Festive frolics, Funlovers! Welcome to the Annual Yuletide Yawn, that glorious celebration of excess that now extends from the MidSummer Equinox through to Lent. We are about to reach the centrepiece of that extravaganza where for 12 whole days all sensibilities are suspended as we embrace the myth that The Nativity was an Andrew Lloyd Webber production.
Last year my ‘celebrations’ were interrupted by ‘carol singers’ or should I say a callow youth of a neighbour who sang ‘Hark the Herald angels…’ but then forgot the words. Since he had spent the greater part of the Summer kicking a football into my parked car I restricted my appreciation to a single walnut which I suggested he share with his ‘backing singers’, a group of fellow acne-ridden, tuneless warblers who were skulking behind the hedge. That was perhaps the highlight of the entertainment last year. In anticipation of a lean and unedifying diet of TV I shall be forsaking the box in favour of collection of DVDs that I have been saving for just such an occasion.
I will no longer have to watch a stream of holiday ads for places that no one can afford to go to any longer. Nor will I have to watch 2 weeks of ads from celebrities for their latest offerings, interspersed with programmes of celebrities promoting the self-same offerings (most of which will be pulped come February).
It is not that I am anti-Christmas, I used to enjoy Morecambe and Wise, the 2 Ronnies, Turkey dinners, Top of the Pops and falling asleep before the Queen’s speech had finished. It is just that I preferred things the traditional way – My version of Cinderella never ended with Prince Charming and Buttons entering into a Civil Partnership. It was not Jack and the Beansprout, due to arts council underfunding or failure to secure planning permission and Widow Twanky never ran an eco-friendly laundrette. Peter Pan, I understand, has been banned by some councils because of the drugs connotations.
At least I grew up in an age when I could appreciate the difference between real life and fiction, I am not so sure that the younger generation will be allowed to learn that there is a difference given that they are being spoon-fed a diet of soaps and reality programs which they perceive to be the way that normal people behave. Crash test TV may be good for audience ratings but is it really entertainment?
And now we learn that Simon Cowell wants to bring the X-factor to politics! If anyone knows how to take a group of talentless no-hopers, milk them for all they are worth and leave them as a group of talentless no-hopers then he can, but I for one will not be watching.
Why stop there, let’s have ‘Politics Swap’ – Gordon Brown and Robert Mugabe swap places for a month! Why not give Parliamentary Question Time the World Wrestling Federation treatment – take hype to the extreme.
It will take more than Simon Cowell to persuade me to turn out at a polling station on a wet Thursday in March to vote for an overpaid self-promoting peacock of any political affiliation. If they wanted to make politics more interesting then perhaps they could start by having a Celebrity Guest Speaker of the House, that way they could save on John Bercow’s generous salary (unless they were to employ Jonathan Ross for a day). Letting Kim and Aggie, John Sargeant, Kermit, Bruce Forsyth, the Teletubbies or Timmy Mallet loose in the House of Commons might be fun. I’m sure Christopher Biggins would be itching to get his wig and tights on. In hindsight Brucie is probably not a good choice, he might feel too at home with all those doddery old farts.
Here’s hoping that the next decade will be better than the one we are soon to be leaving.
