Bus Stop!

Love is the glue that binds myself and my good lady wife together – although she also claims the prescription drugs she uses to stop herself from repeatedly stabbing me through the throat whenever I annoy her are a major help.

But our marriage is also founded on other common interests...

We both reckon the only good Tory is a dead one, we both support Amnesty International and their work campaigning against torture (although we have an Amnesty amnesty on torture if it means either of us get to inflict pain on anyone in Coldplay) and we both despise both Dan Brown and anyone who reads any book he has ever written (or just walked by).

Sadly, though, there will be a parting of the ways over the next few weeks as the best reality show on Channel 4 is back and I will be watching it alone while my good lady wife is elsewhere, petulantly refusing to partake in the televisual fun.

Coach Trip, for those who have not had the pleasure, is either the ultimate postmodern satire on reality TV – or it’s quite simply the worst show to grace TV screens. Ever. In the whole history of telly. And that includes ITV dramas with Ross Kemp.

The basic premise is that seven couples (husband and wife, mother and daughter, brother and sister, etc,) go on a coach journey around Europe and stop off somewhere each episode to do fun things, like lace-making in Belguim, making pottery in Limoges or harpooning dolphins in Spain (I made the last one up).

The 14 folk are guided by an elderly tour guide called Brendon, who’s like a bitchy Norris Cole from Corrie, and people who upset or annoy the other travellers are voted off the bus to be replaced by other couples. The travellers themselves are brilliant and the voiceovers introducing them go something like this:

‘Ted is an unemployed spot welder from Sheffield and his wife Liz is a suppository inserter in a care home in Bradford. They collect bar towels in their spare time. Today Ted is trying his hand at laying a mosaic in Budapest while Liz looks on…’

Ted: ‘It’s fiddly, this. Give us an hand.’
Liz: ‘Fuck off Ted, I’m doing The Sun bingo.’
Ted: ‘But you could help me with this here more zake, Liz.’
Liz: ‘Fuck off Ted – or I’ll sleep with your brother again…’
Ted: ‘You slept with my brother as well as my father!’

And this is just the rucks between the couples themselves. It gets even better when factions of the 14 start having a pop at each other.

Every conflict is cynically engineered and all the squabbles involve the sort of people who are not classy enough to spend a week in Playa Las Americas. But bizarrely it remains compulsive viewing. Honest.