TV cont.

People who watch TV should be shot for breathing. I mean air is a valuable commodity. And space, they take up space. And if it takes eight times more stuff to produce a kilo of meat than a kilo of stuff think how much stuff it takes to add a kilo to a TV potato. No, shoot them and give real vegetables a chance. Take ‘Let’s dance for Comic Relief’ last night. OK it’s nice to see celebrities show fear and shame once in a while and it’s relaxing to watch comedy that doesn’t stimulate all the muscular activity required to laugh or even smile, but this yearly wince-in was the bleached bones of joylessness, a sort of ‘I’ll rub yours if you rub mine’ last gasp funereal copulation. No wonder Charlie Brooker vented his weekly spleen on the guy who suggested ten years ago, “Why not watch TV and write about it in the Guardian Guide? Should be fun.” Turns out the only fun was ripping its inane banality to shreds like a lion with chirpy jackal. And now as Charlie has gone the way of Mary Whitehouse, amusing but unheard, the slop, sorry slot, has fallen to Grace Dent. In her early weeks Grace was benign bringing the cogent balance of a reviewer, but as the weeks have gone by the spleen has grown. It must be like reviewing ‘The Mouse Trap’ on a weekly basis; an enjoyable who-done-it, an interesting if flawed plot, tedious predictable drivel, the woman in front of me had hiccups, why only one murder when I would personally kill the whole dam lot of them! Yes Grace has become her own master of the inventive pithy derisory phrase. You go girl!