Warning sense, rationality and logic will not be found in this post. In it’s place you will find swearing, vitriol and gushing bile.
Firstly I don’t watch a lot of television. I hate soap operas. Years ago you could avoid them by going out a few nights a week. Now they’re on every day with omnibuses in case you happen to get a life by accident one day. However they are very popular (like boy bands and happy slapping) so you can see why they fill schedules.
Documentaries have steadily become so dumbed down there isn’t any point in watching them if you’ve read a book in the past 20 years. I don’t need programmes to tell me that fat girls who drink 20 units a night, smoke heavily and have unprotected sex with strangers are not doing themselves any good. David Attenborough is still whispering about animals. They still get born, shag, kill a bit then get killed themselves only now in high def.
Reality TV got boring years ago. Celebrities brightened up the tired format for a few years but now they’ve ran out of celebrities and the same faces pop up more often than an afternoon playing speed “Guess Who” with a child on pure E numbers.
What I do like however is a nice bit of comedy. Not especially sit-coms which have been generally weak for years now. I like light, throwaway quizshows and the stand-up comedians. Stuff that’ll make me chuckle and if I’m distracted by something I don’t especially mind as there’s no plot and a laugh will be along in a minute.
Apparently the programme schedulers in Northern Ireland hate programmes I like. They can’t stand them. Specifically the sports programmers. Any excuse and the schedulers happily replace whatever I want to watch with some turgid match or other. The match is always shown at around 9:30pm. Heaven forbid it would interfere with the viewing habits of the soap ghouls or be shown live. Instead my programmes are replaced by nasal rat-boy Stephen Watson fawning over some shitty footballer who wouldn’t make it into an English non-league team.
This is made all the more annoying by the fact that people in Northern Ireland don’t watch Northern Irish teams play football. They couldn’t give a shit. Your football teams are chosen at birth based on the religious beliefs of your parents and they are Scottish and/or English, never Northern Irish. So I despair as the humorous antics on “have I got news for you” is yet again replaced by Ballyshithole Vs Kilcuntsville. For the 5 seconds it takes for me to realise this the viewing figures are doubled.
I’ve gotten used to my BBC comedy being ruined but tonight I should be watching Al Murray and his pub landlord based chat show. Instead I’m typing this blog because in NI we’ve got Kelly’s Sporting Heroes. I quote “Gerry celebrates the local sports people who have put Northern Ireland firmly on the map.”
To paraphrase – fat, beardy, twat who should have jacked it in years ago, Gerry Kelly tries desperately to find a sporting “hero” from Northern Ireland who hasn’t drank himself to death or wrapped his head round a lamppost on a motorbike. Apparently whilst typing this I’m missing George Best’s sister managing to avoid talking about alcohol and spousal abuse, some footballing guy I’ve never heard of who now does the Spanish commentary for Sky Sports, Pat Jennings who is at least famous mainly I believe for being very tall in Top Trumps, fans of a bike bloke, not even the bloke himself having hoofed himself into trees at high speed 8 years ago.
The shows highlights to me appear to be a blind water skier called Janet Gray. People always say that when you’re deprived of a sense your other senses become better to compensate. Janet appears to have picked a sport where her other finely honed senses are going to be fuck all use. Janet doesn’t need to be Daredevil to know that when your hearing is muffled, you taste salt, you smell liquid and feel wet you’ve fallen off.
Saving the big guns ’til last Gerry chats to Dennis Taylor. He will of course always be fondly remembered for being jolly, ginger and wearing stupid fucking glasses. Oh he also used to play a pub game.
Worst of all they never once cancelled “Give my head peace” the home grown”comedy” that managed to drag one joke kicking and screaming for about 600 series.
