A bit more on reality.

Watching reality TV is just a thing. It is a sponge for some of my hard earned time and shifting attention. It is relentless, almost as relentless as my desire to be filled with nothing for an hour or so every night. Reality TV is a fat slice of white bread: stodgy and bland and offers no nutrition whatsoever but pop it in the toaster and shove some butter (proper butter, margarine should be shot) on it and suddenly it all seems rather appealing.
That was a (very) lame effort at an analogy (or is it a metaphor?), the toasting and buttering process relating to the quality, or lack of, the celebrities involved or the hook of the format. But you knew that. Because you’re smart. In which case you might want to stop reading. It’s nice to give an occasional review of the world of reality TV. Never have so many people been gripped by such twaddle. Which is more than can be said for my readership.
Strictly Come Dancing is as shallow and pointless as a puddle of piss and yet it seems to hold millions in its glittery-titted sway. Tess Daly remains one of the most awkward, ill-fitting presenters of her generation and while Winkleman may be slightly less crap she never does herself any favours by putting all the make up in the world into a hot bowl and then just sticking her face into it. All that scandal with the ‘comedian’ kissing the dancer was pretty pathetic. I’d have sympathised if Seann Walsh was actually funny and didn’t have hair that resembled the derriere of a particularly un-coiffed wild sheep. I have almost no hair and would still rather not have his. The rest is underwhelming, repetitive and inconsequential and yet sometimes it feels like there’s nothing else on come a Saturday night.
Now that CBB has been put down with dishonour we have to rely on I’m A Celebrity……..to get us through the winter months but to be honest I can’t be bothered this year. Well, almost. It’s not that I miss Ant, that would be a very sad state of affairs, it’s just that I’ve stopped caring. I don’t know 60% of the contestants, because they’re famous for doing next to nothing, and the rest don’t feature much in my life. Noel Edmonds is, er, a smug prick, Harry Redknapp is a nice bloke but doesn’t really mean anything and the big turkey from The Chase is ludicrously out of shape for the job in hand. Should things spiral out of control and cannibalism end up on the menu then so will she. She should watch her back, provided she has any muscles left working in her neck.
Let’s move on swiftly and look at a couple of the less celebrity inundated efforts. I find I am more and more happy to postpone The Apprentice to another night, one where I am suitably lubricated to let it all wash over me. Every time I watch it I am reminded that Lord Sugar has looked about 74 for almost his entire adult life. He can deliver a pun with all the punch of a fart in a hurricane and I long for the day that his chubby sausage finger just drops off and runs away because it’s so fed up of being pointed at utter cretins for a living. Lord Sugar says they’re not cretins but surely anyone who wants to make a name for themselves by appearing on TV and appearing to be a cretin is still ultimately just that.
The final word goes to Masterchef: The Professionals (loosely speaking), which in its own way is the most gripping of the lot. And yet I can’t work out why. Greg Wallace is a grinning, bug-eyed glutton and his companions – silver road-kill fox Marcus Wareing and strong-jawed, man hammer Monica Galetti both compete to see who can crawl furthest up the others arsehole. The contestants are either suspiciously thin or suspiciously fat and it seems that no-one can qualify as a chef in a re-branded Toby Carvery in the Lake District these days without a splatter of prominent tattoos. Monica’s technical challenge was broccoli, three ways, which must be very high on the list of awful, awful, why fucking bother with that, restaurant dishes. I’d sooner eat my own sigmoid colon. I’d sooner eat your sigmoid colon. Three ways, of course.
I could go on but I won’t. I have a couple of other things to do and tomorrow we’re getting a new boiler fitted. As an early Christmas present. Which, if I can be bothered, and you can be bothered, might make for some interesting reading.
G B Hewitt. 23.11.2018