tv

A visit to a friend’s provided a perfect opportunity to watch a whole evening of TV. Normally, of course, I am very selective in my viewing, watching only the classier programmes such as Eastenders. Now I found myself actually watching Tranny and Suzinna, or whatever they’re called. It was quite disturbing. Members of the public, already quite unstable (as is indicated by their willingness to be on the programme in the first place) are taken into a hall of mirrors and systematically broken down until they admit their worthlessness, at least in terms of clothing choice. If this was made in the former Soviet Union, people would say that it was symptomatic of nostalgia for the good old days of Stalin. Then there was Grand Designs, where people make houses out of unlikely things like rice krispies, and the presenter looks on waiting for it all to go wrong.

On this particular night, as luck would have it, there was a documentary about Take That, in which they were reunited. Except Robbie failed to turn up, of course, leaving the others sitting in a room chatting a little awkwardly, as at a party that hasn’t taken off. Only Jason Orange, now based in Ibiza, failed to give (within my hearing at least) any account of the years since the split, except to say that he’d been suffering from insomnia. It was as though he’d spent all of the intervening years just trying to get some sleep.

Perhaps I’m now addicted to junk TV, since today I even found myself watching a documentary (if that isn’t putting it too strongly) about H from Steps trying to make it as a performer in the West End. I learned a lot about him I hadn’t known before. He’s Welsh. Maybe that’s why he didn’t appear to know that Henry V is anything more than ‘a character in a play by Shakespeare’. And he only knew that because he was having Shakespeare classes. Like Jason Orange, he complains of insomnia, though in H’s case it may be the camera crew in his bedroom that’s to blame.