Sick: Part Two...

I’m still ill and still bed-bound and still in daytime TV hell.

This morning’s ITV1 offerings included the Jeremy Kyle Show, which featured one segment entitled ‘I’m Scared Of My 15-year-old Daughter’ in which a mother came on screen and confronted the daughter who bullies her and once threatened her with a kitchen knife. Enter the show’s resident psychologist whose instant diagnosis was ‘You have a dysfunctional relationship’. Bloody genius…

Next up was another segment entitled ‘Are You Saying I’m Not The Father Just To Hurt Me?’ in which a teenage chap wanted to know whether he was the father of his partner’s child or not. This ended in a DNA test in which the results were announced on-screen. Classy…

Over on Five was The Wright Stuff with ever-grinning media halfwit Matthew Wright. The topic here was How To Make Missing Dads Proper Dads. Involved in this discussion were such doyens of current affairs as Paul Nicholas (of Just Good Friends and Grandma’s Party Tonight novelty pop single fame) and Richard Park (Fame Academy). It was obviously quite heady stuff with those sorts of intellects on display…

Daytime TV comes in for quite a lot of stick – and rightly so because it’s cheap and it’s shit and it’s lowest-common-denominator. And if it’s a choice of watching this shite or phoning up any of the ‘have-money-for-free’ companies that advertise between these shows and getting into debt for life just to get a break from this nonsense I can see why debt among the poor and gullible is a major problem.

Thank god I’ve recently rediscovered Radio 4…