2 posts tagged “tv”
I am beyond excited. The reason? Katie, my fellow OX3-er, and I have decided to go and watch Ready Steady Cook. It’s surprisingly easy to arrange and the tickets are free. We cannot wait. The decision came about when I admitted slightly shamefully that I am a die-hard fan of the show, and, it so happened, so was she. I knew we were friends for a reason.
The fact is I think it is possibly the most genius program since, well ever. For one thing, it still is relatively simple. The contestants really do head down to their local generic supermarket (I would say Tescos but this is the BBC, and we all know what happened with ‘sticky tape’) and have to buy ingredients for £7.50 or less. Probably more than it costs to make the entire show. Also, things can still go wrong. Only the other day, dear Ainsley Harriet dropped his saucepan of cheese sauce on the floor in a moment of clumsiness (it gets very hectic towards the end you see) and had to resort to finding the cheese grater and merely grating cheese over the spinach roulade. I found this rather endearing, as it showed that even he has some culinary accidents.
The one annoying thing is when the contestants are a bit shit. This doesn’t happen so often on the normal shows, as I feel that the only people who would really go on it are genuine foody-cook people, it occurs more frequently on special series of the show such as the recent ‘celebrities and their mums’ run. On one of these episodes appeared Ray Quinn, apparently an X-factor finalist (I didn’t watch it and thus wouldn’t know) who looked about twelve. Whenever Ainsley Harriet appeared to talk to him he would stop what he was doing and have some ridiculous conversation about the ‘trials’ of being a young musician, waving his knife around in his hand and leaving his onion neglected on the chopping board. I was livid, I felt like shouting ‘You only have twenty minutes in which to prepare a delicious feast, you are seventeen minutes down and that onion still needs to be chopped, caramelised and used in a marinade you cretin!’ As you can see, it is a very tense and exhilarating program, especially when you have just had four cups of afternoon tea.
Anyhow, the bit Katie and I are most exited about is the part nearer the end when the audience have to vote for either the ‘green pepper’ or ‘red tomato’ team. Unlike many other shows involving audience participation or voting, it still relies on manual means of judging. Every Audience member has to hold up the card of the team they want to win and Ainsley Harriet announces the winner. I have no idea whether it is down to his judgement how many audience members voted each way or whether there is a minion with a knack for counting whispering in his ear, but either way, it’s pretty spectacular.
I am not sure exactly what it is about the show that I like so much. Perhaps the fact that it makes me think anything is possible, in a very ‘if Anthony Worrall Thompson and Judy from Leicester can make that in twenty minutes then so can I’ sort of way, or maybe I just like it due to the necessity to find something entertaining on the television at four pm. Oh well, that’s not important, I just hope that I’ll be there on a day when competent people are competing (anyone else suddenly spot the connection between those two words?). It would be terribly embarrassing to be chucked out for heckling.
Post the dramas of Celebrity Big Brother over these past few weeks, the new focus is on Shipwrecked, a reality TV show that places five young men and five young women on two desert islands, one for each sex, for five months and, aside from challenges and such like things, they are pretty much left to their own devices, expected, and no doubt encouraged, by the producers to engage in conflict. All in the name of a ‘social experiment’. Like Big Brother, there have already been complaints about ‘racism’, from one of the female contestants who, it must be said, does seem extremely closed minded. However, I wish to draw people away from all that and more to what annoys me about the show in the first place: the introductions. As I am sure you’re aware, at the beginning of any contestant-based reality show, there is usually a short film explaining the background and lifestyle of each person. This is the part I hate most out of everything.
One person who particularly stuck out was Lianne from Brighton. Her intro started as follows ‘Hi, I’m Lianne, a student from Brighton. Most people say I’m a dumb blonde, but I’m really not’. Now, let me ask you this, was there a need to tell that to us all? She then went on to talk about her A levels in Philosophy, History and English, in which she got three As respectively. Indeed proof that she was an intelligent girl, so why did she point this out in the first place? I suppose what I am trying to get at is that I think, if you will excuse the cliché, actions really do speak louder than words. If she really was intelligent, we would be able to tell, and I don’t want the first thing I find out about someone to be what others supposedly think about them.
In fact, I despise this in any situation. In my many years taking part in various clubs and companies, as well as meeting large groups of people in a social context, I have been introduced to many people. As a result of this, I am well rehearsed in greetings, I say ‘Hi, I’m Suz’ and possibly make some comment about whatever we’re doing, if it is appropriate. Never do I say ‘Hi, I’m, Suz- I’m the mad one!’ as this phrase makes my blood boil. Being ‘the mad/quirky/kooky/wacky/zany/crazy one’ is never cool, and I would rather people didn’t boast about it. It does not make a good first impression. If I really do think you are ‘kooky’ or ‘wacky’ I can figure it out for myself, I don’t need to be forewarned. Of course, it can be made worse afterwards by people saying ‘you want to watch out for me’ (say it and I’ll kill you) or alternatively, telling me that ‘everyone says you’re mad’. If literally everyone said it, then surely I WOULD KNOW!!!
Of course, it could be said that I am being a little hard on people. That they are merely trying to be good company by adding ‘interesting’ little facts about themselves in to the conversations, and that people on reality TV shows are meant to tell you about themselves in these clips. However, I don’t see it like that. If I’m allowed to be ridiculously old fashioned, I think it shows that we need to reinforce etiquette lessons in our nation’s schools. You would never find a well-finished Victorian lady saying ‘I’m MAD me! You wanna watch out for me, everyone says I’m completely crazy!’ why? Well, it could be because women weren’t exactly permitted to be extremely extroverted, but I like to think that they were taught how to introduce themselves. Probably told to make comments on the decoration of the room or the company they were in. No talk of their supposed insanity anywhere. And, in my opinion, good thing too.
So, to sum up, I think we can learn a thing or two from our polished ancestors, perhaps the contestants of Shipwrecked should take a look. Although I wouldn’t recommend those Broderie Anglaise bodices on a tropical island that’s for sure!
