Friday 17th October, 2003 – Working From Home

Today I am ‘working from home’. No, really. Since my internet connection is still up the spout – and after spending literally hours on the phone to bored-sounding IT-support people – I have opted to ‘work from home’ today while I wait for a maintenance engineer to come round and look at my machine. It is 14:00 and he still hasn’t come. I’m starting to feel a little annoyed.

Its been a long time since I spent an entire weekday at home on my own, and I’d forgotten how spirit-crushingly awful daytime TV is. This is not an original observation, but one worth making again and again and again and again until someone other than me does something about it. Daytime TV is SHIT. Not in a ho-ho, so good its bad way. In an aaaargh, so very shit it is making me hallucinate way.

Why don’t you just turn it off I hear you ask? Perhaps open one of the many books you have bought with good intentions over the past months, which are currently disappearing beneath a layer of dust on the cardboard box / bedside table in your room?

I would love to tell you why I can’t do that, why I have to sit motionless in front of the television, as the cheaply-made, daytime effluent washes over me. But I can’t. It is too complex, and you wouldn’t understand.

Today With Des and Mel is currently bubbling and steaming away on the TV set behind me. The Des in question is Des O’Connor, who must be approaching 70 now, but whose taught, dark orange skin makes him resemble a pair of brand-new, and rather spivvy driving gloves. The Mel is Melanie Sykes, who is tall, thin, and attractive in a slightly froggy way, and whose job is to read mild innuendo-laden links from an autocue, and then collapse into helpless giggles when Des dutifully delivers the desultory punchline.

Des’s interview technique has not changed from when I used to watch his show on Wednesday evenings ten years ago. Interviews with actors, singers etc. are single-mindedly focussed on whatever product he or she is trying to plug, with questions obviously culled from the accompanying press release.

“So, former Spice Girl Emma Bunton, I hear that your new album takes you in different and thrilling musical directions, from ska to Joplin-era ragtime”

“Yes, Des, I’m very excited etc.”

Interviews with comedians are even worse, with Des shamelessly churning out utterly transparent and deeply incongruous set-up lines, which the guest will then ‘riff’ off in not-very-hilarious style. Today, he was joined by impressionist John Culshaw and, after exchanging hellos and, Des weighed in with his first question:

“So, this week China became only the third nation to send a man into space.”

David Frost must be trembling. Not only was this a jarringly awful opening question, it opened the door for a ‘me so solly’ Chinaman joke so appalling and predictable, I don’t need to repeat it (it hinged on the amusing confluence of the countdown that precedes launching a rocket and the fact that dishes on the menu in a Chinese restaurant are numbered. Enjoy). Culshaw then segued into a Patrick Moore impression. But, obviously wary of the fact that Moore has not been spied on primetime television for over a decade, he preceded his gag with “Maybe Patrick Moore would have something to say about this”.

And before the laughter had even died down, Des blithely waded in with question number two:

“Hey, I hear that David Beckham has announced that he is not going to do any more advertising!”

And so on.

“Hey, I hear that they are thinking of bringing back Dr Who!”

“Hey, I hear that Roger Moore is to receive a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List!”

Please come repair man...