The reality of TV today

Was anyone else watching and felt compelled to turn to another TV channel? I'm talking about the first two episodes of Britain's Got Talent - I'm still in shock. I have not been able to tune in since.

I'm not going to lie, I have long since viewed Simon Cowell as an 'ANGEL' (Annoying Nerve Grinding and Extremely Loathsome), but when the series first started I quite enjoyed the occasional bad bit of dancing, off-key singing and endearing efforts of children. As time has gone on, however, some of the bilge that has been dredged up by Cowell and his cohorts has made my eyes water - did anyone see the 'fire eater' in the second programme?

I kid you not, I stood, rooted to the spot, my right hand hovering over the bed linen gripping the iron, transfixed, as I watched that woman, clad only in skin-tight, black shorts and microscopic circles of duct tape you-know-where as she 'did her thing'. Those of you who didn't see it, trust me, while nothing was left to the imagination you didn't miss much!

There's only one place a girl can go when her sensitivities have been frayed. I am, of course, talking about a certain Crescent Link coffee shop with the font of all knowledge - Anita Robinson.

"Anita, is it just me? Is humiliation in front of an armchair audience of millions the way forward?" I ask, liberally shaking chocolate dust on top of an obscene mug of latte.

Anita 'tutts' in sympathy: "It is absolutely victim culture. Why would anybody set themselves up for that? What is the criterium on which they are chosen? Is it for talent or lack of talent? I'm thinking of people like Stavros Flatley or, dear love them, Jedward, who have made a career of being completely devoid of talent," she says unsure whether to laugh or choke (could be the chocolate powder though...)

All Jedward have is a hairstyle, but you can book them for an appearance at your party or nightclub - provided your door lintels are designed to cope with high hair.

Forgive me if you love reality TV, but when programmes like Big Brother came into being they were interesting social experiments with normal people in an abnormal situation and it was a unique and novel experience to finally be the fly on someone else's wall. It was an interesting concept. It worked, and then it unravelled and gave us, among others, one of the most sinned against TV personalities ever - Jade Goodie. Then it nosedived and in the name of maintaining ratings, the more maladjusted the contestant the more likely they were to get on screen and win!

Quirk

"I think possibly there is a quirk among talentless people that if you have nothing concrete to offer at least be a character, and I think Jade Goodie, although she wasn't painted white, said 'I may be stupid, but let's make a feature out of it' and she actually lived up to her own stupidity," Anita notes with an air of assurance.

"You see that's it. When Big Brother first started it was ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, but you never hear from those people now," I moan.

"Precisely," sniffs Anita: "They had nothing to offer except their own niceness. Now what they look for is damaged people. I genuinely do believe it, they look for quirky people, they look for people who are absolutely sheer bonkers, and they look for people who will make for 'good' television."

In my Omagh Players days we staged One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and I tell Anita that reality TV today reminds me of aspects of the play, inasmuch as the audience, far from laughing at the characters, are actually laughing at themselves and flagging up their own prejudices.

Anita sympathises: "It's like going back to Ancient Rome, where they paraded the incompetent and inadequate, and it's just like 'The Quality' walking about in London in the 17th and 18th Centuries making fun of and pointing sticks at the mad people. That is exactly what they are doing. They have gone right back to that kind of culture where we prey on the afflicted. You can see it in the odd sort of reverse sense that people have when they vote for talentless people."

She's right you know...who here doesn't remember John Sergeant on Strictly Come Dancing? He was brilliantly appalling - if there is such a thing, but the more the judges slated him the bigger his majority became.

"The public changed the rules of competition. The public love an underdog and I think he knew exactly what he was doing and he played up to it," Anita offers.

"You see, I can understand that, Anita, but what I cannot understand is where someone has some kind of health issue or identity crisis and they allow that to be exploited...it disturbs," I muse.

It's a topic she warms to, commenting that some of what passes for TV today reminds her of a Victorian Raree Show and I'm inclined to agree - Penny Dreadful Theatre is back with a vengeance.

Old woman with a beard

"It's like paying to see the old woman with the beard. It scares me," I confide in a conspiratorial whisper, wondering when it all started.

"It started as entertainment and then the envelope got pushed. Once people got used to a certain level they then needed novelty and programmes knew they needed a new hook to hang things on. They have pushed the parameters of taste and inclusion, what is permissible, and they kept on pushing with each successive series, and when you get used to that you even accept it," Anita says.

"But it's even creeping into things like Emmerdale Farm. In fact it's just Emmerdale now," I howl.

"It's even in The Archers," Anita says, her nose wrinkling.

"The Archers?"

"I am sorry to say, I listen to it each evening and I listen to the Omnibus edition on Sunday's. But now, a thing is happening that never happened before, and I am becoming increasingly irritated by The Archers because it is going the way of every other soap, and is rooted now in cheap sensationalism, and characters who are utterly incongruous in a rural background."

I tentatively ask Anita if she saw the flame-eating porn star on Britain's Got Talent. A stupid question I know. If she had she'd be blind in at least one eye...

"I didn't. But I saw the picture of it and I thought 'Wow...this is a family show?'," she stirs her hot chocolate thoughtfully before continuing: "I wonder what impact it is all having on our children and our children's children. You know, before the election I was watching the TV and some eight-year-old was polled by a journalist who asked did he believe what they were saying and the child looked very levelly at him and said they should be made to take a lie detector test like they do on the Jeremy Kyle Show. What's an eight-year-old doing being familiar with the Jeremy Kyle Show? It's a parade of the inadequate and the sad and the damaged."

It shows you how much daytime TV I watch - I asked what the child was doing watching the JK Show when he should have been in school...

Ouch

"That's because it's on in the afternoon, so you can catch it if you really, really want to dear," she says with a smirk. Ouch.

I think I'll pass if it's all the same to you Anita. I've got better things to do with my time rather than watch 'Zoo Television' while cringing behind the sofa... The misguided and dispossessed might be getting a pretty good fee for sitting there pouring their hearts out, but, as Anita points out, it is still cheap television.

"Because they are not professionals they'll do it for buttons because to them the big reward is getting your face on the television for 15 minutes...and some other producer with no principles might think you are newsworthy in a different capacity," she says, eyeing the other patrons over the froth of her hot chocolate.

So I'm not the only one that believes we have glibly trotted down the path to Cult of Celebrity behind our American Cousins.

"You see it again on more innocuous quiz shows and money programmes. Now, if you channel hop from one to the other you begin to see faces that are vaguely familiar and you discover they are 'serial entrants'. There was an incident last week of the dancing dog on Britain's Got Talent, which has fetched up several times before and was the winner of numerous other competitions. According to one journalist this was a professional dog who does this kind of thing for a living. So it makes a mockery of the concept of ordinary people displaying their talent if you have already got well-rehearsed people and have television experience sneaking under the canvas of the tent to block out other players' chances of success."

Phenomenon

I bait my pointy stick by asking Anita what she thinks of the Susan Boyle phenomenon, and unphased the indomitable Ms Robinson bats the curved ball straight back: "In the same article what did I discover? Susan Boyle is not quite a novice to talent shows, she appeared on something else in 1995 - Michael Barrymore's 'My Kind of People' no less. Apparently she got nowhere. The thing about Susan Boyle is, and it is an appalling thing to say about anybody, there is a glorious voice inside a very homely body, and it is that juxtaposition of the plain with the perfect that just caught the public's imagination. If she had been young and beautiful with that spectacular voice she would have been successful, yes, but there wouldn't have been the same publicity fuss about her. It was this dumpy middle-aged woman who opened her mouth and let Heaven escape."

She's right, of course. We are being manipulated, coldly, by producers, and all they want is to find who is going to make the most impact whether by sheer doggedness, unbelievable lack of talent or if they are going to be a character. A straight-talking, straight-singing, medium pretty/handsome being stands practically no chance.

Dredged up

"Does it make you wonder what might get dredged up as the four finalists creep closer to the final of the UK City of Culture title?" I ask.

"I don't know...Derry's certainly full of characters...but we definitely have talent and most of it never gets a fair showing," says Mrs Robinson emphatically, adding: "There is however, something about our confidence levels in ourselves, we don't always have the confidence to follow through and there is something about the confidence, the self-belief and sheer chutzpah of people who don't come from here that makes them win out in spades over people with genuine talent, but they do not have the 'push'. We are too modest and we have been taught to be modest about our talent. There are a lot of people with talent to burn who simply don't have the push to self-promote. It's generational and it is part of our culture, and that's what makes it gobsmackingly appalling when some talentless person stands up and declares they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, and they have two left feet and have no voice."

"We don't stand a chance, do we?"

"Not unless we acquire, very swiftly, the ability to promote ourselves properly and professionally, with self-belief," Anita says.

"I know what we'll do...we'll book ourselves into Britain's Got Talent!," I joke.

"What are you going to do? I'll hold your coat!"

She just w