[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Gavin doesn’t so much demonstrate an eye for the ladies as openly waggle a penis at them, thereby rendering himself the least agreeable member of the party.But only marginally.Most of the others are standard tutting, parochial Brits, apparently incapable of enjoying or appreciating anything.Overseeing the whingeing, whining lot of them is glamorous tour guide Brendan, whose faintly camp air of detachment ensures fun is never more than a six-hour air-conditioned coach journey away.As you’d expect, Brendan is also a seasoned diplomat.Last week he playfully chastised a 73-year-old passenger for wearing a miniskirt (to be fair, her exposed legs did have the textural appearance of Peperami sticks), before stoking the holiday-makers’ enthusiasm for the Spanish bullring they were about to visit by describing, in unflinching step-by-step detail, just how grisly the public slaughter of a large angry mammal can be.I hope they make a second series of Coach Trip.Set exclusively in the winding, perilous mountain roads of the French Alps.During a blizzard.With a bomb in the boot.And with each losing contestant being nailed to a cross and hurled into the crevasse below.Directed by Michael Winner.From one winner to another—yes, it’s The (BBC2), and Saira Khan’s still on the playing field, despite her stroppy, oblivious rudeness angering Tottenham Hotspur’s corporate division so badly they virtually withdrew cooperation from last week’s task.Another irritating trait I’ve noticed—She.Talks.In.Broken.Sentences.Very.Very.Slowly.Whenever.She’s.Trying.To.Negotiate.With.Someone.I think she mistakes this for ‘clear communication’, as opposed to patronising baby talk.If Saira doesn’t win, the BBC should snap her up and give her a role in Mind Your Own Business (BBC1), a daily corner-shop makeover show starring Duncan Dragons’Den Bannatyne and a mysterious Cruella De Vil type calling herself’Mrs S’.The show seems to work like this: Duncan and Mrs S visit a struggling small business, systematically knock all the joy out of it, and leave a ruthlessly efficient but character-free shark pit in their wake.In the case of a neglected village store, their prescribed changes included placing ‘impulse purchases’ by the counter, charging more for chocolate bars, and developing a ‘brand identity’ for the shop itself.As a team, Duncan and Mrs S work pretty well—he’s stiff and ungainly, she’s downright terrifying—but they could do with a little added pizzazz, and Saira’s the woman to provide it.While the others faff about installing laminate flooring and hypnotising customers into voting New Labour, Saira could lock herself in the back room with the owner and Talk.Very.Slowly.To.Them.Until.They.Agree.To.The.Programme’s.Every.Demand.Don’t have nightmares[14 May 2005]What do we want? Bleedin’ justice! When do we want it? Right bloody now! Pity, then, that the wheels of justice turn so slowly.I mean, the Michael Jackson trial reconstructions have been running on Sky News for ages now, and we’re only just getting to the bit where they bring in the celebrity witnesses (with any luck, we should get a Stevie Wonder impersonator this week—I’m not making this up).In our espresso-paced era, to spend months soberly weighing up the facts feels outrageously self-indulgent.Even Crimewatch UK (BBC1), once considered the last word in instant justice, takes too long to produce results.Oh, it’s all very well to end the show with a nod and a wink and a ‘we’ve had lots of interesting leads’, but in this day and age we need speedier results.Or we’ll have nightmares.Old-fashioned tip-offs from the criminal underworld take far too long to process, and besides, most of the viewers aren’t members of the criminal underworld anyway—they’re paranoid curtain-twitchers, and the programme should inject a littie mobile-phone interactivity into its format in order to empower them.How about encouraging viewers to stand by their living-room windows throughout the programme, taking phone-camera snaps of suspicious passers-by and texting them into the studio where we can all have a good look at them? Better yet, they could introduce a 2o-minute break in the middle, so anyone who lives near a canal or secluded area of woodland can nip out, take the dog for a walk, and send in pictures of any bodies they find lying about.And then the police can parade the suspects in front of us, and we can vote to identify the guilty one, press the red button to slam him in jail and the yellow one to throw away the key, or hold down both at once to bring back the rope and snap his neck like a bread-stick.Think I’m being flippant? Well I’m not.I’ve got ITV on my side: they’re showing us the way forward in the form of People’s Court UK (ITV1).Unfortunately, at the time of writing, it’s being used to settle petty disputes, not murders.But give it time, and that’ll change.This is progress.The televised small-claims format has been around for years, but People’s Court UK is unique because it lets the audience decide who wins, live, by texting in
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]