The latest series of Big Brother.
Now I have defended the quality of this programme in the past when it was fashionable for the leather-elbowed Guardianistas to ridicule the "ordinary" people taking part. But no more.
It appears that this time around the producers have solved the tricky issue of casting by simply recruiting the inmates of a local psychiatric ward. We have had a foul-mouthed fishwife whose highpoint was to relieve herself in public like a dray horse in the street. There's been a comedy drag artist who claimed he'd neglected to tell his parents he was a poofter, although I can't imagine that red stilettos are common footwear in Penge.
We've got a wig-wearing nurse who's a compulsive liar, a toffee-nosed black Tory whose murky past has still to be unveiled by the tabloids, a geek suffering from an advanced case of Asperger's Syndrome and a hairy midget Geordie called Anthony who says he's a "Seventies disco dancer", whatever one of those is.
But worse, much worse than those, we have Craig, a hairdresser from Norfolk who is an effeminate, man-boobed, grasping control freak, with a severe personality disorder and a crush on the aforementioned Anthony. I tell you, if Anthony had been female, Craig would have been nicked for attempted rape.
And then there's Kinga, an overweight 20-year-old whose self-esteem is so utterly shot to pieces that she feels the need to flubber her enormous breasts at all and sundry while impersonating an unconventional wine cooler. (Enough said. You'll know if you saw it.) I wonder what her poor parents must think.
It truly is car crash television: wall-to-wall freaks who are facing some serious counselling once they get out. I'd rather watch that documentary about people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorders who have to wash their hands 37 times an hour. At least they're proper nutters, not just teenage tosspots
Barry Beelzebub
