This cruel show's popularity shames us all

IT is a hugely popular programme but it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I refer, of course, to Britain’s Got Talent – the shameful cackfest that is pulling in the punters back to the (once great) ITV1, now re-branded especially for this column as The Moron Channel.

I think most reasonably intelligent people (errr, that’s probably no more than a third of Britain’s Got Talent’s viewers) will feel a little queasy about watching this freak-show-come-karaoke kontest.

Let me spell out why that queasiness, that stirring of moral consciousness (at last!) in bubble-headed modern Britain, comes from.

It comes from a residual – and correct – feeling that to showcase people as they are publicly humiliated, for the sake of making vast amounts of money for Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell and other ITV ghouls, is absolutely cowardly - and it stinks!

Take the case of Susan Boyle – the winner of the viewers’ phone vote last Sunday night. She’s a good singer, no doubt about it. But she is being encouraged to distort herself and cavort in a most unseemly manner by the ugly limelight this show has cast upon her.

It is not right to put a woman such as Susan Boyle through that process. I would say it is not good for her mental health. It is not good for the viewers either.

And on the same night Susan won, a 10-year-old girl, Natalie Okri, was rejected by a vote of the ghastly panel of Cowell, Morgan and Amanda Holden.

You could see the torture in poor Natalie’s face as she shuffled off in tears, shamed, and with a feeling of profound rejection rattling round her head, at the end.

No-one was there, in the few seconds when it mattered, to put their arm around her and comfort her.

And no-one was there, when it mattered, to stop her entering this dreadful series in the first place. The show's popularity shames us all.

Reasons not to be cheerful ... (1) Phillip Schofield ...

I SWITCHED on the box, hoping to cheer myself up, but – urrrgh! – the inane cheeriness of Phillip Schofield has the opposite effect on me.

The Moron Channel - ITV1 - now has a "celebrity" version of Mr & Mrs, the cheesy seventies couples’ quiz formerly hosted by Derek Batey, who’s now 103 and living in Lytham St Annes.

These days the show is called “All Star” Mr & Mrs – so of course it is packed with C-through-to-Z-listers from the worlds of acting, modelling, pop music and sport.

The hosts, fittingly perhaps for such mind-rotting awfulness, are now Philip Schofield (otherwise known as the Prince of Blandness) and the increasingly hysterical-sounding Fern Britton (all those diets and gastric bands have send her gaga … and she’s STILL a fat lass).

The contestants on the show included the goalie, Peter Shilton – who I’m glad to see has stopped perming his hair – and his normal-seeming missus Sue.

Apparently … wait for it! … Shilts once bought Sue a fur coat even though she’s an animal lover.

That little nugget of couple-iness had Phillip Schofield gagging for air in shock … then virtually wetting his pants from laughing so much.

Don’t ask me why mainstream TV presenters find everything that’s said on a show staggeringly amazing and funny. Maybe it is something they slip in the tea before filming.

Shilton did describe his wife as “my best friend as well as my wife”, which was (a) an isolated snippet of genuine emotion that somehow got through the editing stage, and (b) sweet, though not necessarily entertaining.

I don’t think there was a prize for ghastliest couple from the contestants – and let’s face it they’d all look quite appealing alongside Phil and Fern!

Also taking part in this nonsensical quiz were: an oaf out of Boyzone; and the giantess and actress of several dodgy films, Brigitte Nielsen , and her “model” husband, a dwarf called Mattia.

I was depressed when I sat down to watch this junk. I was virtually suicidal by the end of it.

Apparently Mattia’s “great in bed”, according to Brigitte. Oh Please! She’d never have been allowed to say that if Derek Batey was still in charge. Maybe they should bring him back. I see from his website he’s still available for after-dinner speaking and the opening of supermarkets – and those sorts of things take much more mental energy that fronting a prime-time cackfest on The Moron Channel.

What gets me is how intelligent people such as Phillip Schofield can bring themselves to take part in such condescending, demeaning rubbish.

Then again, he’s always been up for the gig.

Telly today – treating us all as thickos

YOU used to be able to rely on telly for a bit of light relief and entertainment – but nowadays it offers nothing but wall-to-wall tedium and has become a powerful aid to British society’s increasing stupidity and depression.

On Sunday night I looked in on Hell’s Kitchen (ITV1), expecting it to be crap – and it was.

Some young geezer with a dodgy barnet was complaining about his woman’s meat course being undercooked and that resulted in a bit of a tetchy situation with the highly strung waiter.

The chef Marco Pierre White, who has a reputation for a quick temper (yawn-yawn, how very predictable) had to deal with the young complainant and allowed him to remain in the restaurant.

Marco spoke to the guy in such a cold and arrogant way – playing up for the cameras, no doubt (more yawns, please chef!).

If I’d been the young guy I’d have lamped this imperious cook – who has a penchant for wearing preposterous tea-towels on his head.

This programme is, like all the other telly shows involving chefs, offers the most bland and unappetising of fare.

However, it wasn’t quite as congealed and rancid as a so-called comedy offering on BBC3, Horne & Corden. I think it was a repeat but it is so hard to tell these days – when everything has become contemptibly familiar through damnable reiteration.

One sketch, towards the end of the show, was bizarre, but not in a funny way. Horne & Corden – both over-exposed and overrated – played at being psychic magicians trying to summon horses onto their stage show. Err, that was it.

They got down on all fours and started whinnying like horses. Pathetic. Doesn’t the Beeb have anyone vaguely normal to check these shows for basic quality and comprehension before they are transmitted?

And I see that ITV1 has brought back the moron-fodder known as Beat The Star. This is another example of telly for adults being so stupid and banal in its content that you would think it was aimed at children.

I saw about five minutes of some sub-Gladiators nonsense about an ordinary punter from a sugar beet factory shimmying up a long plastic tube in competition with the rugby player turned telly dancing tart, Austin Healey.

Then I turned off because “after the break” they were clearly going to mess about in mud in funny little karts… like big kids.

The show was puerile nonsense that treated its studio audience like idiots, which to be fair, they probably were … judging by all the silly shrieking they were doing.

I would honestly say to anyone, if you want to improve your life 100 per cent instantly then simply turn your telly off and go out … for a walk … to visit your auntie … to go to the pub – anything but watch the shameful bilge that is modern television.

And if the weather is too inclement for going out, then go to your bathroom and clean the grouting and / or the lavatory bowl – because that will be more entertaining and better for your mind, heart and soul that watching TV.

I am thinking of devoting fewer of these postings to TV-related matter, which I regard as beneath contempt and hardly worthy of the attention of someone with a brain as big as mine.

Besides which, the vapid "personalities" on TV are simply not cool enough to be in my gang.

A twisted anthem to the topsy-turvy values of the BBC

EVEN as a one-off, sugar-coated musical morality play All the Small Things (BBC1 Tue) would have been a waste of time and money.

But it's been stretched into a six-parter. Incredible!

Saucy woman singer with cone-to-bed eyes and the badly dubbed voice of an angel (Sarah Alexander) walks into a happy-clappy local church choir and immediately the weak-willed choirmaster (Neil Pearson) falls in lust with her.

You can tell this is a BBC drama because the main male character (Pearson) is a vain, home-wrecking bastard, while his missus (Sarah Lancashire) is a saintly, loveable mumsy.

In the Nasty Liberal Thought Control Section of BBC Drama: Man = Bad, and Woman = Good. There can be no deviation from that formula. Off-message writers who try to portray social reality will be exterminated. Repeat. Exterminated!

And if that wasn’t enough to have you weeping into your Guardian, this crock of politically correct cack from Debbie Horsfield also had … a black guy with learning difficulties, a dwarf (female), a son with some form of autism, and two Comedy Fatties from Central Casting.

Now look… there is nothing wrong with having people in the cast of all shapes and sizes and social and cultural backgrounds, skin colour etc. But why does the BBC have to be so bloody formulaic about it? Everyone’s intelligence is being insulted.

As for storyline… er, let me see... The saintly Sarah Lancashire encourages her autistic son (Richard Fleeshman, formerly of Corrie) to be lead singer in a rock band – but only after he’s been rescued from nasty male bullies (who, obviously, in the twisted context of the BBC's La La Land, are too thick and insensitive to recognise autism).

Then, of course, in a scene of cheesy optimism, Sarah’s lad and his rock band enter a choral music competition (huh?!) – which they win.

Yes, that’s right. They beat Pearson’s choir to the top prize, after inexplicably getting the middle aged audience and judges literally dancing in the aisles! As if… Must be drugs.

Then there is the sex thang… all done Richard Curtis rom-com style. Flashing eyes, knowing smirks, the meeting in a trendy wine bar, tut-tutting by assorted old biddies on the periphery … you know the drill. BORING!

Early Doors sticks two fingers up to Britain's Smoking Ban Nazis

It’s something to cheer, I suppose, that one of the precious few good shows commissioned by the BBC in recent years is back for a series of reruns.
Early Doors was always a brilliant, poetic, philosophical, character-driven sitcom.
I came home from work the other night, feeling knackered, and slightly down-hearted because, as everyone knows, there is never anything worth watching on telly on Tuesdays.
(EastEnders? I'd rather stick needles in my eyes. It is condescending twaddle about the working classes - clunkingly written in politically correct jargon beloved of middle class luvvies at the BBC.)
But Early Doors is quality. It's a gentle and slow-paced show set in a back street Northern English pub. It doesn't strain for laughs; it often makes you think profoundly about the absurdity of modern life and the lazy and corrupt characters you come across (such as greedy, bent police officers).
Old Tommy, who sits on his own, is my favourite character. His grimace perfectly sums up what I feel about contemporary British society ... utter weariness at the sheer stupidity of it all, occasional disgust, and a sure knowledge that life used to be better. Much better.
Meanwhile, Winnie the cleaner shows a sly wit, and Ken the landlord has much human warmth, masked by a gruff exterior. Though many of the characters are defective in many ways, collectively, you can't help but love 'em.
It is a show that benefits from perfect casting and writing .. .and you can't say that about many.
And watching it again as a repeat on BBC4 I was also seduced by the lovely smoky character of the Grapes pub.
Wreaths of curling ciggie smoke are part of the elegant beauty and the comforting atmosphere of the traditional British pub. When these programmes were made, the hated smoking ban in workplaces had not been introduced.
It made think again how very unfair that blanket ban was – and how much pleasure it has taken away from people.
The ban has also contributed in a big way to the huge wave of pub closures now under way in our country. That’s not good at all.
When a pub closes, you are not just losing a business but a focal point for the community.
Pubs are sacred to our memories. In each backstreet pub so many tender scenes have taken place down the decades: jokes have been told; tears shed; words of love spoken; baptisms, birthdays and weddings celebrated; and precious last cigarettes have been tenderly handed over to mates and loved ones.
To destroy all that with a total smoking ban on dubious health grounds was a hateful and sinister act by our tyrannical Labour Government.
To my mind, the smoking ban isn't even about health.
It's about freedom – which, actually, is much more important.
Because there is little point being healthy if you aren't allowed to be free.
Before the current "Ban It" madness infected our mainstream political culture, the only powerful people to be rabidly anti-smoking were the Nazis under Adolf Hitler.
They are the spiritual inspiration for the proscriptive anti-smoking martinets now infesting the UK Government and National Health Service.
It is strange that such a lovely and quintessentially British programme such as Early Doors should be such a powerful and eloquent reminder of just how beautiful and enjoyable smoking in pubs used to be.
Nearly all the show’s characters smoke. If a new series is to be made, then I suppose the Grapes will have to feature a wretched Smoke Hole in its yard, where the regulars will have to go and freeze their knackers off and get wet if they choose to spark up ... just like we have to do in real life.
A final thought ... three cheers to Coronation Street for not giving in the pressure from Britain's thin-lipped Smoke Ban Nazis to run "positive" stories showing the benefits of giving up the habit.

Are YOU working class and beautiful like old ITV … or Liberal-Fascist like the modern BBC?

IT’S rather a shame that ITV is crumbling to dust and can’t even come up with good new ideas any more. Demons?! How derivative is it possible to be?
In the glory days of British television (the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s) ITV was more than a telly channel … it was a badge of national cultural identity.
In those days, you were either an ITV person (lively, quick-witted, working class, and rather beautiful) or you were a BBC person (stuffy, bourgeois, Pooterish and humourless).
Nowadays, of course, television is much expanded and yet, paradoxically, it’s not nearly such a potent force culturally.
But suppose for a minute we Brits still identified ourselves by our choice of TV network; then I guess an ITV Person would now be nervous, short of money, insecure, bereft of ideas.
And a BBC Person would be a Liberal-Fascist, hideously corporatist and obsessed with racial issues and feminism.
So I guess ITV still represents the majority of British people … just about!
Meanwhile, one gem of quality writing and character-driven humour survives on ITV, thrives even … and that is Coronation Street.
Last night’s episode saw Becky within five minutes end her engagement to thick-as-a-plank Jason Grimshaw, get engaged and move in with Steve McDonald, and have a blazing row with Steve’s ex, Michelle.
We also saw Steve have a bust-up with both his mam and Eileen.
It was entertaining stuff and as ever there was a neat philosophical contrast between all the passion going on … and Roy and Hayley Cropper, just a few feet away in the Rovers, together the epitome of buttoned up propriety and pained humanity.
And that’s before you consider that Roy is a pathological misfit – and Hayley a transsexual.
The actor who plays Ken Barlow, original cast member William Roache, is now on leave as he grieves for the death of his wife.
I hope the weeks ahead go as well as can be expected for William, and that soon he is back at work to continue Ken’s exquisite illicit romance with the narrowboat-dwelling siren played by Stephanie Beacham.

Friendship at first sight

WELL, I hope you and yours had a good Valentine’s Day and evening.
And if you are single, then I hope all the slushiness, sentimentality and the cheesy concentration on couples shown by restaurants and shops didn’t annoy you too much.
It is good to talk of love, and to write about it too. The subject has, after all, enthralled poets and philosophers since the earliest days of humanity.
I wrote a poem for my beloved 'Posh Boots' for Valentine’s Day and placed it in a beautiful Art Deco repro frame as a present for her.
She loved it, of course. Who wouldn’t be delighted to have a poem written especially for you?
And she deserves to have such verses written for her. We love each other; it’s as simple and as complicated as that.
But don’t worry, I am not going to replicate my poem for Posh Boots here; it’s too personal.
Today, in any case, I don’t intend to linger on the subject of love because, for many people in these days of record numbers of single people, love is absent … or painful.
Hardly any of us finds an ideal partner we truly love for the full run of a life-long relationship.
Some of us go for years without a partner, without love, and then find it quite late in life.
Others find love, enjoy it for a few years, and then lose it.
Welcome to life in our fallen world; it was never meant to be easy.
But today, I want to focus on friendship rather more than what we normally understand as love.
Love of the emotional, sexual variety is intense and, at times, all-consuming. Friendship is cooler yet every bit as important and is, actually, itself a form of love.
Who amongst us hasn’t told our friends that we love them?
Never mind that we might be p***ed as farts at the time. In Vino Veritas – in wine there is truth.
There is a fascinating poem by Robert Graves called Friendship at First Sight. That title raises the possibility of friendships that are formed magically at the first meeting or sight of someone.
Here’s what Graves wrote ...
'Love at first sight,' some say, misnaming
Discovery of twinned helplessness
Against the huge tug of procreation.
But friendship at first sight? This also
Catches fiercely at the surprised heart
So that the cheek blanches and then blushes.
Now, I think it is great, absolutely thrilling, to think that love at first sight happens, as many people who have experienced it will attest.
But I think it equally stunning that friendship at first sight can occur.
I’ve not known the privilege of experiencing love at first sight. Love needs a chance to grow … in my heart anyway.
But I think I have, on several occasions throughout my life, experienced friendship at first sight.
And when I think of each of those instances, though they be many years apart from each other, I know bonds were made that will last a lifetime.
How comforting it is to know, when the world is undergoing massive change and considerable distress that something as brilliant and valuable as friendship at first sight can happen. It makes you feel good about being human.
And for all the singletons around in this post-Valentine’s Day period, don’t forget that love, while it rarely comes at first sight, is still in plentiful supply. It may well be just around the corner for you. I hope it is.