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.