Scraping the barrel
Television is finally scraping the barrel.
For those of you of a non-Irish persuasion, there is a programme on television here that used to be a really good chat show. Then The Plank took over and now it’s run by Twiglet Tubridy. I refer of course to The Late Late Show,
In its heyday guests included the Great and the Good. World famous names would drop in for a chat and a drop of banter.
Tonight, it’s featured guest is a fucking cat.
I kid you not. RTE’s once flagship programme is reduced to bragging that a fucking cat is the star guest of the show.
There is another programme on called Love Hate or somesuch. I watched one episode and wasn’t impressed. From what I can gather, it’s a sort of Eastenders set in the arse end of Ballymun or Ballyfermot – All skangers, skobies, druggies and skinheads. If I really wanted to see them I’d just drop into Skobieville for an hour or two.
Anyhows, the latest series started off with a bang apparently. One of the characters machine gunned a cat. This immediately caused an uproar amongst the Mothers of Seven Brigade and Moggie Lovers everywhere. Now these do-gooders somehow reckon that the sight of a cat being machine gunned is disgusting, depraved and will incite kids throughout the country to dispatch their local felines with an AK 47. I take it these same idiots sit down quite happily every night and watch films where people or murdered, dismembered and generally eviscerated on a regular basis, but that apparently doesn’t bother them?
So tonight, on prime time television, the guest star is a fucking cat presumably purring along on one of his eight remaining lives.
Meanwhile on Channel 4 they have started a new series.
I haven’t watched it and I have not intention of watching it Ever.
From the blurbs they have put out, apparently couples come on the show, go into an opaque glass box, have rampant sex and then come out and talk about it. Sweet fuck, but what have we come to? Are the channels really that desperate to grab our attention? Are they really openly pandering to the Tissue Box Brigade? Are they really reduced to showing us shadowy arses humping as a way of getting an audience? They call it a serious discussion programme. Yeah. Right.
I honestly shudder to think what they will come up with next. Celebrity Gang Bang? Naked Gardeners World? The Sex Factor?
Television really has gone to the dogs.
Or should that be the cats?
Definitely gone to the digs- Late Late was good in the heyday of Gaybo but, the few times I've been forced to watch it since when I'm back home it's a load of crap. I usually exit stage left to the pub.
Fuck it – DOGS not digs.
And wrong e-mail address – apologies for "Simples" !!!
"Digs" is fine. A brand new expression which is worse than "gone to the dogs".
Gaybo could be a pain in the arse occasionally, but in comparison to his successors he was the most brilliant interviewer on the planet.
Television went to the dogs long ago, GD. I haven't had broadcast TV in my house for more than ten years, and almost never watched it for the ten years prior to that.
I used to have Sky years ago, but rapidly came to the realisation that although it might have had 100 (or whatever) channels available, it was just 100 channels of unadulterated garbage instead of four (or however many terrestrial channels there are) channels of garbage. Seemed pretty pointless to me, so I junked the lot.
Anything that I think will be of interest to me I either download or stream directly. I tend to download movies and documentaries I want to watch, and stream live sports (which is basically just Formula 1 – I'm a bit of a petrolhead). And that provides me with all the visual entertainment I need or want.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to see somebody bonking in an opaque glass box. If it was clear glass, I could sort of understand (although I still wouldn't be tempted personally), but opaque? Dear God, some people must have far too much time on their hands if they will sit through something like that.
Sky is up to around 900 channels at this stage. You'd think that out of that lot there would be one or two? Not a chance. Pure unadulterated shite on every single one.
Herself likes the odd programme, but if I ever found myself on a desert island, I don't think I would miss it somehow.
One third of the Naked Groundforce crew would have been worth watching… perhaps the other two thirds would have appealed to the female half of the populus.
They could have renamed the programme – "Charlie's Charlies"?
I can remember back to when the first analogue Sky dishes started appearing (mainly on council houses – surprise, surprise) with a whopping 16 channels! I said at the time it would just lead to more channels sharing the same content, and I was right…
Have you also noticed how most of the channels stop for advert breaks at the same time? Impatient channel hoppers, like myself, can't even find something else while the obligatory crap is aired for the umpteenth time. A hard drive based recorder is the best way to deal with this – record and watch later, zooming through the adds at 3-5x speed. That way in the rare event of a good commercial you can still watch it if you want to.
Many centuries ago I used to work in the cable television business. We actually provided people with six whole channels – RTE1, RTE2, BBC1, BBC2, UTV and Channel 4. The punters would go wild at the immense choice we provided!
One of the few great things about modern television is the hard drive. I'm becoming an expert at the fast forward. I can now rev up to x12 and still hit the end of the ads bang on!
I always enjoyed Late Late. Used to watch in when it was broadcast on Channel 4 and whenever we were in Ireland. Gaybo had some great guests. I especially enjoyed the Irish musicians especially the Chieftens, Clancy's, Dubliners, Furey's. Bono finished if off for me.
From the sublimely sublime to the pompously ridiculous.
Not just any cat I’ll have you know. The cat in question is actually a neighbour of yours.. my next door neighbour’s. No kidding. Bubba is his name. He likes to sleep on top of the fridge because it’s warm up there, and he is not a fan of toddlers. He is most definitely still alive for I almost ran over him this morning.
I know. I nearly ran over him too when I called over on Thursday. That would have nicely fucked up the Late Late? "The cat that wasn't killed can't appear because he's dead" Heh!
If TV is so banal and culturally vapid it may be time to get rid of it. Either watch DVD movies on a DVD player, or get rid of the set altogether and listen to radio. Avoid North Korean Radio as it doesn't play anything by Daniel O'Donnell.
About the only thing I'll watch these days is films and even then, good films are becoming hard to find. Watched "The Shipping News" last night though – brilliant film with a great soundtrack. About the fourth time I have watched it.
On DVD recently I've watched an Irish movie Parked starring Colm Meaney as a man returned from working in England who has to live in his parked car because the blundering welfare civil servants won't sort out his entitlements. The Life of Pi had some spectacular moments, but lacked many subtleties I enjoyed in the novel. A tough and sort of tender French DVD I viewed two nights ago was De Rouille et D'Os (Rust and Bone) which you might look out for. But Spielberg's superbly produced Hugo, located in a railway station in 1930s Paris, was a really good view in recent months.
"From the blurbs they have put out, apparently couples come on the show, go into an opaque glass box, have rampant sex and then come out and talk about it. " IF you want to see that, all you have to do is go to the bathroom in any Club in any moderately large city around the world. Buy 'em a Pint, and I'm sure they'll tell you all about it. 🙂
Our society is eroding at an alarming rate. What used to go on behind closed doors is now on the TV!
Sex as a spectator sport?! The next stage is to have couples humping on stage and then being awarded points for effort and technique.
Can't imaging anything more boring……
The seX Factor? Britain's Got Crabs? Mind you, with an idea like that I'd say Louis Walsh would want a side show with auditions in a nightclub gents toilet. 😛
Damnit, now I can't get rid of the mental image of Louis Walsh on a sex show. I feel sick. Very very sick.
Sex as a spectator sport?
That reminds me of a porn video a mate of mine put on once when I was at his about 25 years ago. It was a French one, and it was called "Sex Olympics" or some such. It involved several couples competing in various races / time trials of a sexual nature (I won't go into detail). It was probably the most entertaining porn I've ever watched (I'm very much of the opinion that if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all). It was all very tongue in cheek (or somewhere) and was a great laugh. Hilarious, in fact.
Now if there was a program like that, I might be tempted! 🙂
Sounds like one of the Private series (don't ask how I know…). There was another with "unusual" locations as the theme. In one scene a couple managed to do it whilst suspended from a mountain in full rock climbing harnesses! Of course the cameraman was "hanging around" as well…
On the Matterhorn, I presume?
I wasn't looking at the fcuking mountain!
One of these days they may end up showing cats shagging because we've become so bored by humans.
Why can't the have a programme showing politicians being machine-gunned? I'd watch that. In fact I'd record it and play it in an endless loop.
Was it your good self that had this idea where instead of holding traditional elections, political candidates should be released into a dense forest during the peak of the hunting season carrying nothing but the clothes on their back? Last one to survive would be elected to his/her constituency.