Last week's TV

This harks back to last week but has been preying on my mind, so I hope to get some relief by sharing. Last Tuesday's ''Bad Lad's Army' featured such heartwarming vignettes as the "recruits" examining their tackle for pubic lice, and a skidmark inspection charmingly performed by the Sergeant Major, who shone a torch into the pants round their ankles in order to show up any dubious markings. And people say 'Big Brother' is low-brow. This sort of telly humiliation is seemingly okay because the participants are all criminals and have been sent into the "army" for self-improvement. Yet when any of the 'bad lads' speak on-screen, they always have the same description appear beneath them - "Danny Walker, 26. Thief", "Andy Pearce, 21. Shoplifter", "Tyrone Tyrell, 23. Flasher and pirate". Have the programme makers not heard of Becker's labelling theory? The deviants are attempting to move on with their lives via a vigorous regime of knob-watching and full arse-wipage, and ITV continually reiterates the identities they're trying to leave behind. It did elicit a few giggles though. Cruel, unkarmically friendly giggles. Don't watch the show if you expect great feats of heroism. Do if you like watching spotty/fat/nefarious proles being forced to do one-armed pressups for insubordination.

Friday Night's TV (21/7/06)

As BB seemingly moves into phase II, initiated by the arrival of a whole new bunch of housemates who bring into question whether Bonnie and Sezer in fact ever existed, it is time to take a moment to reflect. Why is it I feel so disappointed this year? Why do I feel only marginally more entertained than when I watched BB4? Why, indeed, have I virtually stopped blogging when BB is one of the raison d'etres of my messages to you? I suppose sometimes that the personalities chucked into the BB house just don't work, and sometimes they just do. Imagine how awful Jason would have been without Emma and Victor to show him up, Craig without Anthony and Makosi? In BB7 there aren't many interesting interrelationships between people, and very few interesting people at all. It's not even - as people have already started to claim - because we have taken out the so-called "big personalities". There was nothing charismatic about Lea looking like a depressed tortoise, or Grace's uberbitching. Nikki's tantrums were a highlight of the series for me, but even those started to pall after time. But don't listen to people when they say BB is over. Of course it's not. The right chemistry might always be six months or a year round the corner, and any fan of Big Brother has to learn to take the rough with the smooth. With this in mind, I have compiled my favourite moments from the series so far, which all happen to come from the diary room.....

Moment number 3:- [Imogen on Lea's conversational style] It's always COCK and TITS and SPUNK
(sounds so much better when said in a Welsh accent, and when followed up with "I am SOOOO OOOver it")

Moment number 2:- [Nikki on Aisleyne] Who is she? Who IS she? Where did you FIND her? Who IS SHE??
(Nikki should be sent into schools to teach spoken English and contemporary rhetoric. I marvel at her apposite, economic use of language)

All-time favourite moment of BB7 Phase I:- [Glyn on Susie's excessive tea-drinking, and the general lack of partying and snogging] This isn't Big Brother, this is Crapland
(I couldn't have said it better myself, Glyn)

Thursday Night's TV (13/7/06)

Is Love Island the most offensive programme on TV? It seems deliberately designed to humiliate the female "celebs" as much as humanly possible. Not only have they matched them up with some of the ropiest men on the planet (Lee Otway? He's just a chav with an eating disorder), but they've done so unevenly in order that one woman will always be a 'gooseberry'. While the women aren't exactly 'top spec bitches' (Has Alicia Duvall been in a horrific fire??), I do think this is slightly unfair. What puzzles me is that the "celebs" genuinely seem to be going on the island to find love. I thought the embarrassment of Middlemiss/Titmuss/Sharpe last year was just a spot of luck for the producers, but Sophie Anderton seems to be heading for exactly the same pitfall this time around, obsessing over Boyzone's Shane Lynch who is probably wary of her past drug addiction and promiscuity and understandably wants to distance himself from the adenoidal idiot. Sophie, however, has no idea and is gushing about him to anyone who will listen; interpreting his awkwardness as a strong, silent manliness and going all girly when Patrick Kielty and Fearne Cotton urge her to "tell him!tell him!" how she feels so that she makes a total arse of herself. It should be called Pimp Island. It leaves me feeling all sordid. It might just get good though, I'm going to give it another week.
PLEASE DON'T EVICT NIKKI FROM BB. She may have her problems but the show is going to be dire without her. Evict one of the 'voids' instead - Mikey, Imogen, preferably SUSIE. I think I'm going to have to vote for the first time. It's so wrong that she's the bookies favourite to go, when there are peasants like Spiral and Jennie in the house. DON'T RUIN THE END OF BB. KEEP NIKKI IN!!!!

This weekend's TV (7-8/7/06)

Look it's been while. I've been technologically moved back to the last century over the past few weeks - DIAL-UP???? So while I've got a broadband chance, just wanted to register some views on the BB housemates.
Glyn (aka Beavis) and his new blonde hair. Wonderful. Normally such a teenage fashion mistake would only be caught on photos, but unfortunately the whole nation can see this one. In a way it makes him an even more suitable companion for......
Mikey (aka Butthead). Put the goon back in a majorette costume someone PLEASE. I haven't seen anything as funny all BB ias his galumphing around in lycra like a latter-day village idiot. More fancy dress for Mikey full stop.
Spiral - "Oim Spoiral. Oim a total steretoipe. Listen to how I say terty tree" - Spiral may make out like he's all pre-colonial Irish hospitality but rub him up the wrong way and his face darkens to reveal one of the strange locals from Craggy Island. Somehow Spiral has put the phrase 'Bog Irish' back in my head.....
Right gotta go, more soon.