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.