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.