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I settled down to watch a little TV this evening and immediately regretted it.  If there were ever two programmes competing for the title of Most Depressing Depiction of Old Blighty today, it would be the BBC Britain’s Youngest Grannies programme and Channel Four’s The Family.  Britain’s Youngest Grannies had someone living in Peterlee aged 34 baking cakes with her grandchild prior to snogging the face of a lad before going out clubbing.  In The Family, we had two teenage girls completely out of control, one of them whose sole ambition it seemed was to sell alcopop shots in a nightclub for £3 to presumably drunk teenage blokes.

What happened to sitting down in front of the TV, to be a) entertained, b) educated or c) informed by talented actors and presenters.  It all seems to be going ‘Pete Tong’ with this reality TV stuff now and don’t get me started on X-Factor. It’s simple abuse of vunerable people to make money for so called celebrities and TV companies in the name of public entertainment in my view.

Is it me?

18th November 2008

Today’s brain teasing question (and I’m being very sarcastic here, if you didn’t realise) for the GMTV phone in competition is:

Which hit charity single has been Christmas Number 1 three times.

Is it.

a) Do They Know It’s Christmas, b) Stay Another Day or c) Two Become One

Calls cost £1 if you ring in and you can win £1000 and a selection of christmas gifts including a Television. 

I was wondering while I pondered the answer to this difficult puzzle, how many viewers GMTV viewers actually ring in at £1 a shot.  I then wondered what happened to all the fuss about TV phone in competitions and how they were going to make the questions more of a challenge.  I then wondered what the questions were like before they made them more of a challenge.  I then wondered why there was such a fuss over a couple of people who raffled their house with a question that was much more difficult than this and why GMTV seem to get away with this laughable excuse for a competition. 

It’s a simple lottery, so if you enter, you should do so on that basis alone.  The answer is a) Do They Know It’s Christmas.

Finally I am now wondering what this says about how GMTV regard the intelligence of it’s viewers.

PS.  I should show in the interest of balance, that I am unfortunately strangely drawn to GMTV and find it quite entertaining and funny.  It is what it is and unlike the BBC News on the other side, remains focussed on what it is good at without drifting up and down the ratings chasing scale.

Welcome to my morning wake up call at the Holiday Inn Regents Park in London this morning.  Thank fully it was at around 7am.  On previous occasions of which there have been many while I stay in hotels in London, the alarm has been known to wake me up at varying times between 1am and 5am.  With a hangover, I can tell you this is no joke.

Question. What happened to good manners and polite society?

Example A)

I sat for breakfast at my little square table this morning.  To my right was a young girl.  Within minutes of sitting down, two other young girls sat at a table to my left.  You get the picture by now.  I was in the middle.  Did that stop them talking about last nights shag or how much they drank and who they fancied; at the same time leaning backwards and forwards so as to see each other past me.  Not a bit of it.  I gave it a couple of minutes thinking they would realise how rude it was to talk over/past/through someone.  Five minutes later, they clearly had no concept of how rude this was.   I could take it no more.  I asked in a slow voice, with a face like thunder, whether they had any concept of what was rude.  Looking completely blank, with mouths ajar, they didn’t need to tell me the answer.  With that they left looking back in a way only teenage girls can. 

Example B)

On Monday as I sat on the train praying for a quiet event free journey, a large weathered gentleman whose nose betrayed the drinking of far too much red wine over his time on this planet sat down opposite.  The next thirty minutes (and to be frank I have no idea how I lasted this long) were full of him, snorting, sneezing, sniffling, coughing and clearing his disgusting throat using a combination of sleeves and ‘what looked like’ green hanker chiefs.  I had to move to another carriage before running the risk of throwing up.

Answer.  They are long gone.

PS.  You couldn’t make this up!  I’ve just been joined at my table on the train home by two race going gentlemen at Doncaster.  Dressed in suits, but clearly drunk, the last ten minutes have included more swear words than I have heard all week.

Me Grumpy? …….

I’ve literally just passed through Doncaster Railway Station on the East Coast Main Line and felt a little scared.  At both ends of the platform were big middle aged blokes; some standing, some sitting on little fold away chairs, with small notebooks and cameras in their hands noting the number of my train.  A few were wearing plastic Macintosh coats and had flasks and little tupperware boxes with sandwiches in.

I don’t know about you, but every East Coast Main Line train I have been on over the last couple of years has looked the same.  Engine at either end (sometimes electric, sometimes Diesel) and a lot of carriages with miserable looking people standing and sitting throughout.  What is it about trains that gets so many people sitting and standing on platforms taking notes.  I’d love to know.

I’ve just being watching the news report that London’s congestion is back to the level it was before charging was introduced.  Is anyone actually surprised by this or am I the only one?  What we have now, is the same level of traffic, only this time, it costs the poor motorists more to grind their way through the capital.  Apparently, Transport for London, insist that without the congestion charge in place (according to BBC News) we would have hit gridlock by now.  Again, am I the only one who thinks this argument just doesn’t stand up?  Surely traffic congestion is by its nature, self regulating and actual gridlock day by day, a completely unlikely event. The Supply and demand analogy comes to mind.  Who in their right mind would actually ‘drive’ in a ‘gridlock’ every day.  It is not possible, so I suggest people would regulate themselves by other means.

Stop talking about congestion charging and get real.  It only delays normal ‘market’ forces and people (because they are generally clever, you know), will find another way.

I need to develop a way of winning the Hotel Lift Olympics.  When you become a regular customer in hotels, they kindly give you the better rooms, which are normally found on the top floors.  This would be great, were it not for the fact that it introduces a challenge which after a number of repetitions becomes ever so annoying.  It goes like this.  I get up before my fellow lift users, I get showered before them, I shave before them, I leave my room before them, I enter the lift before them.  However, and this is where it all gets nasty, they, having entered the lift after me, get to leave the lift before me, and almost without fail,  get to the front of the:-

a) breakfast queue, b) checkout desk or c) taxi before me.

I think a new system needs to be found that goes along the lines of, first in the lift, first out the lift.  This should be enforced with severe penalties for any fellow miserable hotel guest who breaks this rule.  I’m thinking, halve their breakfast allowance, add an unknown expense onto their bill, or give them a taxi driver who talks incessantly all the way to work.

I thought there was something different when I stumbled across the Chris Moyles shows on BBC Radio 1 this morning.  I could here music as I stepped into the shower.  Even stranger 10 minutes later, when I stepped out, I could hear yet more music. Was he sick?  Had he been taken off air?  Neither.  When he did pipe up, he was uttering some commentary about having lost half a million listeners.  At last I thought, people are finally getting bored rigid with his talk talk format and leaving for other stations playing music. 

It seems the end is nigh for Chris.  Perhaps he could move to Radio 5 and let Scott Mills who plays more music, take over the morning slot.

Breakfast proved to be quite entertaining/annoying (delete as applicable).  Sat next to me was a small slim, power dressed (large pin striped suit with big shoulders - bring back Alexis) girl.  Apart from the way she was dressed she entertained/annoyed (delete as applicable) me in a number of ways.  Firstly I should explain, before heading down to breakfast I had just watched the TV news where pictures of starving Ethiopians were shown.  Anyway, I noticed on one plate she had a stack of fruit salad which had been littered with the crusts of white bread.  Strange combination for a meal I thought.  It was only after I’d sat for a few minutes that the waitress offered to take this plate away.  The girl had actually finished (not eaten) it.  Getting up from her table she went and collected more boring white sliced bread.  Cutting the crusts off she proceeded to eat this stuff with a sprinkling of honey.  OK.  I was now entertained/annoyed (delete as applicable) even more.  The final straw which tipped me over the edge and had me heading for the door, was she then went and collected a small box of Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut.  No bowl.  No Milk.  Just the Box. 

Crunching through this stuff with mouth ajar using her fingers was just too much entertainment/annoyment (delete as applicable) for this time of the morning.

I was feeling reasonably awake this morning so decided to engage with my fellow human being as he drove me from my hotel to the office at Southbank.  I commented on how many more cyclists there seemed to be in London these days.  He nearly blew a gasket describing all the near misses he had had over the last few weeks with cyclists.  During one particular story, he didn’t see the red light that most people would take to mean stop, and drove straight into the path of oncoming vehicles while describing said events with cyclists.  I didn’t make any more comments for the rest of the journey and I think he was just a little embarrased by his mistake. 

Thankfully nothing hit us and we didn’t hit anyone else.  Another exciting day in London.