Hair in Avocado

Tramadol Nights, Channel 4, Tuesday

Russell Howard’s Good News, BBC3, Thursday

Come Dine With Me, Channel 4, Saturday

Well. What a week it’s been in Goggleboxing land. We’ve had Charlie Brooks as Eastenders’ Janine finally being allowed to act again instead of gurning and mincing as she’s been doing for the past few months, as she finds out about hubby Ryan’s affair with babymum Stacey (Ah’ll kill im, Pat, Janine vowed on Thursday, a threat that is usually known as idle when made by normal people but which is quite quite literal when Janine makes it). We’ve had Katie Price making a formal complaint about Frankie Boyle on the surprisingly awful Tramadol Nights and his quip about her disabled son Harvey. And we’ve had Russell Howard in Good News Extra showing us an ad for the ‘Pink Stinger’ – a handbag-sized Taser disguised as a tampon (Santa?).

But all this fades into mehness when compared to today’s Come Dine With Me, Channel 4’s show where masochistic contestants take turns to invite a group of strangers into their homes to make them dinner and entertain them for the evening, before being marked out of ten by all their guests with the eventual winner taking home a £1000 prize. Not for £10,000 would I invite TV cameras into my home as I attempted to cook for guests, since that normally involves cursing, banging of oven doors, too much wine, and the admitting of eventual defeat and takeaway pizza. This wouldn’t matter with mates, but with strangers who are sitting round my table, judging my house and drinking my wine, my temper might fray somewhat as I screeched that they were all a bunch of attention-seeking snobs who wouldn’t know a good night out if it Glasgow kissed them on the street. If I were ever in Big Brother I’d be the Most Hated Person in Britain within two days.

And so to today’s Come Dine With Me. My holy maiden aunt was that a car crash. I LOL’d, I GOL’d, I updated on Facebook throughout. Perhaps I should get out more. But then I would have missed this glorious gem of misfits, mayhem and mayonnaise with ketchup.

I missed the first instalment where the lovely Nigel hosted his four other contestants in what was apparently a good night – Nigel went on to win. Next up was Valerie, and, is usual with Come Dine With Me and most other TV before about 730pm (Eastenders time),  I had half an eye on it while surfing the net and musing about actually doing some work. But Bernard, a piggy-eyed Craig Charles on meth lookalike who doesn’t seem to know he’s gay, finally made me give the programme my full attention.

Bernard had a problem the night before about Nigel and another contestant, Dawn, getting on so well (translation: no-one’s listening to me), and tonight he excelled himself by yawning loudly when Dawn was talking and finally interrupting her to tell her how rude she was. Cue lots of beeps, Bernard storming out to the garden in a huff, and Valerie’s night ruined.

Personally I would have stabbed him in the eye with a toasting fork, which is why I am never tempted to go on reality TV, and Valerie, in that strange half posh, always slipping accent, was understandably miffed about her night being ruined by a short fat carpet salesman with table manners similar to Attila the Hun. But then Dawn came into her own. The next night was at Bernard’s house, and Dawn, after spending the entire evening moaning about how ‘shattered’ she was (shattered and emotional, more like), sneaked off home without telling anyone. Now, I’ve done this several times myself, when I’m tired and emotional myself and the prospect of slurring to people that I’ve had enough just can’t be faced, but I’d like to think that with a camera crew there I might manage to be not such a drunken tramp.

But then Dawn was a rather special type of lady. She was allegedly 33, a factoid that almost had me tipping my wine down the sink, and also hero-worshipped Pamela Anderson, a factoid that made me wonder about forced euthanasia. She had taken pole dancing lessons in the past – surprise – and she was so false-tanned Tangoed that she makes Kat Moon look normal (and ladylike) in comparison.

And so my jaw dropped. But that was nothing compared to the next night, when Dawn hosted. Her starter of ‘avocado surprise’ – the surprise being that it wasn’t puke when it so clearly looked like it – went down like the proverbial lead balloon, possibly because of her adding full fat mayonnaise and tomato ketchup to the blended avocado. Before that she blended raspberries to add to champagne, and her expression as she wondered why her hand blender with its, em, steel blades mashed straight through her plastic sieve was almost enough to send me scuttling to the Betty Ford clinic.

Her main course was packet-based chicken fajitas with refried beans. Now, nothing wrong with that as a meal, and by coincidence what I was having for dinner later that evening (although without the refried beans, because I’m not a sick bastard), but on a programme like Come Dine With Me, where the whole point is to outdo your fellow cooks with how sophisticated and cheflike you are? Nah.

But this still might been OK had Dawn actually cooked it herself. Nah again. After presenting the avocado in vomit, sorry, I mean ‘avocado surprise’, she put her head down and fell asleep. Yes, at the table. Yes, with guests. However, this did lead to one of the best admonish-the-drunk lines I’ve ever heard, and one which I’m immediately nicking – Bernard in his broad Preston accent saying in a voice like a mournful horse: ‘Dawn! Your ’air’s in your avocaaaaaaaaado!’ Classic.

Dawn then went to bed. Yes, while she had guests over, leaving the hapless and gentlemanly Nigel to take over with the fajitas, even if he did shudder at the packet seasoning and tin of refried beans. Meanwhile, Dawn snored happily upstairs while her guests sat hungrily downstairs. Not a successful hosting experience by any means.

She was conspicuously absent from the end of show interviews after Nigel got the money (and she slammed the table and swore on learning she came last), obviously being shattered again after a night socialising. Around the same time as the programme was aired she was done for drink driving after crashing her car into two others, clearly being shattered again. All in all a fascinating and quite literal car crash of a lady.

And I haven’t even started on the wonderful Peep Show and its introduction of Kenneth, Mark’s sinister looking sex toy. But really, Come Dine With Me in Preston was a pure classic. 4OD, now.

Carry me to the bonnet, captain

When did Eastenders get so risqué? wondered a friend (new to Eastenders, it has to be said) on Facebook this week, referring to, I presume, last Friday's episode when Ryan chased Stacey/Danielle to the hotel she was staying in with Baby Lily before their flee to Abroad, dumped her into Dot's car, practically kidnapped her by driving her to a deserted parking lot and telling her you ain’t going nowhere, then tenderly lifted her onto the bonnet of said car and undressed her all the way down to her fake Ugg boots, before the camera panned upwards in what I imagine is the televisual equivalent of that old journalist line 'Our man made his excuses and left'.

Setting aside the fact that yes, sex on an OAP's car bonnet is always chavtastic (but this is RYAN did you see him with his top off last week ahem?), of course Eastenders is always risqué. I refer not to the hotel biscuit-dunking of Jane and Massoud on Monday (oh how I wish that was just a euphemism), but well, to pretty much everything on Eastenders since the year dot (dot. Huhuhuhuhuhuh.)

Ian and Janine, for example. When Janine lost her job, then became a coke addict in literally two episodes and then started shagging Albert Square guys for money in order to pay her rent then feed her Evil Addiction. No mention of the dole or housing benefit, of course. Now each to their own and I’ve never been there so I’d never judge etc, but IAN BEALE? 

Ian Beale again (oh god help me). When he tried to seduce wife Jane, standing in front of her proudly in his baggy black knickers, only for Jane to gulp bravely and say Maybe we could have a cuddle. It’s Ian’s seductive face that still haunts my dreams. And this was three years ago.

Conor and Carol. I’m trying to find something witty to say about 50 year old Carol shagging the 20 something friend of her son Billie, but when I try to type it my keys just go ‘Waheyeyey’. There must be a bug.

Paaaaat and Fraaaaank. Oh dear god. Not only was there the fleeting suspicion that these two hoary old dinosaurs were actually some sort of soulmates, thus making me wonder if someone had dug my heart up from the rusty tin it’s buried in somewhere on Rathlin, but there was the Revolving Dicky Bow Incident. Twice. If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. Where’s my brain bleach?

Sharon and Dennis. Ah now, this was just cruel. Damaged Sharon finally found love, albeit with her adopted brother, only for him to be stabbed on their getaway from evil Johnny Allen. Not fair.

Arfur and Mrs Hewitt: What you smiling about? wife Pauline snarled suspiciously when husband Arfur came into the house after yet another clandestine meting with Mrs Hewitt on the allotment. I just want a kiss, poor Arfur replied. Wot’s wrong wif you? Pauline screeched, thus paving the way for her to cark it on her own in the snow without anyone caring.

Christian and Syed: It’s not natural! You’re going to go to hell! Ah, how nice to see that over 20 years since the first ‘gay kiss’ (read: chaste peck) on Eastenders sees two gay men in the throes of passion snogging like every other character in Eastenders in an illicit affair (desperate, Hoover-like). And now they’re living together happily, although knowing Eastenders, this will not last long. 

We look forward to lots more risqué on Easties, like ginger baldy Max trying to snog Stacey in her wedding dress, or Kat and Alfie getting it together in their caravan, or even Big Mo trying to seduce Fat Elvis. If nothing else, it makes our own desperate fumblings seem less pathetic.

Sometimes I gurn.

 The Accused, BBC1, Monday

Good TV should make you laugh, that’s pretty much a given. But the real benchmark is – with apologies to Peep Show, Getting On, Extras, I’m Alan Partridge, Roseanne, The Thick Of It, Spaced and everything else I’ve tittered at in awe over the past few years – whether it makes you cry. Especially when you get drawn into it and don’t even realise you care so much until you start to gurn and embarrass yourself in front of your scundered pets. Often it’s a blessing to live alone.

Which brings me to The Accused, the latest offering from the exceptional writer Jimmy McGovern (Cracker, Priest), a six part series in stand alone episodes, each focusing on an ‘ordinary person’ and how they end up in the dock. The first, with Christopher Eccleston in the main role, focused on a man getting into debt and therefore into the downwards spiral that is to be expected in a McGovern drama. The second, starring The Office’s Mackenzie Crook in a first class performance, was about bullying in the army. Both were powerful dramas, both roused strong feelings on watching about whether the accused should be found guilty or not – and both were good programmes that were strong and thought-provoking but didn’t induce either laughter or tears.

And then came the third The Accused. Starring Juliet Stevenson, this one was about Helen, a middle-aged primary school teacher whose 20 year old son is killed in a factory accident. Despite a coroner verdict of accidental death, she is convinced her son’s death was due to negligence, and so she battles on, remortgaging her house, against her husband’s wishes, to challenge the CPS decision not to prosecute, and finally setting fire to the factory in question  (yay!) after the boss (cast to the nines as a fat grasping capitalist; he may as well have had a top hat) refuses to make any acknowledgement that he regretted his employee’s death.

Peter Capaldi, mostly known from his role as The Thick Of It’s sweary spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, plays a blinder as her frustrated, bewildered, angry and helpless husband, who nevertheless comes through for her at the end in a lovely scene that nearly had me thinking marriage might work for some people sometimes. His wife represents herself in court, since her solicitor says she'll resign if Helen stands up and tells the jury ‘I did it’ –  but this is what Helen does, and the whole story is told in flashback as she tries to convince the jury that what she had done was not right, but is still justice.

I’m not a parent, but (despite popular opinion), I do have a heart, and I just can’t imagine not only losing a child but knowing that someone was at fault for it – and that it’s being covered up. As Helen says, every time she gets knocked back by the law yet again – by the coroner, by the CPS, by the appeal, it's like her son dying all over again. By this point, despite seeing where her husband was coming from and thinking it would maybe be healthier for her to let the whole thing go, I was rooting for her to the stage where I was talking to the TV and freaking my house rabbit out by being a bit sweary.

When the verdict came in – if you don’t want to know the result, look away now – and she was found not guilty, that’s when I got a bit teary. Is that the verdict of you all, sighed the pissed off m’lud, only for the foreman to say happily ‘Yes, it was unanimous’ and the courtroom to erupt into cheers. That’s when I got very teary, actually gurned a wee bit, went up to bed with a big smile on my face, and reflected that despite the plethora of absolute shite filling 75% of our screens, there is still some very good telly out there. More please.