One of the nice things about getting older is that you no longer have to pay any attention whatsoever to popular culture. Over the years I have probably caught no more than an hour in total of Pop Idol, The X-Factor, Big Brother, I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here andBritain’s Got Talent. I haven’t watched a single episode of any soap opera in over twenty (glorious) years. I’m not proud of this – just relieved.
Don’t get me wrong – I lap up popular culture in the form of comedy and crime shows – but I seem to have an aversion to those events where the whole nation gathers to pass judgment on the sort of acts that used to make light entertainment programmes unbearable in the 1970s, and the sort of “celebrities” of whose existence one had previously been blissfully unaware.
Now, I can understand the lure of a communal event, and the pleasure to be derived from supporting a favourite performer or team - I’ll be glued to next’s year’s World Cup and Wimbledon along with everyone else. What I don’t get about popular culture is the popularity of some of the ghastly people who present the programmes or the experts who comment on the acts.
Does anyone anywhere in the whole world actually like Piers Morgan? He revealed everything we needed to know about his personality when he appeared on Have I Got News For You way back in 1996. Why would anyone want to spend any more time in his company? Yet he’s huge on both sides of the Atlantic. Can the whole world have missed the screamingly obvious fact that this man is a sort Platonic Ideal of an obnoxious prat?
There are three male panelists on Strictly Come Dancing. The old cockney geezer comes across as sensible and likable. The other two are just asking to be slapped.
Big Brother’s Davina McCall seems to have based a whole career on being unfunny and irritating.
Moving away from “talent” shows and onto comedy: is it even remotely possible that the majority of Britons don’t want to put their boot through the TV screen whenever Jonathan Ross appears on it?
Are there genuinely more than a handful of people out there who wouldn’t pay for the opportunity to knee Dara O’Brien in the nuts?
As for Frankie Boyle, the Scot who enhanced our lives by making jokes about the Queen’s vagina, attacking an 18-year old English Olympic medal winner for having a large nose, and publishing a book with the title, My Shit Life So Far – well, our cultural life would obviously be hopelessly compromised by the absence of his life-enhancing genius.
As for Jeremy Hardy, how could we survive without his up-to-the-minute attacks on that wicked Mrs. Thatcher and his heart-warming support for Arthur Scargill and the miners? Or without Jo Brand’s fascinating insights into her private parts and bodily functions? Or Marcus Brigstocke’s searing indictments of the middle classes, delivered in the sort of Cockney accent only the graduate of a fine boarding school would imagine is convincing? Mind you, given the Young Master’s excellent education - including attendance at the university which boats the highest percentage of private school undergraduates in the country - we middle class types are probably a bit proley for him.
For decades we’ve been forced to endure people who, if we had actually met them, we would thenceforth have crossed a continent to avoid: Hughie Green, Jimmy Savile, Russell Harty, Dave Lee Travis, Robert Kilroy-Silk, Roy Castle, Alan Carr, Jeremy Kyle, Trisha Goddard, Cat Deeley, Chris Evans, Chris Moyles… Oh God, the list is endless!
Please make them stop!
And now, even Terry Wogan has abandoned us.
The only problem is, I couldn’t stand him either. His Eurovision commentaries were mildly amusing, but his TV talk show was dire and his radio show brought me out in hives. If I ever hear him say “Steady the Buffs!” in that mock-grave tone again, I may never regain my sanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment