Is the world crazy or am I?

Last year seemed to see an explosion of shows on TV which aped nakedness as a cure for most of life’s insecurities. Of course setting the ball rolling we had the camp crusader Gok Wan, with his self-confidence boosting charade which was How to look good naked, and it looks like a few TV execs had a free night that night as they saw this and immediately started to approve naked themed shows. Naturally all these shows have only shown tasteful nudity (well as tasteful as getting naked on TV can be to be fair), and start bragging about how being naked in public can be a life-changing event. Anyway to cut a long story short, these kinds of shows kept coming as we saw the crusade of tele-journo Dawn Porter, trying to take on the fashion industry and single-handedly save femininity in one fell swoop in Dawn gets naked where funnily enough Dawn actually doesn’t get naked (not in her final crusade anyway). We were also treated Then came the final nail in the coffin for this trend as Trinny and ...

This week saw the historic inauguration (both of them as it happened), of President Obama, which is a step forward perhaps the world has needed. I have to say that I saw Mr Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday, and I was impressed and somewhat relieved by the message which preached, tolerance, responsibility and hope. The feeling is that America is now redeemed somewhat in the eyes of the world now that warmongering joke that was the George W Bush era is consigned to history. There is certainly a lot to be done to fix America’s position in the world and I have no doubts that this week is only the beginning of a long process of change, but it makes you feel good to know that an intelligent and tolerant leader is now at the helm of one of the most powerful countries in the world. This week also saw what I thought was a rather dubious democratic decision. That is the public vote which awarded Ulrika Johnsson the victory of this year’s celebrity big brother. I suppose I didn’t really watch it b...

Yes kids it’s that time again. That is time for you to see just how wrong you were, when you thought your teenage years were crazy and wild. I am of course talking about the über-cool, gratuitously explicit mess that is Skins - well I say über-cool - as the show seems to be self consciously oozing that kind of feel. It deals with issues of teenage life like, alcoholism, sex, death (?), parties, A-Levels, addiction and mental illness. Fair enough, some of these were issues I had to deal with in my teenage years and I’m sure many of you reading have too, but the fact that this is all shoved down your throat by a load of brightly clothed (seriously is that how teenagers dress?) wide-eyed, quirky, nu rave fashion-school/performing arts wannabes makes it a little hard to swallow. The characters in the show are detestable and the one saving grace about this new series is that the original (annoying) cast has all but been traded in for another batch of fresh-faced young pill-poppers. I don’t ...

It truly is January. It feels like life is returning to normality at the moment. The decorations are down, the festivities are over and the grim realities of life once again fade into view. It is also absolutely freezing, and as I look out of my window I see the trees have become a very wintery white. The final nail in the coffin for me is the start of the Reality TV year which ended with ‘Strictly Come X-Factoring’ or something of the like, and has begun again with Celebrity Big Brother. Or Celebrity cash and fame grab as I like to call it. The house contains the usual array of has-beens, who-the-hell-are-they’s, oh-no-not-hims, and Coolio (you know the Rapper…). Now normally this simultaneous celebration and degradation of fame would usually piss me off, and I would argue “why do we dish out the term celebrity to anyone who has been on TV for five minutes,” but that is not what bothers me about the charade. What annoys me more is the over exuberant, screechy, hyping host of the evict...