I rarely just turn on the TV and channel surf, but last night that's what I did. The relationship between the 'box' (though it is flatscreen so 'oblong'?) and me is a frosty one, particularly as someone who wants to encourage more highschool killing sprees at Channel 4 has stopped running Fraiser repeats on weekday mornings from 8-8.30 and replaced it with Celebrity Big Brother footage. Presumably the same person then spends 8.30 - 9 a.m. at the Andrex puppy orphanage with a flamethrower.
I am often forced to turn over to BBC1's Breakfast News, which is a wonderful combination of islamic fundamentalist fat cats stuck up property ladders and social awkwardness. The banter between the co-presenters is a wonder to behold. Distil the most dismal, witless, perfunctory office banter you've ever heard down to a heinous licqueur of uncomfortableness and you'll start to get an inkling of just how bad these people are at what they do. At any point where they're not reading directly off the autoqueue, you can sense the raw stench of terror. Their inepitude is to such a degree that it leaves me with the only possible conclusion that there must be an interconnecting door between the BBC's presenter training scheme and a labotomy centre.
"That was John Ball talking about the boating craze in Norfolk. Susanna, have you ever been boating?"
"B...o....a...t...i...n...g?"......drool.
"Ha ha. Great stuff. Over to Bill with the weather."
Anyway, I digress.
Last night I saw a programme called Generation XXL. Naturally, it was on Channel 4. Channel 4 is worryingly similar to Fox, yet at the other end of the political spectrum. Both have schedules which place surprisingly brilliant TV right next to the kind of dire, desperate shite that you wouldn't play to your worst enemy. Generation XXL isn't brilliant TV, by the way, but that's immediately clear from the title. It's one of those titles that you know some researcher at a piss pot, bottom feeding production company shat out during a mind diahorrea session.
"How about Generation XXL?"
"Good title. What's it about?"
"I don't know....fat kids?"
"Yeah! I love it! Edgy!"
It's one of those 'documentaries' that paints itself as a social awareness/ "Come on guys, we're addressing a problem here" type of broadcast, rather like 'The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off' or 'Embarrasing Illnesses' but really is more a case of "Ha ha! Look at the FAT fuckers! Look how FAT they are. Aren't you glad you're not like these losers. I know I am!"
The sad thing about the programme was that, despite diet, there was a clear theme running through each of the three obese children. There was one uniting factor which you felt may have contributed to their phenomenal masses: they were all bone idle. In fact two out of the three ten year olds were actually obsessively concerned with their diets (one was even on Weight Watchers) but it doesn't take a trip to a Sports Science Nutrition Centre (which it did) to suggest that these children are fat because they do not fucking move! But the programme makers knew this, and they were obviously urinating themselves with delight when they asked the boy (a behemouth weighing 17 stone and standing at 6 feet tall despite being ten) what he did with his day:
"I play a lot on my compuuuuaaaa. First I get a helfy snack, den I play on my compuuuuaaa, den I go toilit, den I play on my compuuuuaaa, den I have veg-tiballs, den I play on my compuuuuaaa"
The camera zoomed in like a ferocious predator to capture the fatty; his big wobbly face so inherently lazy that it couldn't be arsed to construct consonants. No opputunity was lost to have a bit of a snigger. The classic 'walking on the beach' sequence gave us another chance to giggle at lardy when the camera otherwise inexplicably focused on a "Beware: Soft Sand" sign. "Imagine that!" the programme makers were saying, "Imagine fat boy sinking in the sand. I bet he would! Imagine him thrashing and sinking in the sand. What a disgusting, gargantuan fuck!"
Aside from the not so subtle bullying, the programme seemed to stumble on to one valid point, and that was that the healthy eating message had not been entirely unsuccessful. Okay, there was one fat oaf of a father who blamed society for his errant parenting. "It's so easy today. All these fast food places. You can feed the whole family for under a tenner"....I bet you can. I bet you can also blow them all up with a single grenade, but i wouldn't advise you do it.
But this wasn't the case on the whole. Two of the families paraded their vegetable packed fridges as if deflecting all possible criticism. In fact it seemed a huge source of pride to two of the mothers that they didn't constantly feed their children melted butter through a straw. The government has spent so much money forcefeeding the message of healthy eating, that people have become lost in the detail. Guidelines are so specific, that people don't even try and engage a bit of sense. At one point, his equally fat mother was blubbing as if to say "What more can I possibly do?" perplexed that leaving salt off chips and serving Diet Coke wasn't causing the tons to tumble. But that seems to be the problem with food education. It seems to be all right to eat a lard sandwich, just as long as you use wholemeal bread.
I have since learnt that they are planning to follow these kids around for the next SEVEN years. The official blurb says that it's in order to "find out what it really feels like to be growing up fat". I imagine that it's the same as just growing up, except more people point and laugh at you. Now these 3 kids can enhoy the next 7 years of their life with millions of people pointing and laughing. Oh well. In for a penny, in for a kilo.
