eastenders she grew up (and outwards) in the most public way possible, but as the programme went on I started to see it as less an opportunity to explore the prevalence of fad diets and skinny culture on young women today, and more of an opportunity to explore, er, Natalie. 

Natalie went on the maple syrup diet – having only maple syrup to the tune of only 360 calories a day; the cabbage soup diet – self-explanatory, and makes you fart; and the fingernail diet – eating a fingernail portion of food every 14 minutes (who the hell makes these up?). After days of starvation and heart palpitations, she came to the conclusion that fad diets are Bad. Thanks Natalie.

She lost her own four stone by eating healthily and exercising, and fair play to her too. But, in a programme where she derides the magazines like Heat and Closer for obsessing about women's weight and promoting crazy diets (sniff a grapefruit before eating was one memorable piece of advice), she was also buying them. She railed against the diet industry's feeding of myths to women, yet presented her own statement as fact – fad diets make you fat. There is proof that they do, but the way she went up to a group of young women on the street and proclaimed this as gospel, without offering any facts to back it up, shows both that she is a poor documentary maker and that many young women will swallow anything about the diet industry. As long as it doesn't have too many calories, that is. 

She got one thing right though – even if was more by chance than anything else – the extreme skinniness culture has become much more pervasive in the past five years or so. Look at the women in Friends – going from slim in the first few series to genuinely emaciated in the last. Will the bubble burst? Natalie wonders, concluding that it won't, because "people are too into reading about this". Well, stop buying the bloody magazines then, Natalie.

I hence declare a boycott. Not that I read Heat and the like – I do like reading brain mush, but prefer Take a Break and Enid Blyton – but I am watching no more stupid diet programmes, 10 Years Younger, You Are What You Eat or any other sort of nonsense like it. Enough. Maybe I should go back on the drink.

Crying Into Their Beer

Premier League: Manchester United v Liverpool, Sky Sports, Easter Sunday
Lee Evans XL Tour 2005, Channel 4, Saturday

"happy easter mct r u going to watch the scum," read my dad’s text to me on Easter Sunday morning. At 57, he has finally mastered text messaging, if not punctuation, and I was quite chuffed by this Easterly greeting. Plus, it reminded me in the nick of time to get out of my jammies, trowel some slap on and get mineself down to the pub for the footie.

"I forgot you were a Man U fan," said the disgruntled sports journalist to me this morning, when I happily asked him if he’d seen the footie at the weekend. Yes indeedy. I’m not as bad as Da Canning though, who is not only a rabid Man U fan but a rabid anti-Liverpool fan, actually booting the sofa after Liverpool’s victory over AC Milan in the 2005 Champion’s League final (myself, Ma Canning and the dog had fled for cover when the third goal went in).

But this is not why I’m writing about the footie on the TV page this week. Really. (Hee.) After years of doing it, it struck me on Sunday that I hadn’t yet written about one of my favourite goggleboxing experiences – watching footie in the pub.

It’s great gas, so t’is. Even if you’re not supporting any particular team, it’s still loads of craic watching grown men ooh, aah, and cry into their beer. It’s even more fun when you’re a girlie, as guys cast sideways glances at you, wondering if you’ve been dragged there by a boyfriend or if you’re actually a "real" fan. (I like to play on this stereotype of people with wombs not being able to be proper football fans by telling anyone who tries to chat me up that I support Man U because I like the colour of their strip.)

Watching the match on Sunday was one of the best footie pub experiences I’ve had, and no, not just because of the result. We ended up standing beside a bunch of stalwarts, all Liverpool fans bar one, and there was great banter for the first while, at least until I came back from having a smoke to find the bar in uproar and Mascerano having a hissy fit on the screen after being sent off. (Quite right too. Don’t argue with the ref, primadonna football players. And Ashley Cole should have been sent off against Spurs as well.)

The rest of the match saw several grown men crying into their beer, with my favourite moments eavesdropping the extreme spin, justification, and ref-blaming among the Liverpool fans, and the guy in the Liverpool top who shamefacedly put his hoodie on over it at full time. It was so good I decided to ignore my usual afternoon drinking rule and stay on for the Chelsea/Arsenal match, the best bit of which was the guy in the corner sprint towards the screen with his pint every time Chelsea got close to scoring. Great stuff.

More great stuff with Lee Evans on Saturday night (Channel 4) , a comedian I always found quite annoying but revised my opinion of after seeing his latest tour show. (Yes, I can occasionally change my mind. Didn’t I even say last month that Deano from Eastenders can act after all?) It’s still on 4OD for anyone who wants to see the show, and, one of the bits I liked best, his singing the Welsh national anthem at the end.

Sadly I can’t share the best of his, em, adult jokes in a family newspaper but suffice to say that if you do watch it, look out for the "men and women sharing a bath" sketch, especially the bit about men lowering themselves into the scalding water with a certain piece of their anatomy stretched up behind their ears. It’s funny cos it’s true…

Pramface Babies, Channel 4, Thursday
Wonderland: The Curious World of Frinton-On-Sea, BBC2, Wednesday

It has been quite an odd week. There has been some great stuff on the telly, such as a couple of excellent documentaries and several programmes on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion. (Just in case that sounds like I’ve gone all highbrow, I’m looking forward more to Max apparently getting buried alive in Enders this week.) Delia opened more jars and packets in the kitchen, happily enraging food critics up and down the land and even leading to one of our news journalists to sadly opine that she’s lost it. Delia that is, not our news journalist, although it could probably accurately be said that the jury is still out on that one.

But, as I have found since starting this column, my view of the goggleboxing can be coloured a tad by what is happening in my life at the time. The best week in TV ever, which was close enough this week, means nothing if I am watching it through a scowl and wishing violent death on all concerned. Yes, even Bargain Hunt. It has not been a good week.

But it would have put anyone in a bad mood, watching Channel 4’s offensively titled Pramface Babies last Thursday, following four young mothers from Liverpool as they gave birth to their bairns. It opened with 19 year old Laura, sprawled on a hospital bed about to go into labour, with her mobile clamped to one ear as she tried to track down the errant father. She ended up giving birth without him and months later was still forlornly saying to the camera that she hoped they had a future together. "Sorry to disturb you," she said to errant dad’s mum  "but I’m giving birth to your grandchild here."

Linzi was in hospital having her second child to her boyfriend, in genuinely disturbing scenes as her mum and idiotic spidey other half told her during labour to "stop moaning and just get on with it." I knew as soon as Linzi hit twelve that she’d be coming home pregnant, her vile mum said, clearly not caring about labelling theories and self-fulfilling prophecies.

It was good, strong TV, and very interesting if sad to watch, but through it all there was a sneaking sense of a "let’s laugh at the poor people" approach from the director. Quotes from the four young women, about things like finding someone to love and to love them, were put up on the screen to frame segments of the programme, and may as well have had "Laugh here" on them. Worst of all was the title Pramface, a term given to the Vicky Pollard style of parenting with WKD swigging mums swapping their babies for Westlife CDs, but not applicable here. Someone isn’t automatically an ASBO candidate just because they’re poor, something that shouldn’t even need said. Still, best contraceptive I’ve seen on TV for a while.

More exploitative yet fascinating stuff with The Curious World of Frinton-On-Sea, (BBC2, Wednesday), looking at the longer-term residents of the seaside town, many of whom had been there for decades. It was a very well made film, but again, had an even clearer sense that the director was inviting us to make fun of people who had done nothing wrong except be born as the people they were. There has been some fallout from the show, with most of the criticism focused on the fact that director Mark Isaac seemed to hone in on the more vulnerable residents, without telling them exactly what the Wonderland series – a look at eccentrics – was about. Margaret, the curio shop owner who confessed to having a long standing crush on fellow resident Geoffrey, clearly had some mental issues and was only in the programme to laugh at. Nothing wrong with a portrait of lonely residents in a small town, but there are better ways to do it. So there.

But anyhoo. Tanya flips in Eastenders this week and tries to bury Max alive. Not that I’m saying my less than great week had anything to do with men, but, well, hell hath no fury…You go, girl.

F**king Frozen Potatoes

Phone Rage, Channel 4, Thursday
Delia, BBC2, Monday
White Girl, BBC2, Monday
10 Days to War, BBC1, Monday

It has been claimed by many in recent years that call centres are the "modern mills". The situation of workers chained to their desks by their headsets, with their loo breaks timed and having to be back at their desks literally on the second after a break, may not sound as bad as sooty-faced Dickensian orphans spluttering their way up chimneys while being pitchforked on the bum by evil Fagan types, but that’s only because you’ve never worked in a call centre.

Phone Rage (Channel 4, Thursday), brought back all those deep-repressed memories of my year in a call centre in 1999, quite literally the worst, most demoralising and most depressing job I have ever had. Doubtless my lily-livered editor will not allow me to mention the phone company I worked for during this year of hell, but suffice to say it was one of the major ones, with one of the first mobile phone networks, and one where you could ring up and find out the numbers of companies anywhere in the UK.

"Anywhere in the UK" was the problem. The contract for this had been "outsourced" to Belfast - in other words, we work cheaper over here so our wages were unlikely to cut too much into the few billion quids’ worth of profit made by Ma Bell. This meant we were not only very busy – 90 calls an hour was the average – but that every fourth or fifth call was an enraged person from Birmingham or Oxford furious that me in Belfast did not know the name of the shop next to Boots on the High Street, and so could not give them the number.

(I was called a "thick Irish bitch" quite a few times, but this just made me chortle and remember the time I asked some chavette in London whether she meant "N for November" and was told, No, n for knife, innit?. Or the time I was asked for a number in Canning Town, and then asked if I was spelling it correctly. Yes, I said, it’s my surname, so I do know how to spell it. Wot? said the amazed Cockney on the other end of the line. Your surname’s Canning Town?)

So, and very probably not what the programme makers intended the reaction to be, my rage was directed at the customers and not the call centre staff. Yes, I know it is infuriating, and I have been enraged on hold myself, but, people, it is not the fault of the poor minimum waged or studenty types on the other end of the phone. Be nice to the mill workers, everyone.

My ire was quenched somewhat by Delia Smith’s new programme on BBC2 on Monday night, quite self-confidently just called "Delia", and giving tips on how to cheat at cooking. Now, as someone whose cooking is what can most kindly be called a bit hit and miss – most of the stuff I make is passable, sometimes it’s stinking and very occasionally I manage a delicious fluke (usually when I add half a bottle of wine to whatever I have in the cauldron) – I was very interested in this, and now Deila, using tinned mince and frozen spuds for her shepherd’s pie, is my new hero.

It’s all the more amusing as it gives me even more ammunition in my "chefs are pretentious gits" rants, as I imagine the likes of Gordon Ramsay going apopoleptically purple and screaming about "f**king frozen potatoes!!" As Delia said, it’s eating. It’s fun, and important, but not that much so.

And how nice to see a cooking programme where the recipes don’t call for you to walk miles in green wellies to pay twenty quid for a sprig of herbs at an organic farm. As one of my favourite quotes goes, life’s too damn short to stuff bloody mushrooms (OK, I might have added the sweary bits).

Lots of swearing after Delia in White Girl (BBC2, Monday), part of the Beeb’s tedious White season, a 90 minute drama about a family fleeing to Bradford to escape the mum’s abusive partner. They are the only white family in the area, the three children are the only white pupils at the local school, and, after mum Debbie takes loser husband Steve back, 11 year old daughter Leah soon finds solace in Islam.

Debbie and Steve react with predictable rage; Debbie then goes to the local mosque and by the end of the drama, mother and daughter are reunited after Debbie finds the strength and inner peace to kick Steve out.

"In a way, this is a love story between a mother and a daughter: they’re both trying to reach each other," says actor Anna Maxwell Martin, who played Debbie. This is the main reason I felt uncomfortable about what could have been a good stand-alone drama – everyone comes to art with their own agenda, and watching White Girl, the main thing I saw was a victim of domestic violence finding the strength to be on her own. The film would have been fine, and better, if it had just stuck to this.

The religious element was unnecssary and, especially in the scene where Leah "repels" stepdad Steve by chanting an Islamic prayer at him, patronising. Religion, whether Islam or anything else, was seen as a wonderful answer to this messed up situation and messed up kid, and the scene where Debbie says "I divorce you" to Steve three times, as in Islamic law, was also patronising, in its suggestion that it is only when Debbie started thinking about her life in Islamic terms that she was able to articulate what she needed to say to break free from Steve. A reasonable enough film that, like pretty much everything in the world, would have been much better by leaving the religion out.

Next up was 10 Days to War (BBC2, Tuesday), the start of ten ten-minute shorts portraying the lead up to the invasion of Iraq five years ago. It wasn’t very good, and, as Jeremy Paxman said on Newsnight afterwards, does it matter now? Figures on the death toll in Iraq over the past five years vary from 600,000 to just over a million, so questions on legality five years on are mostly academic.

But still, they need to be asked, and asked again, even if the BBC has chosen a pretty crap way of doing it (and given it the validation of calling it a war instead of what it was, which was an invasion).

The five year anniversary of the invasion is the focus of this Saturday’s demonstration starting at the Arts College, as is the probable upcoming invasion of Iran. It won’t bring back the million in Iraq, but it might stop a million more. Demo starts at 2pm.

Chop 'Em Off

Eastenders, BBC1, Thursday
Eunuchs, Channel 4, Tuesday

I have had fun this past week. It was my birthday on Friday, with resulting party, presents of birthday cake and bottles of wine, and so many empties in the flat on the Saturday morning that I am embarrassed to put them in the communal bin (yes, they’re still there on Monday). I have moved house again and am now closer to Lavery’s, and Spud’s. And I have been happily torturing all and sundry with the idea of Ian Beale’s sex face, based on my usual reasoning that if I have to suffer so does everyone else too, so there.

I was and am still mightily traumatised by last Tuesday’s promiscuous serial killer leer from Mr Beale, but there was really no excuse for Eastenders to then on Thursday show the man padding about his living room clad only in his keks. They looked like plain black knickers from the half second I saw them before snapping my eyes tight tight shut, but of course this was not how I described them to a roomful to people on Friday night.

Posing pouch, is the phrase I used. There were screeches, yells, and even threats of violence against my person for introducing such a concept to people who don’t even watch the show. I didn’t care though, because I was on the floor laughing like a loon at this point. It was the way wife Jane screamed when she saw him and said nervously that maybe they "could just have a cuddle" that night that really got me. But now, having been forced to think about Ian Beale in the nip for two weeks straight, I’ll shut up.

In a similar vein, I’ve just related to our photographer in great detail the contents of Channel 4’s documentary Eunuchs last week. It’s quite interesting, and most amusing, to see men’s faces when informed of this topic. It was certainly the quietest I’ve ever seen the male friend I watched it with.

The documentary followed four men, three in the US and one in Britain, who had all decided to have themselves voluntarily castrated. (I’ll pause at this point for any male readers to wince, cross their legs and check to make sure everything’s still there.)

Two of the men had already had the procedure done, one was about to have the procedure, and the fourth, which was the most amusing part of the documentary simply by virtue of my friend’s face when watching it, was trying to do it himself with a burdizzo, an instrument of torture looking pretty much like a huge pair of pliers.

This man came across like an attention-seeking idiot, choosing to tell his sister the news by brandishing a burdizzo at her, making her guess what it was for, and having the cameras present throughout. She played it like a trooper though, trying to hide her obvious shock and act supportive.

This was the same for the mum of 20 year old Zachary, who travelled with him to have the operation done and who was clearly completely confused and bewildered by the whole thing. It’s difficult to say whether it might in fact have been more effective for her to smack him across the head and tell him to wise the feck up, but, having presumably decided that it wasn’t, watching her struggle to deal with her son choosing to have his nads chopped off was actually kind of heartbreaking.

It was the same for his old-fashioned type dad, who, when he heard the news, was clearly struggling with trying to be supportive of whatever mad scheme his son had come up with now, versus screaming at him something along the lines of what the hell he thought he was doing. Once again I’m glad I’m not a parent.

I have had immense fun this Monday morning "discussing" (read: "relentlessly describing") this programme to the mostly male staff in the newsroom, who have all turned interesting shades of green while declaring it sounds like a mad programme and they’re glad they didn’t see it. Mr Editor, who appears to have been forced to watch it by the females in his household, somewhat wimpily says he left the living room halfway through, although he claims this was more to do with what he thought was a poor documentary than any pressing concern for his nads.

Doubtless me saying I enjoyed the documentary will invite unkind comments about the range of my feminism, but I enjoyed it simply because it’s always fascinating seeing just what we crazy humans can get up to. The one flaw in it though was that it just profiled the four men, without any sciencey bits or attempts by a shrink to explain why someone would want to do this to themselves. This made it feel more like car crash type TV, so nicely satirised in That Mitchell and Webb look by a fake programme called "The Boy With An Arse For a Face".

Still. A good show, made all the much better by watching it with a bloke, and particularly enjoyable to imagine applying it to one Mr Keith Macdonald, from Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, who is about to become a dad for the seventh time. At 21. By seven different women. While unemployed and not supporting any of the seven financially. Does this eunuch-ism have to be voluntary?

Pick On Someone Your Own Size

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Channel 4, Wednesday
Eastenders, BBC1
Pulling, BBC2, Monday
50 Most Shocking Comedy Moments, Channel 4, Wednesday

There has been goggleboxing galore over the past two weeks! I have no idea where I found the time, since my mates have now all happily fallen off the wagon and I have rejoined them in the mosh pits so often since February hit that I fear for my liver and that cooking, as opposed to slinging another pizza in the oven, has become a lost and exotic art. (This is not as bad as the bad consequence though, when my bank card swore at me yesterday at the ATM outside Tesco’s and saw me at the shop not ten minutes ago peering pathetically into the caverns of my purse and wrestling with the age-old decision of milk versus ciggies. I’m sure it would surprise no-one which I chose.)

And what’s been even more fun is that most of my goggleboxing has been done in houses other than my own, meaning not only do I get fed and get to laze around on someone else’s sofa introducing them to the joys of Eastenders, I am also able to watch Freeview and Sky as everyone else on the planet can afford to have more than the terrestrial five channels. (You’d think as a TV critic type person the North Belfast News would pay for a Freeview box for me, but apparently not.)

This of course means I am occasionally forced to watch stuff I would normally rather stick needles in my eyes rather than flick over to, such as last week at the house of one of the news journalists. Lured into a false sense of security by mushroom pasta, a few glasses of wine and Channel 4’s 50 Most Shocking Comedy Moments (which was brilliant), I was then told we were to watch Gordon Ramsay in Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, USA style.

For the happily uninitiated, this has la Ramsay going to failing restaurants in the Land of the Free ™, telling them in his inimitable Gordon style just where they’re going wrong and how being more like him will ensure they’re going right. Hmm.

Many people who know me know I do not like chefs. Most of them pat me on the head and cluck sympathetically when I say this, as they know I once went out with one of the breed and so they assume this is the source of my ire. But it goes back much further than that. Watching a chef like Gordon Ramsay on TV, throwing a hissy fit and a spatula across the kitchen, has for years raised my heckles and my blood pressure as I throw something of my own at the TV and scream my standard chef-hating phrase: "It’s only food! It’s not a cure for cancer!"

So of course I kicked, screamed, moaned and complained about the decision to watch Gordon. And then kicked, screamed, moaned and complained as I got sucked into it and had to draw the life-shattering conclusion that Gordon came off rather well in it.

To be fair (to my hatred of chefs), this was only because Michel, the owner of the naff restaurant Gordon was sent in to save, was even more chef-like than the standard of the species. Just as I will appear relatively sober and normal against the orange-legged hot-panted millies who insist on trying to take over the beer garden in Lavery’s (over my small dead body), so even Gordon Ramsay seemed like less of a colossal prat compared to a small French chef jumping up and down incandescent with rage. Over food.

But fear not, the world has not stopped, for I am back to hating Ramsay once again. This relief came from watching an old episode of Have I Got News For You, which made me feel even more like a pleb because the house I watched this one in had a recorder type thingummy device which meant we could go to the pub on Saturday to watch the footie (Liverpool out, Man U in, oh happy happy day), stay beyond that, and still get to indulge my geekdom afterwards.

If someone is going to rant, stomp and throw their weight about, my reasoning has always been that they should be consistent about it and do it to everyone, not only those smaller or perceived as weaker than themselves. I believe the phrase is "picking on someone your own size".

It was clearly easy for Gordon to be Gordon to Michel the chef, yelling at him in front of and for the cameras, but oh my how he was outclassed by Paul Merton and Ian Hislop when presenting Have I Got News For You, with barely a peep out of him when getting slagged off. The change in him was obvious, cowardly, and genuinely distasteful. Did I mention I don’t like chefs?

Elsewhere, Deano is back in Eastenders, and I found myself actually pleasantly surprised. The whole "I got mean and bitter in prison" thing was completely overdone, but it was a refreshing change to see that Matt di Angelo, as a snarling, vodka-swilling, unshaven wide boy, can actually act. Much more fun to watch. Tiana Benjamin as Chelsea though is still throw-stuff-at-the-TV annoying, and even though new girl Clare deserves a good slap around the face with a gently humming chainsaw, long may she continue to annoy Chelsea in the salon.

I also got caught up on Pulling, which has finally made it from BBC3 to us great unwashed on BBC2. The TV programme Pulling I got caught up on that is, not the other form, which…er…anyway, it is tres amusing, it is, and gets the line of the week from me when the girlies ended up at the bingo on a hen night. Yes, I know. Bingo. On a hen night. I was just as disgusted at this shift in the universal standards of what constitutes a good night out as one of the characters, who loudly bemoaned the fact that a £20 admission fee into said bingo included three whole units of alcohol.

"Three units?" she spluttered. "There’s more than that in my urine. Double vodkas all round!"

This was good enough, until she gently enquired of a more lightweight lady what she would like from the bar.

"What about you love? Something soft? Hooch? Carlsberg?"

A woman after my own heart.

There are many times I feel sorry for myself. All the way through January, any time I have to leave my sofa, and when I ponder whether I am in fact the only person on this green earth not to like Big Brother. But none more so than when I am sick. So Friday saw me on the sofa, under my blankie, bemoaning the TV gods yet again for the lack of telly. It was daytime telly this time, so it was even worse.

It was yet another time in recent months when I found myself in extravagant praise of 4OD. I found Comedy Live Presents, with Russell Brand, which I watched pretty much because it was on the first page of 4OD and I couldn’t be bothered scrolling down any more. But it was very good, it was. I can’t quite explain the origin of the gag that had Russell Brand fantasising about grabbing the Queen’s boob, but rest assured it was very funny indeed. Comedian Michael McIntyre’s diatribe against that strange six day period between Christmas and New Year where you don’t know what’s happening ("Is the TV still good? Do I have to go back to work? IS THERE POST?!!") was very good too, although sorry to say the only Irish comedian on, David O’Doherty, was in fact very poo. (I did like Russell Brand’s pointing out though that as "an Irish gentleman" O’Doherty seemed to have been placed on a little performance area islanded away from the main stage. Heh.)

But Comedy Live Presents was a one-off, according to the moguls at Channel 4, to which I say boo. More please.

I was feeling somewhat better after this comedy therapy, at least enough to ring a friend and demand he come over with Wotsits and fruit juice and sit on the sofa with me to mop my fevered brow. Once again while watching TV with a male friend I found myself fighting for dominance of the remote control, meaning that while I got to watch Eastenders because quite frankly there was going to be an almighty temper tantrum if I didn’t, I then had to watch Derren Brown on Channel 4, because there were horses in it (yes, my friend, like my dad, is a gambler).

I don’t really like Derren Brown, namely because he’s a bit smug and because he spells his name in a stupid way, but he’s not as annoying as, say, David Blaine, so I settled down to watch this without (too much) moaning, although my friend was sent out to the shop to get more Wotsits as penance.

Anyhoo. This new Derren extravaganza was called "The System", where he claimed he could predict the outcome of horse racing and guarantee winners every time. Naturally every gambling type up and down the land was glued to it with notebook and pen, as was everyone on Betfair.com who no doubt thought all their Christmases had come at once.

"Investigating the psychology behind gambling and using his unique combination of skills to create guaranteed success, Derren proves his skills work every time," boasts the Channel 4 blurb. Er, not so.

The programme featured a young woman from London, who had been getting anonymous tips for the races in the form of a "System", and who won her bets five times in a row. After the fifth time, when she was a grand up, she was taken to meet the man behind the system – our own Mr Brown, who was wearing a particularly horrible camel-coloured coat. You know the system works, he told her – are you prepared to risk all the money you can raise on the sixth race?

Four grand was duly begged and borrowed, and put on a horse at Newbury a few days later. Then Derren explained his "system", which wasn’t a system at all but which had seen him take over 7000 people, split them into six groups, and give each group the name of one horse. Five of the groups lost, and the remaining group was again split into six, and again each group given a horse to bet on (come on, keep up). And so on for the five races, when there was only one person left standing.

Personally if I’d been that one person, and had only been told of this scam after putting my four borrowed grand on a horse where there was only a 1/6 chance of winning, I’d have smacked Derren Brown. The horse duly lost, the woman was suitably devastated, and Derren then predictably produced his trump card - he had actually backed the winner for her after all!

This was really stupid TV, and was completely misrepresented by Channel 4. No, I didn’t expect to be able to learn a system for betting on the gee-gees, but unlike most of Derren Brown’s other stuff, there was nothing interesting behind this at all, only a simple numbers game. It was pretty much a scam. I also think that the self-righteous blurb at the end of the show, saying that all the participants had whatever money they’d lost refunded, was a complete cop-out. Nothing at all to address the fact that most of these unwitting guinea pigs had probably never gambled before, and were now very likely going to do it again.

Now I don’t mind irresponsible TV. I don’t even mind sick TV. But bad TV? Pah.

Of Damien and Babysitting

Panorama, BBC1, Monday

The Omen, BBC1, Saturday

The TV is still rubbish. I don’t know whether, writing this after the grim dark month of January is just ending, it’s just me at this stage. Perhaps I enjoyed the Christmas telly too much (that’ll teach me to get my hopes up). Perhaps all men should be lined up against the wall and shot (although I did meet a nice one last week, so may reprieve y’all for a bit yet. I said "may").

Or maybe, perhaps I should give up on the TV page, and in fact other such mundanities as work, paying rent, and trying to get out of bed in the mornings (seriously, what for? It’s winter). I keep eyeing my backpack in a wistful, pathetic fashion, imagining it in its proper home on an Australian beach rather than crumpled up at the bottom of my wardrobe.

And what do the TV gods crap upon our heads just as we’re all miserable and depressed and have no money to go out? Crap, that’s what. Striptease what was Channel 4 offered us on Friday night, after School of Rock, which isn’t a bad film but which wasn’t good enough for a Friday night. I was in worse form because I only got home from work at 11pm (damn you, Cassidy’s after work pints), and had a choice of Striptease, Jonathan Ross, Newsnight Review or The Late News.

Thank the gods once again for 4 On Demand, where I watched the last two episodes of the brilliant Peep Show I’d been keeping for just such an emergency, and dipped into different series of Drop the Dead Donkey, which now comes across as a bit dated but which is still very chucklesome if you work in a newsroom.

About the only thing I went out of my way to watch this week was Monday night’s Panorama, where former Blur bassist Alex James went to Colombia to investigate the effects of the cocaine trade there. James was apparently qualified for this as he spent a million quid in his Blur days on champagne and cocaine, so received a letter from Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Velez inviting him to Colombia to see first-hand how taking cocaine in a Western society impacts on the country of origin.

Colombia supplies 80 per cent of the world’s cocaine, to an annual value of £56 billion, and as such is subject to "official" government led measures such as coca crops being routinely sprayed from the air to destroy them, as well as the violence, murder and trafficking the industry creates. James went out with the spraying teams, met coca farmers and dealers, and talked to the Colombian president about what he thought could be done to address the problem.

But the programme was quite disappointing in the end. Given just half an hour, it was only possible to skim the surface of an extensive problem, and sending a celeb instead of an investigative journalist in what just looked like a gimmicky stunt by Panorama, considerably lessened the impact of the debate. James didn’t address at all the issue of legalisation, which, no matter what your views on drugs, would seem a likely way to end the violence and misery caused by trafficking.

He was also very weak on the practical issue of a farmer making $550 per month growing coca, as opposed to $132 a month growing other crops - if the Colombian government, and the White House in their ubiquitous "war on drugs", were serious about ending the trade, they should be asked if they are willing to make up this shortfall to the farmers who grow the coca in Colombia, or the poppies in Thailand and Burma.

James was there much more as an observer rather than a journalist, something which seriously marred the programme in not having these questions asked, and, not too sound too much like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, not what I expect from a supposedly serious documentary such as Panorama.

Saturday TV was just as bad as Friday’s (thank the gods for the Crescent Arts Centre monthly night this Saturday so I don’t have to suffer again this weekend). I was babysitting my goddaughter and her brother on Saturday night, making me rue the day I’d offered since it meant a few mates were actually going out at last but I was going to miss it. (But maybe that’s why I was asked to babysit.) The kids were quiet so it was fine, and as my mate has cable I was able to watch Police Academy 3 on ITV4 as well as rifle through his Family Guy DVDs (I think he had the "real" stash hidden).

But then I made the mistake of watching The Omen (BBC1), which was somewhat inconsiderately shown just before midnight, making those of us in other people’s houses and thus not knowing where all the creaky noises were coming from cower under the duvet and think about "accidentally" waking the kids up to use as a shield between me and any anti-Christ type figures lurking at the window.

Although I’m now a committed atheist - yes, yes, "should be committed, more like", move along - The Omen still has the power to scare me witless. Being brought up Catholic means that I actually believed that stuff as a kid, and that even now as an adult I can’t watch something like The Omen without a disturbing thought of "But what if...?" creeping into my overtaxed dome. It’s the music as well. As soon as it starts I have a Pavlovian dog reaction of goosebumps rising, heart hammering, and thoughts of going to mass the next day. My fears were not calmed when I feel asleep on the sofa and was woken at 3am by my scary-looking goth mate arriving home and knocking on the living room window.

Still, great stuff. But I have no idea why the powers that be then decided to remake the film a few years ago. There’s nothing wrong with the original, and that kid as Damien is the most creepy looking youngster I have ever seen. Yes, even more than the ones I was babysitting.

Pap, Paxo and the January Blues

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? ITV1, Tuesday

Deal Or No Deal, Channel 4, Wednesday
The Weakest Link, BBC2, Thursday 

My mates are all a bunch of gits. They have responded not to requests, pleas, or threats against their person. No, they bleat pathetically, I’m seeing this non-drinking thing through to the end of January. Their excuses for this are equally pathetic, ranging from detoxing to being skint to "wanting to get fit". (Ha. The most exercise most of them get is carrying three pints at once back from the bar.)

I hold no truck with this. If they’d ignored Christmas like wot I did, and only bought presents for small people under five, they would not be in the financial mess that has enforced exile on us all throughout January. Detoxing is what you do from Sundays to Thursdays, and as for getting fit, if a few of them actually walked everywhere like normal people throughout the year instead of heaving their flabby unfit arses into the car to drive ten feet to buy their Crunchies, they wouldn’t be inflicting all this "getting into training" nonsense on the rest of us.

Bitter? Moi? So would you be if you were getting cabin fever to the extent that you fear for others’ safety (no, woman in Tesco’s, the way to get me to move forward that half inch in the queue that is clearly so vital to your speedy shopping experience is NOT to bump my arse with your shopping basket). 

Adding insult to injury in a month where the world seems to have stopped, there was complete pap on the TV this past week. The only thing I actually made an effort to watch was Eastenders, and even that was crap. Teen tearaway Jay has joined up with some bigger, tougher teen tearaways, who made the kind of overtures to him normally associated with bum-flashing baboons, offering him a phone and a knife as well as following him around asking if he was going to be about later. Yeah, cos teen gangs are that desperate for recruits...

However, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was great craic on Tuesday night, largely because of the reactions of my parents during my most recent sporadic visit to Craigavon.

As the line goes in The Animals’ House of the Rising Sun, my father is a gambler. (He doesn’t go from town to town, although perhaps my mum would prefer him to.) Nothing serious of course - a wee flutter on the gee-gees of a Saturday and the odd game of poker, but he does have the mindset that it’s better to take a chance at brilliance than to sit safe in mediocrity. As such, Tuesday’s Millionaire had him apoleptic with rage, exceeded only by the time Liverpool came back from 3-0 down to beat AC Milan in the Champions’ League.

It concerned every contestant on, who clearly either knew the answer or who was at least 80 per cent sure of it, but decided they would use a lifeline "just to be sure". For Pete’s sake, shouted my dad after the third contestant did this (well, he didn’t say "Pete’s", but I’ll leave that to your imagination), you know the bloody answer, so say it. It should be renamed Who Wants To Win £10,000, Ma Canning noted sagely afterwards, and she was right.

Deal Or No Deal is another one people shout at the TV for. I watch Deal or No Deal sometimes, if only to gaze in horrified fascination at Noel Edmonds’ clothes (the shirts are bad enough, but tucked into the tight jeans? Ye gads). But I generally avoid it, because of its long drawnoutedness (yes, that’s a word), and the way Noel Edmonds insists on trying to get the maximum drama out of every little, insignificant second. Chris Tarrant used to do the same in earlier series of Millionaire, before he wised up.

Because of this, I watch Deal Or No Deal the way I watch most TV - while doing something else at the same time and only tuning in for the important bits. But this only works in Belfast. Watching it in Craigavon while reading meant I was interrupted at every box by Ma Canning, who kept shouting in from the kitchen "Has she found the £250,000 yet?"

As Ma Canning was making dinner for us all at the time, while I lazed on the sofa, I refrained from comment. Also, she was holding a heavy saucepan.

But absolutely the worst presenter I have ever seen in a quiz show is Anne Robinson in The Weakest Link. Now, The Weakest Link is a brilliant idea for a TV show. Pitting people against each other for anything, but especially for money, is like sitting back and holding a magnifying glass above an anthill.

But the programme is ruined for me by Anne Robinson’s stupid pseudo-tough gal act, quizzing the contestant between rounds and clearly thinking she’s funny. Nope Anne, you ain’t. And another thing (it might be time to duck now), stop slagging people off for being stupid when you can’t even pronounce some of the words in the questions properly. And another thing (eek), your wink at the end is not funny, clever or sexy. It’s bloody annoying.

Last Thursday’s Weakest Link was won by Nichola from Ballymena - apparently the ’h’ is important - whose sensible haircut, clothes and specs on what was a woman presumably in her 20s screamed "god bothering" and made me not want her to win. She also voted off the last man standing against the last other woman, giving as her excuse that "we girls have to stick together". Pah to that, Nichola with your h. Such underhanded tactics only reinforce the view that we girlies can get nowhere without them. Hang your big Ballymena head in shame.

And finally, speaking of pants (yes we were), Jeremy Paxman has emailed Marks & Spencer to complain about the declining standards of their men’s knickers and socks.

"Their pants no longer provide adequate support," Paxo said this week after his email to Marksies was leaked, adding that the socks "appear to be wearing out much faster" than usual, even with "rigorous" toenail clipping.

Now, I like Paxo. It warmed even the cockles of my Tesco-homicidin’ heart when I saw him sniffling in Who Do You Think You Are? But to think about Paxo’s pants, regardless of their "support level" is to think too much. Go back to haranguing government ministers, Jeremy.

Nuclear

Eastenders, BBC1, Friday
The One Show, BBC1, Monday
Elephant Diaries, BBC1, Thursday
Shameless, 4OD

Despite most people seeming to think I am a hardened, cynical type when they first meet me – probably because this is usually on nights out, where I am smoking like a train and swearing like a trooper – surprise is often expressed at further meetings that I am actually a trusting, gullible soul. I just, genuinely, really, don’t think people lie to me, because, despite my many (many) faults, I don’t usually lie to them. (I said usually. OK then, size does matter and your arse does look big in that, so there.)

A few of my friends have caught on to this in recent years and now take shameless advantage, telling me they once motorbiked across Australia in the nip, or that the word "gullibility" isn’t found in the dictionary. (Shane, hang your head in shame.) I think this is very poor form, much akin to making fun of the disabled. It’s not my fault that I can’t see why people would be bothered to lie, and so I generally believe what they say. (I’ll just quickly point out before Mr Editor goes bananas that this relates to personal interaction only and not a work situation where I have to interview a nasty corporate.)

But my tendency to believe what I hear means that people in the pub can have great fun at my expense, as my standard response to their claims that they’re a brain surgeon or that they were shot in the stomach when an innocent bystander to an armed robbery is to say "Really?", either out of not wanting to call someone a dirty stinking liar (occasionally), or because my poor naïve self actually believes their lies (often).

I was reminded of this while watching Eastenders last Friday, when poor Honey was sat down by evil Ronny and told that, while everyone in the Vic absolutely loved Honey, Billy and their two kids staying in the front room, it might be a bit dangerous for Billy as maneater Roxy was head over heels in love with him.

"Really?" said an open-mouthed Honey, making me cringe and hide under the duvet in embarrassment at my own more gullible moments. "Mind you, my Billy does have that effect on women." Ah, the power of lurve…
(And that’s all that will be said on the power of lurve for quite some time, as when I nipped over to the shop on Monday morning for milk and fags they had their Valentine’s display out already. Grr.)

I was internetless for most of the first two weeks in the new house, a state of affairs I would have assessed as showing how worryingly dependent I am on the web, if I hadn’t been so busy climbing the goddamn walls. I never realised before what a goggleboxing gap there is between 7 and 8pm (end of news to Eastenders). So I found myself watching The One Show and Elephant Diaries quite a bit, as it was easier than getting up and switching the TV off after Newsline. Yes, I know this lazy streak of mine is something I need to work on. That’s a resolution for 2009, after I spend this year quitting smoking, getting fit and becoming nice.

Both shows are not bad, both are fairly inoffensive, but both don’t need to be on quite so much. The One Show just reminds me that there is still an hour to go until Eastenders, and I now get a sinking feeling in my tum when the theme music starts, knowing it signals the start of an hour of fidgetiness waiting for the good stuff to start.

And Elephant Diaries. Again, not bad, but for the love of the gogglebox gods, who decided we needed a whole week’s worth of this stuff? We’re only saved on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Eastenders is on at 730 instead of 8. I thought I’d seen the end of it last Friday, only to be tortured with it again on Monday. Enough with the elephants, BBC.

In other news, I am settling into the new house quite well, rattling around the 5 bedroomer like a loose pea on the one hand, and not having to put up with crappy techno music leaking under my door at 2am on the other. Five quid on a taxi to Lavery’s versus being just down the road from work and so able to stay in bed until 835. Swings and roundabouts.

I was shocked to discover that after all I don’t have cable, though this didn’t matter when I finally managed to hook up the internet and fix the bug that was plaguing my laptop’s access to 4OD. So I finally watched Shameless for the first time, spurred on by the new series 5 currently showing on Channel 4.

I know, I know – as a hotshot TV writer I should have seen Shameless years ago. I haven’t seen The Sopranos, 24 or The West Wing either, although in my defence I did used to work nights, so didn’t want to get into something and then miss it the week after. Ah, the days before internet catch up. What did we do with ourselves?

Anyhoo, Shameless was brilliant, and is one of the best things I have seen on the gogglebox, like, ever (I also got watching the first ever episode of Brookside, and the one where Beth and Margaret snog. Hee hee!). I now have all four series to catch up on, as well as watch all three series of one of the best wimmin’s programmes on ever, No Angels. And they’re now all free, compared to before Christmas when it was 99p a bally download.

The perfect thing to get over the dratted January blues. See you in March.

Meltdown

Half Ton Mum, C4, Sunday
10 Years Younger: Winter Sun Bikini Special
Corrina, Corrina, Channel 5, Saturday

Like so many things in life, the goggleboxing experience for 2007 was both up and down. There were the ups of the fourth series of Peep Show, the Blink episode of Doctor Who, Noel Fielding on Never mind the Buzzcocks, and men strapped into pregnancy suits getting their legs waxed on Human Guinea Pigs.

But there was also the jingoistic patriotic ranting ofthe commentators during the England/France semi-final of the Rugby World Cup, Ross Kemp on Gangs winning Best Factual Series at the BAFTAs (pah), and Gordon Ramsay’s F Word joining the ranks of all the other egotistical, yelling, boring chef shows. Double pah.

And then of course there were the likes of The X Factor, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, Strictly Come Dancing and Big Bloody Brother. As anyone within a 100 feet radius of me at any time will know, I is not a fan of the reality TV show. It’s not just because, as Ricky Gervais/Andy Millman said in the final episode of Extras, that reality TV is just an updated version of the Victorian freak show, where misfits and miscreants are wheeled out solely for our amusement. It’s mostly because they’re crap, and the people in them are talentless muppets.

And also because I know that 2008, like 2007, will see me unable to avoid them. Not watching them isn’t enough, apparently. I’d like to say that when I’m in charge, reality TV will be allowed to be on as long as no-one talks about it or newspapers fill pages about it, but that would be being too optimistic about my own capacity for mercy.

Car crash TV, however, will not be banned, mainly because it amuses me and makes me feel better when my jeans don’t fit. Still though, Ten Years Younger: Winter Sun Bikini Special is a fair candidate for having everyone involved in a programme lined up and shot.

It used to be that us girls were allowed to let ourselves go a bit over the winter. Those extra few pounds over Christmas were seen as, if not a perfectly acceptable winter addition to hairy legs and pale winter skin, then something no mortal soul was allowed to point out for fear of being chased down the street by a screeching, axe-wielding hormonal female.

Not so any more, alas, according to Ten Years Younger: Winter Sun Bikini Special. No ladies, apparently it isn’t now acceptable to have pale (read: normal) skin during the winter, or to skip a couple of days between each defuzzing of the pins, or to eat so much Milk Tray we can’t move. Even though no-one will see our bods through their wintery layers (ahem), TV is still annoying us about how these bods should look.

Monday’s episode followed the usual format of taking a saggy, baggy 40 something and showing her just where she was going wrong. This episode featured blonde Essex woman Heather, who had lost five stone and so was left with what she flatteringly called "elephant’s ears" of loose skin hanging over those jeans she couldn’t fit into (ah, Heather, I feel your pain).

But of course by the end of the programme the elephant’s ears had been removed, Heather had had a boob job, a new haircut and a new wardrobe, and she was swanning around on the beach like Pamela Anderson.
And fair bloody play to her, too. I know I don’t like these types of programmes. I know I don’t like the emphasis put on looks, and the pressure that this puts women (and many men too) under. But as someone whose body shape can go from slim to chubby in as little as a couple of weeks of overeating (damn you, festive season), I also know how your opinion about how you look affects your confidence. So I was happy for Heather. But uncomfortably so. Of course that makes sense.

There was also a mixture of emotions a few days before, while watching Half Ton Mum (Channel 4), following 64 stone Renee from Texas (where else?) as she pleaded to be given gastric band surgery.

Bedridden and barely able to move, someone of Renee’s size is classed as "super morbidly obese" and not suitable for gastric band surgery because of the risks to the heart. Renee managed to convince the Renaissance Hospital in Houston to perform the procedure on her, but she died a week later from a massive cardiac arrest.

I was struck by many things while watching this show. Pity at someone whose life was of such poor quality, for whatever reason. Annoyance at Renee for getting herself into that state, and then whining about it. And of course, a good old helping of Catholic guilt about thinking Bad Things About the Afflicted.

But, as I said to a friend while we were discussing the show and I pointed out that almost everyone in it, even the doctors, were at least a bit overweight, the main thing I took from Renee’s story was yet another sense of the truly messed up nature of capitalism. It took Renee a year to be approved for and have her gastric band surgery, during which time around 40 million people elsewhere in the world died from hunger and hunger-related disease. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.

But most of the TV this week was less stressful on my wee noggin. I was settling into the new house at the weekend, so was ensconced on the new sofa goggleboxing for most of it, sighing happily every few minutes as I gazed around my new pad. As I was all warm and cosy and didn’t want to even bother changing the channels, this included watching Corrina, Corrina on Saturday afternoon on Channel 5.

For the uninitiated, this has Whoopi Goldberg playing Corrina, a maid in a house where a young girl has just lost her mother. Difficulties abound until of course Corinna and the da fall in love and live happily ever after. And it says a lot for the cynic in me that at the end, watching Corinna and her new man together, in what was supposed to be a fluffy, heart-warming moment, that I thought, Hang on a minute.

As the maid, Corrina was expected to cook, clean, look after the kid, iron the da’s knickers and all the other nauseatingly boring things involved in the day to day running of a house while the da was at work. As the new wife, she was expected to er, cook, clean, look after the kid and iron the da’s knickers – except she would now have to do it FOR FREE. Hmph.

I think it’s safe to say I’ll never get married.

And there’s a DVD player in the new house – yes, I really was living in poverty in the old one – leading to more goggleboxing joy with The Simpsons and yet another great line from Homer as he wondered what good cause he could spend some ill-gotten gains on.

"There’s plenty of needy children out there," Lisa reminded him. "Ah!" Homer said in dawning comprehension. "You mean I should buy a gun!"

I think it’s safe to say I won’t be having kids either.

Post Christmas Meltdown

Eastenders, Christmas Day, BBC1 (well, of course)
Doctor Who, Christmas Day, BBC1
Ballet Shoes, St Stephen’s Day, BBC1
Extras, Thursday 27th, BBC1

"Well, did you have your sad bitch Christmas?" was how I was cordially greeted in the office on returning to slavery on the 27th.

This was a reference to how I had spent the month of December telling all who would listen, and plenty who wouldn’t, that I was planning to spend Christmas Day on my own this year, saved from grim solitude by Eastenders and wine. For some reason people seemed to think this hermit-like happiness was not a happy event at all.

The correct response to this delicate greeting would of course have been a snarl that yes I did, and yes it was great, so feck away off. But I couldn’t, because I ended up not on my tod in the end.

And before everyone goes "Aw, she got invited somewhere after all", I am going to say, ONCE AGAIN, I would have been fine on my own. But at the last minute, while drunk in Lavery’s on Christmas Eve, I realised that going to a mate’s house meant he could do all the cooking, while I could sit on my (rapidly-increasing) arse drinking wine and watching Finding Nemo. It also meant I got to keep my Christmas steak for St Stephen’s Day, even though I had no booze left to go with it (bah).

It was two blokes wot I spent Christmas Day with, so, while I got to watch Doctor Who because they wanted to perve at Kylie, it also meant I got banished another room for Eastenders while they did their male bonding "Ug! Eastenders is rubbish! Ug!" dance.

I cared not a jot. The fire was lit, I had wine, I’d been fed, and I didn’t have to listen to Bill and Ted in the dining room. It was win/win.

I also got slagged off on my return to the office about saying Eastenders had been great on Christmas Day (I honestly don’t know why I bother working here). Ha! the scoff went, and there was you slagging it off for weeks beforehand. But yes, it was rubbish for weeks beforehand, and no doubt will be again. But when Eastenders does Proper Drama, it does it at full steam.

Oh Og, it was brilliant. I came into the dining room from my exile after the first episode, bouncing with excitement at how great it had been. No-one listened to me but I didn’t care. The writers very kindly didn’t end the episode at the DVD just starting to be watched – we got a whole five minutes of fallout to whet our appetites for the next one. Best moment was ginger baldy Max, turning to wife Tanya after she had seen footage of him snogging the face off Stacey in her wedding dress, and saying "It’s not what it looks like." Ha!

And then the second episode! It was even better than my favourite Eastenders fantasy of seeing Deano and Chelsea fed head first into a tree shredder. I sat gawking and gape-mouthed on the sofa, with a glass of wine in hand that I forgot to even drink, and got shouted at by the boys for not noticing the fire going out. Pah.

(It was also fun as another guy turned up in the house for a quick visit, and pointedly declined to join in the "Ug! Eastenders is rubbish! Ug!" dance with the other two. "No thanks," he said as Bill and Ted gruffly told him there was more manly televisual fare on in the dining room, "I’ve been waiting to see Max get what’s coming to him all year." Bless you, Fitzy.)

In between the two episodes was Doctor Who, which as everyone knew was set on the Titanic and had Kylie in it. I don’t know if it was the delayed excitement from Eastenders, or the fact that by that stage I’d had about a bottle and a half of wine, but I was confussed and confuddled for most of it. There was lots of running about, lots of shouting, and lots of flashy things flashing. I had no clue what was happening.

It was still great to watch though, and it was very clever of the makers to cast Kylie in it, as this meant everyone watching had someone to perve at. It certainly kept the boys quiet. The more drunk of the two even got all welled up when Kylie fell into The Pit. You know which one of you it is …

And I have to say, very disappointingly, that was it for the Christmas Day viewing. We watched Catherine Tate at 1030, but after that there was nada, very disappointing when there’s plenty of wine left. Still, I did of course fulfil the usual Christmas Day obligation of falling asleep on the sofa, in all likelihood farting gently while dreaming of Eastenders’ ginger baldy Max. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write…

The next day saw me safely back on my own sofa, settling down to watch Ballet Shoes on BBC1. It was keek. Well, not keek – it was a fairly faithful adaptation of the book and it looked very well, but it was hard to muster sympathy for those cut-glass accents. I remember as a kid after reading years’ worth of Enid Blyton finally getting an audio cassette of The Valley of Adventure and being struck dumb with horror at how the characters sounded (you read in your own accent, of course). This was the same.

Extras was also a bit disappointing, although far better and of course much funnier. Andy Millman was now a successful star with his crappy sitcom When the Whistle Blows, while poor Maggie was slipping further and further down the poverty ladder. Andy dumped his agent and dumped his friend, only to Come To His Senses at the end with a rail against Celebrity Big Brother.

All very predictable, although the interview with the Guardian where he lied his way through it and got poor Maggie to pretend to be his PA, was painfully good. As happens so often with Ricky Gervais’ work, I was honestly so embarrassed at this point I had to cover my ears.
The best scene was with Maggie playing a prostitute in a Clive Owen film, with an incredulous Clive insisting he "would never pay for a prostitute who looked like that."

"Honestly Clive," the hapless producer pleaded, "they sent me a truckload of absolute hogs and this was the best one."

So an up and down Christmas gogglebox experience this year. But, all hails good for 2008, as I have a new house to settle into, WITH CABLE. So many more things to complain about. I can’t wait.