Clickbait hate does none of us any good

Last week Channel 5 screened a documentary entitled Benefits: Too Fat to Work which, I confess, I didn't watch. Being part of a group that is subjected to probably more clickbait articles and TV programmes than any other (being fat in contemporary Britain makes you feel about as popular as an imam on Fox News), I thought that I'd pass. Admittedly some programmes are well-intentioned and genuinely do set out to inform and help those of us who regularly clog up the NHS with our vast, wobbly bottoms and multiple chins, but this didn't seem like one of the good ones. In fact, a combination of benefits and obesity seemed calculated to press all the wrong buttons: “The benefits cheats are back – and this time they're GARGANTUAN!”

Given the obviously prejudicial nature of this latest salvo against fatties, I was amazed to read that The Guardian's TV reviewer, Euan Ferguson considered that, “Fat people have been dealt with down the years by most major channels with surprising empathy...” I must confess that that statement caused me to LOL, long and loudly. Firstly, Mr. F, I would ask you to put yourself in my shoes and ask how you would like to spend even a week in a world where you were seen merely as a problem that needs solving? That, in itself, is dispiriting enough without being almost single-handedly held responsible for the parlous condition of the U.K.'s health system.

There is no doubt that there are more overweight people around these days and this is clearly worrying health professionals, but is it really so surprising? Since I left Britain in the middle of 1982 the whole country has changed beyond recognition: the idea of a job for life is merely a distant memory and, for those of us who are lucky enough to have a job or at least enough work to cover our basic bills, life is a constant battle to grab some time. I certainly didn't sign up to work this hard for so little return – in basic terms, I must work long and hard to earn an amount of money that is an inadequate return for my experience and effort, BUT it is better than nothing. However, it does mean that I don't have a lot of time to spend making my own dinner from scratch. Basically, people buy a lot of ready-to-microwave food because it buys them a few extra minutes, as does driving to work, even when the office might be within reasonable walking distance. These days, more than ever, time is money.

Despite being a lardy I am, however, a non-smoking teetotaller. It's not a course of action that I would recommend for everyone, but it works well for me. Many of my friends drink considerably more than me and I can only say good luck to them if they enjoy it and their systems can tolerate it. The advantage that heavy drinkers have, of course, is that – unless they have descended into full-blown alcoholism – they can turn up for work on Monday morning with a clean slate. Unless their employer has actually witnessed the Friday night carnage and seen them lying in the middle of the street in a puddle of vomit and wee, they are free to carry on. I have no objection to this and can boast at least one great-grandfather who continued merrily pickling his liver and nicotining his lungs into very old age with few apparent ill effects.

However, I am obliged to ask where all the clickbait documentaries about binge drinking are? Certainly we can rely on the annual news reports every December when the office party season swings into action and the vomit comets line up on the street to bus all the revellers to A&E but when it comes to regular, unsubtle hate-mongering it definitely seems that the drinker is of less interest than the fatso.

Yet neither, I would posit, is the true reason for the imminent collapse of the NHS.

When the system was set up in 1948 the job for life was a reality, not a vague historical concept and most adults worked, therefore regularly paying to support this new “free at the point of delivery” lifeline. Furthermore, the population was roughly half of what it is today, the number of services that could be offered by the NHS was very limited (no MRI scans and open heart surgery, for instance) and life expectancy was lower – much lower. Despite continually being told that we are digging our graves with our teeth, we are nonetheless living beyond the point at which we can possibly enjoy a decent quality of life, with conditions like Alzheimer's and senile dementia felling many long before death. At the same time less money is flooding into the kitty because fewer people are earning enough money to enable them to pay taxes and help with supporting the health system.

THAT is the problem.

Still, I would be more willing to accept Euan Ferguson's verdict on Benefits: Too Fat to Work had he not fallen for this bit of blatant prejudice. Discussing the people featured on the programme he revealed, “But I didn’t hate them – although, granted, I wouldn’t have queued to stick my nose into their fragrant armpit-geysers.” The worst thing about fat people is that they SMELL, of course. Fat people – don'tcha just hate them? They sweat cobs and they stink like pigs. At the age of 54 I am old enough to remember the bad old days when it was said that Asian and black people smelled. Since then I have heard that old people smell really bad too and now it's the lardies' turn. On one occasion I had the pleasure to be told by an acquaintance that I should be sure always to shower at least twice a day because, “Fat people smell really bad.” Sadly, this chain-smoker failed to apply the same strict criteria to her own hygiene regime, so she invariably ponged like an old ashtray.

As I look at The Guardian's website I note that they are no less guilty of whipping up hatred than any of the red tops. At the bottom of Euan Ferguson's TV review I am invited to read articles entitled, “Obesity plan could cost shoppers dear”, “Young pioneers in the frontline of NHS battle against obesity” and “The bulk of the nation”.

We have already seen violent crimes committed against other hate figures in our population – how long will it be before we see the first against the obese?

An Open Letter to Sir Bob Geldof

Dear Sir Bob,

While realising that the past few years have not been kind to you and not having any desire to 'tune you grief' as my South African mates would say, I still think that it's time that you and I had a little talk.

When I was a teenager I was quite a fan of The Boomtown Rats and certainly rated you more highly than that prize ass Bono (is there no bandwagon sufficiently transient to induce that tax-dodging eejit not to mount it?!) but some of the things that you have said and done recently have made me realise that it could well be time for me to speak up.

Firstly, you appear to think that anyone who has expressed reservations about the latest Band Aid project doesn't give a toss about the way in which various countries in West Africa are being ravaged by Ebola. Nothing could be further from the truth – but I would posit that most refuseniks are probably more likely to be suffering from charity single ennui than compassion fatigue. Speaking for myself I do care about Africa, so much so that I elected to study African History in an African university, so don't think that you can wear me down with your, “Give me your feckin' money, you feckin' tight, pig-shit ignorant Western feckin' bastard!”

However, I think that I can probably speak for many of us when I say that I am heartily sick and tired of being asked to hand over dosh by a bunch of multi-millionaires who have “generously given their time” in order to lay down some piss-poor cover version of a 'much loved' classic. It might be their time but it's our money!

I have been a professional writer for more than 25 years and am still not earning enough to trouble HMRC. Do you know how insulting it is, when Britain's NHS and educational system is in a state of crisis, to submit your tax return and be told, “No, it's all right, love – you need it more than we do.” Yet YOU are expecting ME to be the one to hand over the money. Why not ask your dear old mate, Bono to donate the moolah that he saved from moving his financial affairs to the Netherlands?

I would also ask why, in any case, we should donate to Band Aid? It would surely make more sense to ask us to send a fiver to Medecins Sans Frontieres because they are at least on the front line.

Of course, in the end the people who should be pressured to contribute should be the big drugs companies such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline who are, after all, in more of a position to make a real contribution to ending the scourge of Ebola than the overworked and underpaid workforce of the UK. What we need most of all is a vaccine, but I think that you will find the pharmaceutical big hitters less susceptible to your peculiar brand of brusque Dublin charm.

Finally, could you and Midge not have written a new song? For God's sake! That's four feckin' times we've had to endure Do They Know It's Christmas? and, let's face it, this knackered old war horse is looking its age. If you hadn't kept on digging it up it might have evoked a few sensations of cosy nostalgia but now we're just fed up to the back teeth.

And, despite the 'subtle' lyric changes it's still a patronising and misleading view of the continent.

Sorry for your troubles and all, but I just had to say this.

Your former fan,

KJ  

Patsy Stone and A Grand Night Out

Recently I happened to see a stand-up routine by the waspish comedian, Simon Evans, who lives in the Brighton and Hove area. Most of his rant concerned the vast numbers of scantily clad ‘hens’ that hit both towns during weekends, leading him to posit that perhaps it would be a good idea if the local prostitutes were to wear badges so that punters could more easily identify the real working girls from the amateurs.

This comment did ultimately raise a laugh, but it was preceded by the sort of collective intake of breath that must have warned Evans that he was perilously close to the precipice, the point at which a triumphant Sunday Night at the London Palladium becomes professional suicide on the stage of the famously tricky Glasgow Empire.

Perhaps I laughed earlier than the rest of the audience, because this observation was one that I had recently made myself, when watching some fly-on-the-wall documentary about the mess that police and paramedics are forced to confront on the streets of Britain’s cities every weekend. Watching one crowd of women staggering along the street, clad in what can only be described as inappropriate attire considering the inclement weather I had thought exactly the same thing myself. Having been absent from my home country since 1982, I started to wonder at which point it became perfectly acceptable for young women to venture out at night in what would have been regarded in the 1970s and 1980s as the classic uniform of a brass.

At this point I would like to state that I have absolutely nothing against prostitutes; these women perform a very useful service and I would love the profession to be legalised, thereby offering them an increased level of protection against pimps who are a bit too handy with their fists and equally violent punters. Without this protection, many prostitutes are forced out onto the streets where they become easy prey for men like Steve Wright, the lorry driver who murdered five women near Ipswich in 2006.

The bald fact is that when you have something to sell – in this case, sex – you have to make sure that the potential customer can see the goods in advance of payment. So, that is the prostitute’s angle; what tempts the ordinary lass out on the town to market herself in exactly the same way?

In the 1990s I started to be aware of the now well-worn phrase, “I’m confident in my sexuality.” This is all very well and would perhaps explain an attitude that might persuade women to put their melons on show: “See these? See how ripe and luscious they are? Well, have a bloody good look, love, because this is the closest you’re ever going to get to them!” That is a dangerous game at the best of times but, coupled with an intention to drink one’s own bodyweight in alcohol, it becomes damn near suicidal.     

Recently Joanna Lumley has added her own five cents to the debate by advising young women on ways that they might keep themselves out of harm’s way. “Don’t look like trash, don’t get drunk, don’t be sick down your front, don’t break your heels and stagger about in the wrong clothes at midnight,” she said. Sound advice, I would have thought. Yet delivered in La Lumley’s cut-glass accent, this sensible warning has been construed by The Guardian’s columnist, Tanya Gold as an attack on working class culture.

Speaking as a member of the bourgeoisie I would like to posit that, were I working class, I would deeply resent the implication that a typical night out for me would inevitably involve donning a fanny-flashing dress, downing an industrial-sized quantity of Bacardi Breezers and sitting in a puddle of my own wee.

It is perfectly natural, upon reaching middle age, to imagine that the years of one’s youth were far superior to anything on offer today, but given the evidence that many of Britain’s towns and cities are virtually no-go areas most evenings (and especially on weekends), wouldn’t it be great to return to the days when all generations felt comfortable about hitting the town after dark?

On the odd occasions when my friends and I could talk our way out of Bryntaff, our boarding house, and onto the mean streets of night-time Cardiff (and this always involved a lie about going to the cinema), we inevitably applied make-up and wore our “going out” clothes. We usually ended up in a pub, in conversation with some slightly lairy, but perfectly decent blokes from somewhere exotic like Port Talbot or Neath and probably had a bevvy or two. I am heartened to note that a night on the town for my 25 year-old goddaughter is pretty much the same; having seen photos of her social life I can confirm that she and her friends also prefer the ‘dressing up’ to the ‘dressing down’ option. Probably they have a drink or two, but stop long before they lose control.

The main problem is that, in combination with excessive amounts of booze, wearing a PVC nurse’s uniform that barely covers one’s arse cheeks is an invitation to trouble, whatever Tanya Gold says. When I was a teenager I was advised not to wear cripplingly high heels because, if some man with evil intentions did decide to rape or mug me, it would be more difficult to make my escape. That seemed like sound advice then and it still does now.

There is a vast gulf between offering advice to help women stay out of trouble and stating that, “They asked for it!”

Like many of us who experienced our teenage years in the 1970s I was raised on the old feminist anthem, “Whatever I wear, wherever I go, yes means yes and no means no” but I hadn’t factored in the possibility of living in an era when women would drink so much that they would finish a night out so drunk that they would be unable to withhold sexual consent.

Being too drunk to say no is a massive problem – possibly one of the largest facing young women these days.

It’s for this reason that courts are obliged to hear cases which revolve around “he said, she said” non-consensual sex scenarios and the incidence of STDs like chlamydia are higher than they have been for decades.

In advising girls not to dress like tramps and drink like fish, Tanya Gold accuses Joanna Lumley of colluding with the Taliban. This is clearly complete nonsense, but does expose the current British obsession with not being judgemental.

Maybe it is time that we rediscovered the positive aspects of being judgemental. Maybe it is time that we told young women that to venture out at night in clothes bought at Anne Summers and combine their inappropriate attire with copious amounts of alcohol is a thoroughly bad idea. Maybe it is time that we told them that a little responsibility for their own actions is in itself empowering – and far more celebratory of their sexuality than going commando in a perilously scanty French maid’s uniform.

“Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no.” I still believe in that philosophy; any sexual assault is ALWAYS the fault of the rapist. However, when my friends and I chanted this, all we were thinking about was displaying perhaps a centimetre more cleavage than our parents would deem suitable.

If I acquired a Porsche convertible and parked it in an area of high crime and left the keys in the ignition I would anticipate a stern lecture from the local constabulary about my carelessness and lack of common sense, were it stolen.

Of course, it is a big mistake to associate rape with revealing clothing; most sexual attacks on women by men have absolutely no bearing on their choice of outfit, but it certainly is true that a combination of trashy costume and terminal drunkenness is a pretty good guarantee that a night out will end in trouble, whether this involves pregnancy, an STD or finding yourself in bed with a total stranger.

As we seventies feminists have long realised, ending up in bed with some unpromising herbert due to the application of beer goggles does not a rape or serious sexual assault make.

You want equal rights? You’ll just have to butch it out and admit your mistake.

When I was a teen there was a phrase that used to send us all into gales of laughter. It was very popular with Play for Today style dramatists and always involved a scenario where a girl was debating the merits of sleeping with her boyfriend: “Will you still respect me in the morning?” Oh, how we laughed!

Funnily enough, it doesn’t sound quite so amusing these days.

  

  

Bowie and Me

In his typically humorous memoirs, The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson frequently comments on his status as a baby boomer and philosophises about the way in which the average boomer’s expectations of life differed from his or her parents’.

Born in 1951, Bryson is definitively a baby boomer as, born in the final quarter of 1960, I am too. Maybe I limbo-danced my way into the great boomer party at five seconds to some mythical midnight, but I have no less a right to consider myself as part of this great post-war reproductive experience.

One thing that quite clearly separates us from our pre WWII parents is our status as perpetual teenagers. This is something that was made blindingly obvious to me last week, when David Bowie released his first new work for a decade.

Even if Twitter had existed when my Mam had been 52, as I am now, I can hardly imagine her tweeting “OMG have you heard the new Andy Williams album? #amazeballs” to her followers; yet many of we Bowie fanatics have been rediscovering our teenage years with the news that our favourite Starman is on the brink of releasing a brand new album at the age of 66.

One comment that I saw on The Guardian’s website struck me as particularly apposite: “David Bowie made me who I am today” it read and, had it name checked almost anyone else, I would probably have guffawed; loud and long. Yet how can I scoff when I have to admit that in my own life there is a Bowie-shaped fault line?

All it took was one picture; an exotic, glamorous creature reclining on a chaise longue, one arm raised gracefully over his head, a head which is incidentally adorned with gloriously long tresses. Oh, and did I mention that he was wearing a dress?

That picture which, I later learned, featured on the cover of an album entitled The Man Who Sold the World, was to divide my life into BB (Before Bowie) and AB (after Bowie).

BB KJ was a happy, innocent child who liked nothing better than to throw on a pair of blue and green tartan ski-pants, a jumper knitted by my grandmother in wool of such an intense colour that it could probably be seen from outer space and a pair of wellies (I was a style icon even then) so that I could ‘help’ my grandfather in his vegetable garden. Granted this assistance generally involved accidentally slicing earthworms in half with my mini-spade and marvelling that they didn’t die, eating peas straight out of the pod and wandering off when some random thought distracted me, but it was a healthy, out-of-doors existence and it suited me very well.

AB KJ was a very different beast. All I recall after seeing that picture (and where was it, I wonder now; in some teen magazine possibly?) is training bras, Clearasil and the development of a very bad attitude. To my grandfather’s dismay, the genie was out of the bottle and it was never going to be pushed back in, however hard he tried.

A long-haired man in a dress was quite possibly the worst thing that you could have ever shown Granddad; let’s just say that he didn’t share my enthusiasm for all things Bowie, who quickly became the centre of my pre-teenage universe. Why would anyone bother with Donny Osmond and David Cassidy (sorry, boys) when the man who fell to earth was carving out new territory?

Bowie quickly came to represent the possibilities of the world outside my little rural patch of West Wales. I cannot imagine how a man in a dress, more beautiful than many women, would go down at the Martletwy Young Farmers’ Club but something told me that he would have to be very handy with his fists to avoid a good kicking.

Of course, what I did not realise that the late sixties and early seventies would later be famous for its celebration of androgyny and ‘gender-bending’ as it later came to be known. We Bowie-istas like to imagine that our hero sprung, fully formed, from the rib of Zeus or something equally mythological but, as Peter Doggett reminds us in his excellent book, The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie and the 1970s, Bowie is nothing if not a magpie, albeit a very intelligent example of the species.

With input from (amongst others) Anthony Newley, mime artist Lindsey Kemp and his contemporary, Marc Bolan, Bowie began his process of Ziggyfication and unwittingly became the template for many other later music stars, including Madonna and Lady Gaga. My first Bowie album was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, reaching backwards to embrace Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory, before he reached what, to me, will always be his apotheosis, Aladdin Sane.

Due to his talent for recreating himself in a variety of fascinating guises, Bowie’s career has been something that we fans can constantly dip into at various stages along the way. Tin Machine did not appeal to me, although 1999’s distinctly Hunky Dory-ish Hours did.

The nearest I have ever come to meeting Bowie was during my time at drama school in 1981, when a fellow student volunteered her boyfriend to help with the sound on a production of Godspell since, “he has worked in the music industry a bit.” He turned out to be Tony Visconti, producer of both Bowie and Bolan and on meeting him I was so hysterical to be shaking the hand that shook the hand etc. that all I could manage was a high-pitched squeak. Prepare ye the way of the lord, indeed. My middle-aged self, of course, is furious that I lacked the gumption to make him a cuppa, sit him down and winkle as many stories out of him as I could when I had the chance.

I have no desire to meet Bowie in the flesh; to me, as to many of his fans, he is an almost mythological creature. To discover that he has, for example, bad breath and a post-nasal drip would make him human and that is one thing that I cannot afford to acknowledge.

No, even as an old geezer with a career that spans 45 years, Bowie has to retain that air of inscrutability and exoticism that has epitomised his personae since the beginning and with Where Are We Now he has proved that he retains his seductive air.

Analyse this!

Recently a friend lent me a copy of Caroline Knapp’s memoir, Drinking: A Love Story, which recounts, in painful detail, her love affair with alcohol and her decision to give it up because it was ruining her life.

Although I have never had the remotest desire to drink to excess and have only once in my life drunk enough to gain a hangover (following a violently eventful Christmas party at the Top of the Carlton in Johannesburg, in case you’re wondering), my father’s side of the family had more than its fair share of addicts. Whether their poison was booze, gambling or prescription medication, I’m afraid that the Elsdons and Halls were a pretty rackety crew, with the Howells dropping in an interesting side order of mental instability for good measure.

Having been born into a middle-class family in Britain in the 1960s, alcohol was part of my parents’ hectic social life. Every party they attended was prefaced by a discussion about alcohol – if we’re going round to Huw and Ceinwen’s tonight we should buy a decent bottle of red – and any party that they threw necessitated even more detailed discussions. Bill drinks Johnnie Walker, while Freda favours Campari, Gareth won’t drink anything other than Carlsberg and Nesta will start the evening with sweet sherry and move onto white wine later. Have we got enough?

There was always enough, however much was consumed. Despite living in a West Wales backwater there was always plenty of money swooshing around, thanks to the major oil multinationals having set up shop just down the road at Milford Haven and other nearby towns. My Dad, who had an ironmonger’s shop and two home decorating stores in the area, happily accepted the oil companies’ money even as he cringed at the blots on the landscape.

Of course, all this relentless socialising and alcohol consumption meant that some of the guests went over to the dark side, drinking way too much, disappearing into the bathroom with someone who wasn’t their spouse, neglecting their children and not functioning properly at work the next day. Marriages imploded, livers exploded, families fractured and divorces resulted.

Fortunately for me, my mother was virtually a teetotaller due to the fact that she became virtually narcoleptic after two glasses of wine and my father, being as much of a wimp about hangovers as me, generally knew when to stop. I was one of the lucky ones, but even at a young age I could see how much harm alcohol could cause.

As a teenager it became necessary to decide on a social drink; my choice was Southern Comfort and lemonade, surely the most disgusting combination to be requested at any rugby club in Wales; ever. Also, unlike Caroline Knapp’s favourite tipple of dry white wine, it singularly failed to provide the warming glow of self-confidence that she so brilliantly describes in Drinking: A Love Story. Southern Comfort left me feeling stone-cold sober and deeply socially inadequate, as I sat with my group of friends in the dimly lit surroundings of the bar or dance hall. Only when exposed to bright light (for instance, when visiting the ladies) did I realise that I was over the limit and, while my mind remained razor sharp, my legs refused to carry out the orders from my brain.

So, Southern Comfort was either a poor choice or a good one, depending on one’s genetic predisposition to alcohol abuse. I consider myself one of the lucky ones, too unsophisticated ever to take up drinking with enthusiasm.

So, I never became an alcoholic and have never experienced the sensation of waking up unclothed in a strange bed, never puked all down myself or lost control of my bowels, bladder or any other part of my anatomy in public, never found myself bawling down the phone to an ex-boyfriend at two in the morning in the alcoholic ritual familiar to many and dubbed “drink and dial” by Knapp.

And, because I never took up drinking, I never had to give it up.

Over the years I have had alcoholic friends and have noted the ways in which they gave up their addiction. One friend became an enthusiastic member of AA, another went cold turkey on her own because she could not accept AA’s insistence on a higher deity, yet another took up exercise and healthy living as a substitute addiction. All can now truly consider themselves ‘recovering alcoholics’. However none of them, even in their darkest moment, considered psychoanalysis as a possible solution.

Of all the constants that characterised Caroline Knapp’s descent into alcoholism and her emergence from it, the thing that struck me most forcefully was her reliance on the management of her mind. Near the beginning of her memoirs, she even mentions “a therapist” as one of the pillars of a liveable life, along with a good job and a decent place to live.

Maybe this is one of the aspects of American East Coast culture (Knapp, the daughter of a psychoanalyst, grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts) that most baffles Brits. While it is true that, for instance, London NW3 probably has more therapists per square kilometre than anywhere else in Europe, the concept of paying a Daddy (or Mummy) figure obscene amounts of money to listen to our stream-of-consciousness rants about our feelings and failings seems incredibly self-indulgent to most Brits, me included.

Naturally, if there has been some massive damage caused by a life-changing incident, the opportunity to speak to a neutral professional can be valuable but, for most of us, the term ‘psychoanalysis’ sounds like a very expensive way of getting things off your chest that can far more cheaply be achieved by inviting a few mates around for tea. Just for the record, Knapp’s addiction to visiting her therapist every time her life went tits-up did not seem to result in any improvement to her well-being, but probably wreaked havoc on her bank balance.

In the end, Caroline Knapp beat the bottle and reclaimed her life, albeit only after spouting a shed load of Freudian truisms and analysing the life out of her very existence. Maybe it’s because I lived in Africa that (although I am as guilty of enjoying a good whinge as anyone) Knapp’s complaints and incessant desire to make a bloody great drama out of the most innocuous incident seem very self-indulgent. At times, the desire to rip one’s hair out is overwhelming, as she bangs on for chapter after chapter about her problems, when it is perfectly clear that, compared to about 99 per cent of the world’s population she is living a charmed existence.

Sadly, Caroline Knapp died of cancer in 2002; she was still clean and sober at the time of her death. Maybe her battle with the demon alcohol, anorexia and a number of other addictions demonstrates that ultimately the source of and answer to our problems lies within ourselves.

And that the ‘talking cure’ is a very expensive red herring.  

Top of the Creeps

The Paellataffy Award for Best Comment On The Whole Sorry Jimmy Savile Business goes to Mark Steel, comedian and Independent columnist: “… of all the revered institutions that were clearly up to no good, none was more obviously sinister than Jimmy bloody Savile. I felt abused by him when I was 13 and I only saw him on the telly.”

Like all the best witticisms, this observation has the ring of truth about it. I am almost exactly the same age as Mark Steel and also feel moved to ask just what it was that we did to deserve being exposed to the horrors of Savile on TV almost every week?

“This is Top of the Pops and those were the Nolans. How’s about that then, guys and gals? What a cracking bunch of young ladies! (Makes manic noise that sounds like the result of a random sexual encounter between Tarzan and a duck) Now, what have we got next? Well, it’s Gary Glitter and who wants to be in his gang, guys and gals?”

Pass the sick bag.

Savile’s presence on a myriad music shows was always something of a mystery, given that he lacked any deep interest in pop and rock and never exhibited any of the almost insane enthusiasm displayed by his contemporaries, Alan (“Fluff”) Freeman, Paul Gambaccini, John Peel and even Kenny Everett. All Savile seemed interested in was getting his gurning boat-race on TV as much as possible. You could as easily imagine him volunteering to host Crufts or a series about caravanning – anything as long as he remained in the public eye.

 Jim’ll Fix It was no less one giant enigma of a programme, with those who knew Jim claiming that his desire to “fix it” for kids was a total mystery to them, given that he had always purported to dislike them.

Now we know that when he was slipping his Jim’ll Fix It medals around the necks of the “lucky” children for whom he had fixed it to ride in a tank with the army, eat their lunch on a rollercoaster or meet some fleetingly famous celebrity or other, he was actually making his selections, like an elderly aunt lingering slightly too long over a Yuletide box of Black Magic.

Savile could almost be described as a sort of human double bluff; surely nobody who seemed so creepy and unsavoury could actually BE creepy and unsavoury?

The other inspired comment about the BBC paedophilia scandal was made by Craig Brown in The Daily Mail, who described Savile as hiding “in plain sight”. This is an excellent summation of the situation, since the man himself actually confessed to some of his least acceptable sexual tendencies in his autobiography.   

In one peculiarly vile anecdote, Savile admitted that he was interrupted by a knock on the door while ‘entertaining’ a runaway from some type of young offenders’ institute. A pair of police officers had arrived to ask him whether he knew of her whereabouts (and what, I wonder, made them beat a trail to that particular door?) Savile said that he hadn’t seen her, but if he did he would invite her to spend the night with him, which would be his reward for ‘finding’ her. According to dear old Jim, the police officers seemed perfectly satisfied with that and, instead of searching his apartment and feeling his collar, there was a nod and a wink and an understanding between consenting adults. For who, given a clearly disturbed teenage girl, would pass up the opportunity to get his leg over? Anyway, think of all the millions raised for Stoke Mandeville.

My hatred of Savile can be ordered into a fairly neat three-tiered system, consisting of:

1.      The acts themselves, which do seem to have been particularly horrific and, for the most part, involved some of the most damaged and powerless members of society in institutions such as Stoke Mandeville and Broadmoor.

2.      Bullying his victims and colleagues into silence. Apart from the initial paedophilia claims, Gambaccini claims that Savile was also a necrophiliac, who used his status as a volunteer porter at Stoke Mandeville to visit the inhabitants of the morgue. All I can say is that he would have been laughing on the other side of his knighthood if all of this had emerged when he was still alive. Yet the fearless, “I couldnae gi’ a fuck” Scottish comedian, Jerry Sadowitz was very vocally pursuing the “Savile is a paedo” line as far back as 1987. “Jimmy was The Guvnor,” says Gambaccini. “You didn’t mess with him.”

3.      Making me feel like one of the rabid “hunt him down and cut off his knackers with a rusty knife” crowd who put a Newport paediatrician out of business because they didn’t know the difference between a children’s doctor and a kiddy fiddler. Having never been a “there’s one on every street corner” paedo-hysteric it gives me little pleasure to feel some perverse sense of self-satisfaction that my belief in the essential grubbiness of human nature has been justified.

Worst of all, though, is that Savile is dead and his scores of victims will never receive the justice that they deserve.

A Private Matter

Given the massive medal tally that has characterised the 2012 London Olympics, one would imagine that the British talent for finding a cloud in every silver lining would be given a well deserved rest but, no.

Apparently too many medal winners are emerging from private schools. This, at least according to one hilarious letter in The Daily Mail, is because private educational establishments house their own yachting facilities, shooting ranges, equestrian centres etc. I was educated at a private school in Cardiff which, at the time, accepted boarders and I can assure you, dear reader, that the most exotic thing that we enjoyed was access to a swimming pool. Admittedly this was more than many state schools could manage, but given the fact that otherwise we would have had to be bussed to the Empire Pool in town, this ultimately represented a saving. The pool was, in any case, in a state of very poor repair and desperately needed a makeover, which could not be afforded, at least not during my 1972-1979 tenure.

Of course, I cannot speak for all private schools; perhaps riding to class in a golden coach and having to muck out the unicorns as punishment is, in fact, common in Eton and Marlborough. I doubt it, though.

The whole point is that, in most cases, at least, what being privately educated teaches you is a sense of discipline. Those who know me will confirm that I am built for comfort, not for speed, but as a boarder I was expected to play sport sometimes three times a day; after breakfast before assembly, during the lunch hour and after school for a further 50 minutes. Not being very good at it was no excuse.

During the winter we played lacrosse, hockey, netball and table tennis and if the weather was so foul that even our formidable Head of Games, Miss Bates, agreed that it would be lunacy to venture out, we were subjected to a peculiar form of torture known as Wet Games. Despite its somewhat Hustleresque connotations this involved congregating in the school hall in our games kit and learning ludicrously archaic dances like the Gay Gordons and Stripping the Willow. Believe it or not I actually didn't mind Wet Games, because it at least involved music, albeit not the kind of thing that I would normally listen to, being a Bowie and Prog Rock gal. In the case of waterlogged pitches we were prescribed a long walk over Llandaff Fields. Apart from these outdoor activities we were expected to take to the gym for PE once a week.

Due to my lousy attitude, disinclination to attack and inability to defend in both lacrosse and in hockey, I was generally stuck in goal where it was believed that my bulk would prove useful. This was problematic, since as a dedicated specs wearer I was unsure what to do about the eyewear. Should I take them off and be partially sighted or leave them on and risk getting broken glass in my eyes? In the end it was easier to leave them on and abandon my post when the opposing team loomed too near.

So, sport and me - not a good combo.

Summer was easier; cricket, tennis and rounders were kinder, since being exiled to the margins when fielding meant that I could, to quote Stephen Fry, spend my time making daisychains and reading Dornford Yates. The warmer weather also meant that the boarding houses could not help but be about 10 degrees warmer than their wintertime average of far-too-cold-to-sustain-human-life.

Yet, the emphasis on sport did not mean that we had superb equipment. One of my lasting memories about playing cricket, for instance, was that all of the shin pads were in a ridiculously poor condition and house matches were generally characterised by batters having to adopt a curious stance when running in order to hold them in place.

Fortunately music was deemed as important as sport and eventually I managed to persuade the Head of Music that my presence in the choir was more important than on the playing fields.

Admittedly, this was during the 1970s, but the whole point about playing sport at school is that, however lacking in talent an individual might be, it at least teaches the body to expect to have demands made upon it. The other point is that most (if not all) private schools subscribe to the concept of mens sana in corpore sana. Boris Johnson has revealed that, when at Eton, he was expected to undertake two hours of physical exercise per day, a custom which he has obviously decided to continue, with his enthusiasm for cycling and running.

While many will argue that some state schools have been forced to part with playing fields to balance the books, it is not necessary to have mountains of expensive equipment to improve state schools' chances of producing more Olympic contenders. So what CAN state schools do to help themselves?

1) Expect pupils to participate in some physical activity every day. "But I don't want to" does NOT constitute an excuse.

2) Come down hard on bad behaviour. If parents send children to school who haven't been taught to belt up when the teacher is speaking or that time-keeping is a valuable life skill, then react with actual punishments like doing various janitorial jobs around the school or keep them in late after school. It worked when I was a nipper!

3) Make them realise that nobody achieves anything without hard work and effort. I doubt that Jessica Ennis would have won gold if she'd spent every Saturday morning lying in bed until noon.

4) Stop imagining that life would be so much better if you were at private school. Being woken up at 6:45 by someone switching a bright, overhead light while ringing a bell when you're experiencing your first morning away from home is something that will change your life forever - and NOT in a good way.

5) Stop wasting money on pieces of modish and totally unnecessary technology and plough the money into sports equipment instead.

Ultimately, private school is a lot more about hair shirts than popping over to the stables to select one's polo pony for lunchtime games.

You want to be privately educated? You'd better be tough enough.

Edwina in Wonderland

Does anybody know where Edwina Currie lives?

Don't worry, I'm not asking because I want to post half a ton of horse manure through her letterbox, as satisfying as that would undoubtedly be (good for the roses, not quite so great for the Axminster) more that, in my mind, her abode lies somewhere over the rainbow, slotted in between Never Never Land and that hole down which the White Rabbit disappeared, closely followed by Alice.

Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to inhabit the inside of La Currie's head and can't help thinking that it must be a little bit like being stranded in Dali's Persistence of Memory; all of those melting clocks and that blasted landscape might be intriguing at first, but living there for long would soon wear thin.

Wear thin! Now there's a Freudian slip. For after single-handedly solving the problem of poverty in Britain ("There isn't any, because so many people have mobile phones and digiboxes: QED"), Edwina is now turning her vast intellect onto the problem of obesity.

This is where one inevitably concludes that she surely must be inhabiting a completely separate reality to the rest of us, since in EdwinaWorld, being lardy isn't just acceptable IT IS POSITIVELY ENCOURAGED! Yes, apparently the UK has turned into a fat friendly holiday camp, where doctors fail to point out to their patients that having an arse the size of Lanarkshire is possibly not a great idea.

Now, I have sat down with some of my horizontally over-extended chums and we all seem to have had the same kind of experience with the world of medicine. Over the years we have all been informed that our every ailment, from ingrowing toenails and sprained wrists to vertigo and halitosis, is a direct result of our revolting bodies. Now, I am all for people being advised to lose weight and offered a helping hand in their quest to shed a stone or two - or more - but my lardy crew and I would also appreciate being able to report a sore throat without suffering actual verbal abuse. What we would like is for the medical expert to fix the immediate problem. For instance, what would be the point of arriving at the local surgery with a broken leg, only to receive a flood of anti-smoking propaganda?

So, Edwina, I have to ask you - where do you live amongst these non-judgemental medics? I had a fabulous doctor when I was living in South Africa and am looking for one in Europe. It would be great to find someone else one who was capable of encouraging weight loss while not sneering at larger patients as though they have just emitted a particularly evil-smelling fart.

EdwinaWorld also clearly enjoys access to a different range of TV channels than those seen by we ordinary folk. It all sounds rather fun; whereas the TV programmes that I see generally feature cookery programmes where stick-thin female guests almost faint on learning that some chefs use butter and sugar in their dishes and bordering-on-emaciation actresses examine corpses that look in rather better nick than they do, Edwina sees nothing but enormous celebrities. By "enormous" of course, I mean fat, not famous.

Where does she find 'em? Dawn French is a shadow of her former self, James Corden is dropping stones like a latter-day dyspraxic Moses and Ruth Jones must now be verging on a size 12, but all Edwina can see is an endless parade of stellar wobble-bottoms. Not only this, but when they appear on screen, a satanic subliminal message appears, advising the under-fives to eat as much fast food as possible to reach their fighting weight. Allegedly.

Naturally, unwilling to appear a nagging old trout, Edwina disguises her disgust with admirable skill: "I worry for them," she repeatedly states. Yes, Edwina, you're all heart, aren't you? I bet that you were doubled up with concern for Norma Major when you were boffing her old man.

Since it naturally follows that if you're a tubster you must be thick, it is essential that we should be constantly provided with suitable role models at all times. Yet this is the entertainment industry that we're talking about - and where would we be without our daily diet of smokers, drunks, drug addicts, liars, adulterers?

Oranges are not the only fruit and lardies are not the greatest of the UK's problems, Edwina, no matter how much you need a willing scapegoat.

Cats and Dogs

Perhaps it's because my life is so specifically cat-shaped that acquaintances are often surprised when I state that I actually do like dogs. A lot.

When I'm out and about and encounter an especially cute specimen I inevitably call them over and then belatedly remember that I'm violently allergic and if I as much as pat their head, my hands and arms will erupt in itchy red bumps that look vaguely bubonic if scratched, while my eyes will turn red and make me look like an extra from Night of the Living Dead. So, until a truly hypoallergenic dog can be bred, I'm definitely off the market as far as pooches go.

Recently when I was quite surprised when a friend - who I have always considered something of a domestic pet no-go area - admitted that he would also have liked to be a dog owner, but his habit of taking off for the other side of the world at a moment's notice had made this impossible. Who could be trusted to look after the dog when he was away? It was impossible not to adnire this responsible attitude, but I was sorry that he hadn't taken the plunge.

There is something very endearing about the Latino dog owner; despite his outrageously macho attitude to life, this doesn't extend to his choice of dog. Drive through La Linea de la Frontera on the road to Gibraltar any morning of the week and you will be entertained by the sight of some of the world's tiniest dogs enjoying their morning walk with their almost exclusively male owners. The concept of a 'status dog' clearly does not exist in Spain. While British hoodies take great delight in terrifying the local populace with their Rottweilers and Pit Bull Terriers, your average Latino is far more likely to be strutting along the pavement with his chihuahua in tow and displaying absolutely no embarrassment about it either.

The topic that had ignited the whole debate with The Friend was his belief that Uggie - the real star of the French movie The Artist - should be honoured with an Oscar and I feel that here would be the perfect dog for him. If your average hoodie is determined that his canine companion should reflect his aggression, then a Jack Russell like Uggie would be the perfect choice for The Friend: fearless, always busy, excessively gobby and into absolutely everything. You'd have to team Julian Clary with a Saluki to find another match as perfect.

Coincidentally, were I to choose an actual breed (although I feel that a rescue mongrel with three legs and one eye would probably be more my style) it would either be a Jack Russell or a Labrador, both of which seem to embody the most appealing aspects of dogginess. The Labrador is a winning combination of devotion and co-operation while the Jack Russell is energetic, intelligent and perversely reminds me of my late cat, Augustus John, in its small stature and attitude of terminal bossiness.

The aspect of dog ownership that I find the least attractive, however, is the spectre of the unprovoked dog attack that seems to be a media staple these days, as more and more children and adults are maimed by the friendly family Fido who, until the moment of insanity occurred, had displayed no signs of aggression.

Say what you like about cats (and I have said plenty about my three's propensity to vomit on my duvet, hog three-quarters of the sette when I'm trying to relax in the evening and use my bedside mat as toilet paper), there's not much chance of them ripping half your face off.

Welsh secret weapons

With this year's World Cup taking place in the Land of the Long White Cloud, it would be a brave rugby fan who bets on anyone but the All Blacks to lift the Webb Ellis trophy.

Apart from having the home advantage, New Zealand's national team can rely on the haka. The power of this war dance to discompose opponents has long been noted, with the All Blacks occasionally being asked to perform it in the dressing room, such is the power of this display to persuade opponents that the outcome of the forthcoming match is a foregone conclusion.

What was slightly less impressive was the All Blacks' reaction to the Welsh team's decision to respond to the haka by standing their ground and staring the All Blacks down. Unfortunately the latter's petulant outburst, that the nasty boys in red weren't playing fair, didn't exactly match their fearsome reputation as rugby's hard men.

Still, the Welsh boys can relax; let the Kiwis do their little dance unopposed, for we have a weapon far more terrifying than a Maori dance. What can it be, this thing that strikes fear into foreigners from around the world? Yes - it's Welsh names!

When at university in South Africa, one of my acquaintances mentioned that her maternal grandmother hailed from somewhere in Wales. In response to my questions she admitted that not only was she unable to pronounce the place name, the terror of “all those consonants and no vowels” had led her to forget it entirely.

A few days later she brought in the offending name, written on a folded piece of paper. Obviously, like Voldemort, it was considered too terrifying to repeat in public. I opened the note and saw the full horror for myself: Aberdare.

What is it about Welsh that causes the brains of otherwise intelligent people to turn to mush?

A friend of mine recently visited Hay-on-Wye, not expecting that this small border town would contain quite so many Welsh signs, but seemed charmed rather than alarmed by the experience. He is very much in the minority.

Discussing the new series of Torchwood with another well-educated friend last week, she revealed that she didn't enjoy it as much as Doctor Who (another BBC Wales production) because of “all the Welsh names.”

There were actually only two main characters with Welsh names in Torchwood – the formidable Gwen Cooper and a character, killed off at the end of last season, called Ianto Jones. I think that most of us can cope with Gwen and Jones but in case, dear reader, you find the thought of saying “Ianto” about as appealing as diving headfirst into a pit full of vipers, here's a guide to pronounciation: yan-to. There! Not that difficult, is it? If you really want to sound authentically Welsh, shorten the second syllable so that it doesn't sound like “toe”.

Currently I'm planning my own Welsh drama series, following DC Llinos ap Iorwerth from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychllwyndrobwll-llantisiliogogogoch as she tries to solve the murder of Llanelli-based rugby player, Llelli Llewellyn, on the Froncysllte viaduct.

If that doesn't sort the men from the boys, I don't know what will.

Publish and be damned famous

With the ever-growing storm surrounding the current economic crisis, the debate has exposed the extent to which the banking industry has effortlessly achieved basket case status. It's difficult to recall the breast-beating that greeted Nick Leeson's downfall all those years ago; at the time we were assured that Leeson was a rogue trader, a claim that he hotly denied, claiming that the entire banking world was shot through with greed and insane risk taking. How right he proved to be!

It's so easy to hate banks, though. Even my previously fair and friendly local Solbank has been eaten alive by its parent company, Banco Sabadell and has been transformed into a mean, money-making machine that has, over the past six months, gobbled up 50 per cent (yes, you did read that correctly!) of the money that entered my account, including the entirety of a 100 quid cheque that my godmother sent me for my 50th. - and a happy birthday to you, you miserable, money-grabbing bastards!

Yet however tempting it might be to view banking as the only industry that has so conclusively sold its heart and soul to the devil, it is far from being the sole offender. Over the past, painful decade I have witnessed the deterioration of the publishing industry from a refreshingly old-fashioned, honourable club to a rapacious sausage factory with all the artistic judgement of Simon Cowell.

Firstly, I am aware that nobody who has the arrogance to produce a novel has the right to assume that it will be published; I'm sure that for every 10 authors manqué who claim to have a book in them, there are nine who would be best advised not to let it out. I remember once reading a guide to aspirant screenwriters in which the author claimed that possibly less than 10 per cent of screenplays submitted are correctly formatted. Some bids for movie immortality are no more than poorly conceived pitches (“guy goes back-packing in Thailand and meets a bunch of deadbeats from Leith - it's The Beach meets Trainspotting”) scrawled on paper napkins. One can only imagine the types of horrors dumped daily on the desks of Britain's book editors, so I sympathise.

However, the face of publishing today does make me wonder whether the aspirant writer will ever have a decent chance of securing even a two-book deal. Despite rave reviews from independent readers, my writing partner (himself a previously published writer and former book editor) and I have completely and utterly failed to find a home for our second thriller. While I understand the basic rules that govern this genre (find some specific locale in which to set it and introduce at least one character who can be reprised in future novels) and my writing partner is a genius when it comes to plotting and pacing – as a former editor he's had years of experience – we have not had as much as a nibble.

Despite the help of a London-based agent with our quest to secure some interest from a major publishing house, we didn't have any serious bidders. This left us with two options; try one of the many small publishers in the hope that once our thriller was available on Amazon, it might attract enough interest to draw in one of the majors, or sell some aspects of the novel to an interested fellow author for a tiny fraction of what we could have earned for the whole and cannibalise what's left for a treatment that might be picked up by a TV or film production company. We've opted for the latter, a pretty devastating return on what amounted to several years of painstaking work.

While I was engaged in the fruitless quest for a publisher I received some advice from a contact who had worked for Penguin for years, reminding me that many authors only see daylight after completing their fourth or fifth novel. She suggested, therefore, that I shouldn't lose heart, but continue to write and perfect my technique. Fair comment, I feel, if it wasn't for the type of fast-tracking that now defines the British publishing industry.

In the past few weeks I have heard of two celebrities, namely Fern Britton and Colleen Nolan, who have actually been APPROACHED by publishers and asked whether they'd ever considered writing a novel? As the old song says, nice work if you can get it! No financial worries for these two authors; fat advances upfront and dedicated editors to mother them through the unpleasant business of plotting, pacing and planning. With this type of assistance on tap, I daresay my tabby cat could probably stump up a half-decent novel.

Once printed, will these two doyennes of daytime TV actually shift enough copies of their respective pot-boilers to cover the publisher's considerable costs? Probably not. Some celeb books have been successful, such as the ghostwritten offerings of Katie Price and Peter Kay's memoirs, but there is no more guarantee of a celebrity name netting hot sales than any properly promoted novelist.

So the unread and unloved piles of manuscripts continue to pile up on editors' desks. With an agent on board my writing partner and I were relatively lucky to have a foot in the door; if you're a first-time or unpublished writer you will be unsurprised to hear that you have virtually no chance at all. These days most major publishers have a “no unsolicited manuscripts” policy, a phrase which can perhaps be better translated as “don't bother us, we're too busy schmoozing at the Groucho Club”.

Still, that's contemporary Britain for you – celebrity mad. It's even spread to the world of science; as probably the highest IQ currently on TV, Professor Brian Cox looks set to take up Patrick Moore's mantle. He has an unfeasibly large haul of postgraduate degrees, has worked at CERN, can explain the concept of particle physics in a way that even someone as mentally concussed by the physics stupid stick as I can understand some of it, but the one aspect of poor Professor Cox's life that nobody can forget about is his previous pop career. So it's not, “Professor Brian Cox, particle physicist”, it's “Professor Brian Cox who used to be part of nineties pop act, D-Ream.”

Still, as they say, things can only get better.

Dentally challenged

In recent weeks thousands of NHS doctors have found themselves under fire for the sheer, unbelievable vastness of their salaries and I know that I should feel massively aggrieved on behalf of all my hard-working relatives and friends who pay for them via the tax system. However, I prefer to direct my ire at a different breed of healthcare professional.

Last week I finally took the plunge and went to the dentist. Yes, I know – I'm a mad, extravagant bitch, but I had seen an ad in one of the local freebies offering a check-up and clean for 19€. Much to my amazement this was, in fact, the amount that was charged. It was a bargain, especially considering that I hadn't had my teeth examined or professionally cleaned since a cavity necessitated a visit in 1998, an experience that still gives me nightmares of the darkest and most depraved kind. Later I discovered that the same butcher already had several complaints lodged against his name with the British Dental Council, a fact that didn't surprise me, but it has left me with a lasting grudge against the profession and a more general disinclination to subject my poor, plaque-ridden gnashers to any more rough treatment.

Yet it's not just the pain and suffering that has put me off going to the dentist, despite the fact that my gums are receding faster than the Spanish economy; it's the mind-boggling bill that accompanies it. A friend of mine went to the dentist this week, a visit necessitated by an exposed nerve. The cost for a temporary filling and a squirt of fluid to kill the nerve was 150€! Of course, he still has to go back in a few days to have a permanent filling – another crafty 150€. At those prices the Civil List begins to look like good value for money.

I'm not suggesting that dentists shouldn't be rewarded for their years of training and their expertise, but this is now beyond a joke. Unfortunately the profession's insane get-rich-quick mentality is having dire consequences for the health and welfare of the people of Britain. Every day we are bombarded with some new warning of what health horror lies in wait for people who fail to look after their teeth, yet with NHS dentists becoming an endangered species and private treatment being beyond the means of many, what are we supposed to do?

When I lived in South Africa my medical aid scheme was so comprehensive it allowed me a pair of specs every other year and two dental check-ups annually. It helped that my dentist was so skilled that I experienced not even the vaguest twinge of pain in all the years that he treated me, so I was quite happy to book my next appointment before leaving. No worries about payment – as long as it was a necessary procedure and not a cosmetic job, the medical aid scheme would take care of it. These days, while it's still possible to find a few vaguely affordable private healthcare schemes, it is a rare thing indeed to encounter a medical aid deal that includes dental treatment. Therefore, it's either a question of finding an NHS dentist (good luck with that, boys!) or going private.

Admittedly I'm slightly out of touch but it seems that the closest NHS dentist to my hometown of Pembroke is 25 miles to the east in an even smaller town called St. Clear's, which is in Carmarthenshire - a different county! As for getting on to his overcrowded books you might have to offer sexual favours or clean his car every Sunday for a year.

Over the years Americans have delighted in taking the mickey out of us Brits for our dodgy dentition and, while I have no desire to see U.K citizens turning into the Osmonds (I am quite fond of teeth looking functional rather than purely decorative) I am beginning to see their point.

If these insane dental charges continue I fear that a return to a nation of medieval mouths is inevitable.

Things that make me go hmmm – on TV (Part 3)

These days almost every TV genre now has its list of cliches that can be called upon at will, but I can't help thinking that, despite the frequent pasting that X Factor and the other reality TV shows receive for their sob story-strewn inanities, the worst offender in the cliche stakes is the property programme.

The fatuous cliches of property programmes
Oh God, where do I start? The phrase 'an embarrassment of riches' is bolting to the forefront of my brain like a rampant stallion. Perhaps it's the omnipresence of these programmes that makes it seem that every other sentence contains some trite horror or other.

The unwritten rules of daytime TV dictate that every property or lifestyle programme (and here I include such offerings as Escape To the Country, Wanted Down Under, Location Location Location, Homes Under the Hammer and a myriad others) contains the following triumvirate of terror:

Talk of “going on a journey”: by no means confined to 'talent' shows, this particular abomination can now be used to describe nothing more emotionally arduous than a couple of days spent viewing property in Rutland. At least X Factor contestants have had to endure the hardship of being separated from their families and the trauma of singing live on TV with millions watching and without an ounce of originality or talent to back their quest for superstardom.

“Ticks all the boxes”: there is no other phrase that has quite the power to reveal the paucity of imagination of the average participant in these celebrations of mental mediocrity. Wouldn't you, dear reader, turn puce and go blind rather than utter such a prime example of brain-fart? I know I would! What's wrong with, “Yes, this does appear to be just what we're looking for” or “Well, we asked for three bedrooms and this has four, so it actually exceeds our requirements”?

“The wow factor”: this well-worn description is liberally applied throughout, whether the property being viewed is a sixteen-bedroom mansion in Buckinghamshire or a two-bed maisonette in Catford. Obviously some properties are genuinely impressive but the constant expectation that the featured home should be a palace fit to make Marie Antoinette weep with envy is as tiresome for the viewer as it surely must be for the presenter.

Come on, people! We really can’t be THAT short of originality and intelligence – can we?!

Things that make me go hmmm – on TV (Part 2)

So, as I have demonstrated, women are frequently portrayed as raging hormonal timebombs with no sense of hygiene. This, in itself, would be bad enough, but the wily TV execs have yet more fiendish tricks up their sleeve. In a further attempt to make them all seem what Irvine Welsh would term “silly wee girlies” they have determined to carry on the old Marilyn Monroe-esque tradition of the tiny, powerless bint in her boyfriend's massive shirt.

The Tiny, Powerless Bint in her Boyfriend's Massive Shirt
Like the madwoman with the pregnancy test, this scene knows no genre and is just as likely to turn up in the corniest sit-com as it is in a tense drama.

Cynics might claim that this aversion is due to the unlikelihood of my ever being able to fit into any of my ex-boyfriend's shirts – even with straining seams and unsightly bulges - and I must confess that, unless I suddenly recall dating Giant Haystacks during a previously undiscovered amnesiac period in the 1980s, this is indeed true. Yet nothing is guaranteed to send me screaming up the wall faster and louder than the scene where, clearly after a night of coruscating passion, the woman is seen wandering winsomely around her apartment dressed in her boyfriend's shirt.

Apart from the hygiene issues of choosing to wear the same clothing that the sweaty herbert thought fit only for the bedroom floor last night, there is almost always a disconnection of logic. For example, this very scene was reprised by the extremely curvy Letitia Dean playing Sharon Watts in Eastenders when she was engaged in a particularly insane sexual affair with Dennis, played by the rather skinny and not especially towering Nigel Harman. There is no way – I repeat no way – that Letitia Dean would fit into a shirt of Nigel Harman's but, when she opened the door clad in that very item it was so capacious you practically could have fitted another Letitia Dean in beside her. Unless dear old Dennis was moonlighting as the Incredible Hulk and extending his wardrobe to equip both of his guises, I would humbly suggest that this was a risibly unlikely scenario.

It's almost enough to make me want to work in TV. If so, I would write a drama of a smouldering affair between an older, golf-obsessed businessman (played by Ronnie Corbett) and a middle-aged TV executive (played by the Amazonian Julie T. Wallace). Then when, after the obligatory night spent ceiling-gazing, she could answer the door wearing his shirt, that reaches way beneath her knees and THEY MIGHT GET THE BLOODY MESSAGE!

Things that make me go hmmm – on TV

If you can cast your mind back almost 20 years you might recall Things That Make You Go Hmmm, the splendidly silly hit by C&C Music Factory,. This inevitably acted as an invitation to hacks and serious journalists alike to discuss the things that made them go hmmm; it certainly made fascinating reading.

Attempting a comprehensive list of things me go hmmm in everyday life would occupy most of my remaining lifespan, but I have lately been struck by how many TV conventions make me wince. Having grown up during a mini golden age of British TV when excellence was a frequently achieved ideal and the vast majority of the presenters and participants were both more talented and more intelligent than the average audience member, it's easy enough to find tendencies to rail against (Mrs. Slocome's Pussy by Stuart Jeffries is a particularly fine account of this era). Yet, funnily enough, I don't seem to spend as much time fulminating against the confederacy of dunces currently appearing on our screens in programmes like Big Brother, as some of the small screen's more infuriating conventions.

This is audience participation spot on A View From A Broad and a chance for you to air your pet peeves. Just e-mail suggestions to me and I'll post them. In the meantime, here is the first of the many things that make me go hmmm.

The Pregnancy Test
Picture the scene: it has come to that point of the soap opera, drama series or sit-com when a female character has gone to the local pharmacy and bought a pregnancy testing kit. This is invariably hidden from view in a brown paper bag of the sort that died out in reality sometime during my teens. If anyone knows of a pharmacy anywhere in the world that still uses brown paper bags, please let me know.

While in the bathroom (this is not an American euphemism – the bathroom rather than a boring old bog is usually the chosen venue) the boyfriend or husband arrives home and heads for the kitchen (these scenes ALWAYS take place in a food preparation area).

Seconds later the woman bounds into the room, pregnancy stick held proudly aloft. Still clutching the offending object she throws her arms around boyfriend's / husband's neck and announces that the test result is positive.

Surely I cannot be the only person in the world thinking: “Yuck! You just pissed on that!”?

They'll keep a welcome in the hillsides (hopefully)

After 28 years spent in Africa and Spain I'm going home.

My decision hasn't exactly been greeted with universal enthusiasm, though. Several months ago I mentioned my intention to a friend who said, “Aren't you a bit young to be going home to die?”

No, I explained, you don't get it. Wales is amazing! Haven't you seen what they've done there? Look at the opening sequences of Torchwood; it's like CSI Cardiff now.

I won't bore Welsh readers any further with what they already know, but I would advise foreigners to see Rhod Gilbert's excellent stand-up routine: “Wales isn't shit anymore – we've done it up!”

Ultimately I'm hoping to settle in the Cardiff area where my pathetic inability to pass my driving test won't be quite so debilitating. The lure of the capital is always strong, but for me Cardiff will almost be like coming home, since I lived there from 1972 to 1979 while attending high school in the city.

Like all ports, Cardiff has always had a cosmopolitan ambience and this cultural mix was very much in evidence at my school. In my final year I shared a dormitory with a Venezuelan, a girl from Japan, a Nigerian, an Iranian and a half-Armenian, half-Indian girl. Hell, you want exotic? One of my friends came from England and was called Bunty.

After spending nearly three decades both as a rooinek and as a guiri, dear old Cardiff exerts a strong pull. I'm not generally a fan of city life, but now that the Millennium Centre seems to be attracting a steady stream of fantastic musical acts to add to Cardiff's rock solid theatrical, operatic and choral traditions, it's even more alluring. On my more confident days I even imagine what it would be like to be part of a choir again, something that would be a possibility in Caerdydd if I could only persuade the musical director that what's needed is a second alto who can double as a baritone when needed. Maybe I could be the first female member of Only Men Aloud? They'd have to change their name, mind.

The culinary scene is also as varied as you'll find in Wales, extending far beyond the obligatory Indian and Chinese restaurants. I'm sure that I'll even find a tapas bar or two.

First of all, however, I'm heading straight for my hometown.

I love Pembrokeshire even more than I love David Lynch which, as my close friends will attest, is quite a statement. I love its craggy, vertiginous cliffs and stacks and its bolshy disinclination to suck up to holidaymakers with resorts offering donkey rides, candyfloss and 'Kiss Me Quick' hats. Mostly it specialises in magnificent golden sandy beaches which offer nothing more than an intermittent ice-cream van in the way of modern amenities. When it does 'do' resort towns (Tenby and Saundersfoot, for instance) they are places of staggering prettiness, which have remained largely unspoiled since the Edwardian era, when they first started touting for business.

Considering its inaccessability, Pembroke town has proved surprisingly attractive to the 'escape to the country' crowd. There certainly is a lot of countryside, but the fact that the nearest Marks & Spencer is over thirty miles away (in Carmarthen) means that only hardened lovers of rural life would contemplate a move this far west.

Back in the 1970s, the nearest M&S was in Swansea; my Dad loved to tell his tale of the day he was obliged to explain the route to two baffled American tourists.
“So we find our way back to the main road and drive how far east?”
“Sixty miles.”
“SIXTY MILES?! You are joking, right?”
“No, that's correct. Of course, if you want a really decent sized branch you'd be better off going to the one in Cardiff.”
“Maybe we'll try Cardiff. How far's that?”
“A hundred miles, roughly.”

Despite the influx of Londoners and Mancunians suffering from some obscure ennui of the spirit, the town is still home to thousands of people whose families, like mine, have been there for generations. To listen to the locals you would imagine that the entire populace now consisted of retired accountants from Tring or organic food obsessed young professionals from Islington, but even the tiny amount of research that I've undertaken has revealed that many of my old schoolfriends are either still there or have returned. Most members of my family who moved away from the area in their youth have chosen to retain a presence there by buying property or regularly visiting relatives.

Pembroke is a place where roots are still important, whatever the locals say. I can just imagine popping into the local caff and trying to get my zany foreign habits past the waitresses.

“I see Keith Elsdon's daughter's back.”
“Oh yes, in the end they all return.”
“She's gone really weird, though. Do you know what she asked for? Apparently she wanted a bap, cut in half and toasted on something called a plancha. Then she asked me to spread olive oil and crushed tomato all over it!”
“Oh, give her a toasted teacake. She'll soon get over it.”

It's funny – by the time you're middle-aged you find comfort in the things that once drove you mad.

http://www.pembroketownguide.co.uk/

Anyone who is remotely interested in my experiences back in Wales can follow it on my new blog, Local Weirdo. I will also be blogging on Wales Online, the website of The Western Mail, Wales's daily newspaper, of which more later.

A View From a Broad will continue to feature its usual range of topics currently inspiring or enraging me.