Eggheads, BBC2, 6.00 pm, 15 September 2006.

If there’s one thing the television producer and the psychologist have in common it’s a chequered history in defining exactly what ‘intelligence’ is. Any standard introductory psychology textbook will detail the problems psychometric testers have had in attempting to measure intelligence, and the over-valued status attached to IQ tests (the only thing the tests are guaranteed to measure reliably is an individual’s ability at taking IQ tests).

As an example of the meaninglessness of IQ scores, take the following example. Madonna is reputed to have an IQ of 140 (the average is 100), yet this didn’t prevent her from marrying Guy Ritchie, choosing to star in the career-ending shocker that was Swept Away or recording that bloody awful cover version of American Pie.

In televisual terms, intelligence seems to come down to nothing more than rote memory recall, the ability to use semantic memory (the memory of facts and concepts) to remember all sorts of pointless information such as the capital city of Venezuela being Caracas. Now unless you’re in Venezuela and need to get to your country’s embassy as a matter of urgency, knowing this simple fact will not be of much use to you, nor knowing another several thousand similar useless facts. Yet, in TV terms, knowing the scores of all the FA Cup finals somehow equates to being Einstein.

Still, the quiz show is the staple food of television producers, mainly because they’re cheap and fast to film with multiple episodes being recorded back-to-back. They’re also relatively amusing to watch with the family, as various members take turns to make idiots of themselves by blurting out the wrong answer to such questions as what the capital city of Venezuela is.

Currently running in the ‘unbuckle the jeans and let the dinner go down’ timeslot on BBC2 at 6pm is Eggheads, featuring "the most formidable quiz team in Britain" or, as they’re described in the TKK household, the least charismatic quiz team in Britain (and that’s saying something). The team are so dull that I’ve given them insulting comedic nicknames just to liven them up.

First up is Judith Keppel (‘Posh’), the first winner on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Her main distinguishing feature is that she pulls a face like a constipated owl whenever she has to think hard about a question.

Next is Kevin Ashman (‘Bus-driver’), a former winner of Mastermind and a man so nondescript he could live in your house for seven years before you noticed him.

After Busdriver is CJ De Mooi (‘Boss-eye’), whose one distinguishing feature is being the weakest link on the team and the Egghead the opposing teams relentlessly go far, sensing easy meat. And he’s not sensitive about it all. Not one little bit.

The penultimate member of the team is Daphne Fowler (‘Dentures’), two time winner of Fifteen to One, and whose distinguishing feature is not having one.

The final member is the unofficial daddy of the team, Christopher Hughes (Amos Brealy as designed by Frank Oz), whose distinguishing feature is his catchphrase "I’m still the reigning International Mastermind champion", which epitomises the smug condescension that oozes from him like sweat from a builder’s arse-crack. Just for the record, there hasn’t been another International Mastermind since 1983 and he isn’t being the least bit self-aware when he says it.

The format is as follows: five-person quiz teams "pit their wits" against the Eggheads. There are initially four rounds before the fifth and final round. In the first four rounds the challenging team are informed of the theme the questions for the round will be on (e.g. sport, history). They select one person from their team to answer the questions, who then chooses a member of the Eggheads to compete against on an individual basis. No conferring is allowed and the loser is ruled out of the final round, in which the remaining members of each team compete on a group basis and are allowed to confer. Each contestant and Egghead has three questions to answer, with a forced choice between three possible answers. If the scores are tied at the end of the round the questions go to sudden death, but with no answers provided.

Before going onto the rollercoaster ride that was the quiz, a word about the competing team for the episode I watched. It takes a lot to make the Eggheads look charismatic, but Black Country boys the ‘Lump-hammers’ managed it in style. Their names alone are enough to suggest the boys’ blandness: Paul, Tony, Gary, Ken, Graham (Did their parents have some form of allergy to syllables?).

The team also committed the cardinal sin of quiz by having such a shit name for their team. Anyone who’s taken part in a pub quiz knows the aim is to have give your team the most ridiculous name possible, so the compere looks like a complete arse when he has to read the scores at the end of each round:

"The Blue Team have 4, The Red Team have 6, and The Urine is Running Uncontrollably Down My Leg Team have no points and no chance of winning whatsoever."

Trust me: after a couple of drinks it’s a hoot an’ a holler.

The first subject is geography and the Egghead was Posh.

Sample question:

The tower called the Scot monument is the feature of which British city?

a) Edinburgh
b) Cardiff
c) Belfast

And no, it’s not a trick question. It really was that insultingly easy.

With questions like the above, it was no surprise all were answered correctly and the scores were tied at 3-3, meaning the round went into sudden death. With no clues as to the answer, the contestants now have to recall rather than recognise the answer. This really sorts out the eggs from the Eggheads.

But Posh loses and, like her namesake, she won’t be seen anywhere when it comes to the grand final.

The next round was arts and books, so step forward Big Daddy Amos to flex the mental muscle.

Sample question:

Which member of the Beatles in 1997 released a symphonic work called Standing Stone?

a) George Harrison
b) Paul McCartney
c) Ringo Starr

Hilariously, the smug twat got the answer wrong with his unnecessarily prefaced answer of "the late George Harrison" (just in case anyone wasn’t aware George died five years ago).

Unfortunately, the Lumphammers fail to take advantages of Amos’s cock-up, and they too had lost a member for the final.

As the quiz progresses, what becomes evident is that for a significant proportion of the time the Eggheads don’t instantly know the answer. Taking advantage of the forced choice format, they tend to go through the answers and eliminate the ones they know are wrong, before arriving at an answer they think is correct, rather than know for certain.

The next round was entertainment, and step forward Mr Bus-driver to entertain you.

Sample question:

Who played the role of Danny Zuko in the stage musical of Greece the first time?

a) Jeff Bridges
b) Al Pacino
c) Richard Gere

Again, Bus-driver wasn’t 100% sure what the answer was, but revealingly commented that "the only name [I have] associated with Greece is Richard Gere". Again the ‘intelligence’ on display was simple associations rather than knowledge.

Bus-driver ran his opponent over, and the Lumphammers (or ‘Lumps’ for short) had lost another man for the final.

The penultimate round was history, and being a history graduate I was looking forward to pitting my wits at home against Dentures. Fat chance.

Sample question:

Which criminal of the Old West was shot by Pat Garrett?

a) Doc Holliday
b) Jesse James
c) Billy the Kid

I didn’t need my history degree for this one; having watched Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid was sufficient to give me the answer. As Dentures is around 86, she clearly had an advantage when it came to history and defeated her opponent. That meant there were just two Lumps left for the final.

In the final round the topic is general knowledge, with four Eggs competing against two Lumps. At this point the numerical advantage should come into play, but not with questions as straightforward as the following example:

Which member of the royal family was engaged to Koo Stark?

a) Edward
b) Charles
c) Andrew

Unsurprisingly, again, there were no wrong answers until it came to the final question with the scores at two apiece. For the deciding question the teams were given a line taken from a nursery rhyme:

"Lady bird, lady bird, who hides under the pan?"

To have a chance of beating the Eggheads, the Lumps had to guess who hid under the pan. Was it:

a) Anne
b) Agnes
c) Alison

As nursery rhymes were clearly not their forte, and neither was lateral thinking, the team was completely stumped, but they still had a one in three chance of guessing correctly.

They chose Alison.

Falsehood!

The correct answer was Anne, as the Eggheads successfully guessed. But the reasons as to why they chose their answer revealed the secret of their success: Anne had been chosen because it rhymes with pan, which, being as it was taken from a nursery rhyme, was a common sense logical deduction.

So, as for many of the questions, the Eggheads hadn’t displayed awe-inspiring mental gymnastics but simply used common sense.

And with their nailbiting 3-2 win the Eggheads stretched their winning sequence to 15 unbeaten matches.

And Amos is STILL International Mastermind Champion.

Amongst other things.

I Smack and I'm Proud, ITV, 9pm, 21 September 2006.

TKK’s parents didn’t practice corporal punishment, which makes his subsequent development of a spanking fetish in adulthood somewhat hard to fathom. Maybe, deep down, I feel missed out on something in my childhood which I’m now trying to experience in adulthood.

Or perhaps I’m just a great big strumpin’ perv.

ITV ‘documentary’ I Smack and I’m Proud detailed a series of families who had no qualms about spanking their kids and were prepared to do so on camera. The show opened with the usual clichés about why it’s ok to smack kids:

"I think it hurt me more than it hurt him." Well if that’s the case then why is your child the only one crying?

"It didn’t do me any harm." Apart from turning you into a psychotic disciplinarian-obsessed control freak.

"Spare the rod and you spoil the child." Because a child that grows up without being physically beaten is being spoilt otherwise.

"You have to be a brave parent to admit you smack your child." For sure. It takes real courage to admit to hitting someone who’s less than two feet tall.

The program focused on a series of families: Angela Davies and her three children Marcella, Aaron and Lorenzo; Gary and Tracy Wall (the Wayne and Waynetta Slob of parenting) and their six children; Martyn and Amanda Ayers and their two kids; Denise Williams (who thinks her kids get a ‘buzz’ from being smacked) and her two daughters; plus Jenny and Mark Flanders (not their real surname), who believed they had a God-given right to go forth and (in)breed, and then spank their breed.

Interspersed between the families were brief comments from an almost exclusively lower-class derived sample of pro-smacking parents (surely some of the middle-classes still spank?), the usual talking head snippets (e.g. Dr Miriam Stoppard) and the obligatory superfluous comment from celebrities. Both Ulrika Jonsson and Fiona Phillips were adamant they didn’t smack their kids and I totally believed them (they probably get nanny to smack the kids for them).

The families demonstrated all the inconsistencies and distorted logic which informed their smacking practices, starting with the Davies family.

"I say my piece: you don’t listen, you get wacked."

Angela had clearly graduated from the Tony Soprano school of parenting and was clear as to the reasoning behind her reign of terror: "I love them, that’s why I discipline them. I don’t want them to take drugs or get pregnant; I don’t want them to hurt another child."

Maybe demonstrating to your kids the fine art of assault with kitchen utensils might not be the best way of achieving that.

Davies stated that "I rule this house, I’m in control", but she wasn’t in control of either her temper or the children. In the twelve days the family was filmed she struck her kids twenty times on camera, so one can only imagine what the family home was like when the film-makers left.

"When Tracy smacks ‘em they know it."

Although the Walls had six kids to smack, the focus was on problem-child Aaron, a seven-year old with a mouth like a pissed-up docker. Aaron had a four-year behavioural history of tantrums and swearing, and you didn’t have to be a social learning theorist to see where it came from. While administering a smacking, Tracey and Gary would argue and swear at each other, which goes to show the parenting classes they’d claimed to attended had not worked.

Gary and Tracey had "tried everything" with Aaron, including the "old-fashioned" method of putting curry powder in his mouth. To those who thought soap was the old-fashioned way, they’d tried that as well. But neither of these two methods had worked, unlike pepper, which really did the job (where had they been for these parenting classes? Guantanamo Bay?).

Maybe it wasn’t a surprise Aaron called his dad a "prick", "bastard" and "fuckin’ idiot" if this was the treatment he was receiving. The battle of wills between father and son led to Aaron running away at one point, not that the Slobs noticed: they’d probably have had another couple of kids before realising he’d gone.

"We woz bringing him up wrong."

Martyn and Amanda Ayers had a more clearly delineated problem with their son Mitchell, who had suffered a severe case of dethroning with the birth of his brother Spencer. The Ayers had planned originally for Mitchell to be their only child and had consequently “spoilt and mollycoddled” him. The birth of Spencer and the resulting loss of attention had clearly affected Mitchell’s behaviour, and six months after Spencer’s birth Martyn decided on a zero tolerance policy:

"One day he wound me up and wound me up and then I hit him. He cried for 10-15 minutes and was shocked and then was perfect for 15 minutes after. I thought: ‘blimey, is this what it takes?’"

Martyn had extended this hardline approach to the evening meal, bawling at Mitchell "keep your fucking legs forward" whenever he turned round. Martyn complained at not being to concentrate when at home and wanting a period of quiet reflection after work, which went some way to explaining the real reason his son was being hit so often. Perhaps if he cooled down after work before interacting with his family then there would have been less need for Mitchell to be hit so often.

The most uncomfortable moment was seeing Martyn ask son: "Do you hate me for smacking you?" Mitchell said no, which absolved Martyn of everything.

"The Bible says it’s ok to discipline our children."

Christian couple Jenny and Mark Flanders had five children and looked so inbred that, to steal the old Bill Hicks joke, their eyes were so close together the right eye was in the left socket and vice versa. The Flanders had the authority of the Bible to back up their disciplinarian actions, the Fifth Commandment being such a flexible tool.

The example of daughter Eloise being punished after drawing on the living room floor gave the Flanders the chance to explain their approach. Whenever one of their kids does something wrong they take them into a room and explain what they’ve done wrong. Then smack them. And, like other parents, a mixed message is thrown in when they give their kids a cuddle afterwards. So the child does something the adult considers ‘wrong’, is smacked and is then cuddled afterwards. Now who’d be confused by behaviour as consistent as that?

Demonstrating the strong vein of rationality informing his decision making Mark stated that it’s important "children learn to respond to their parents rather than receiving a beating by a copper ten years later."

Er, right. I see the connection. Still, you wouldn’t expect the strongest demonstration of logical thinking to come from a Christian.

"My daughters are a pain in the arse."

The final family was Denise (I smack, therefore I am) Williams and her two daughters Page and Charley. Mum would smack for such heinous crimes as not being able to open the door because her daughters’ room was messy. In Denise’s history were features similar to Angela’s: a father from the army who practiced a strict regime of punishment ("his belt would be undone if I wasn’t in by nine") who one day punched his daughter in the mouth after she contravened his oppressive rules.

Was it effective? Well Denise didn’t sleep with anyone until she was 20, although later in life stole money from a service station in Pontypool and threatened the cashier (an old lady) with a hammer, for which she received six months imprisonment. She’s also served time for fraud (three months) and another few weeks for assault. So a successful disciplinarian upbringing there.

An almost complete inability to see links between their childhood experiences and subsequent behaviour as adults was evident in the closing sequences where Harley Street psychologist Dr Lucy Atcheson met the parents. Angela grew up in Singapore where her father was in the British Army. She said he was a "strict disciplinarian" who "didn’t know how to love" and "treated me like one of his soldiers".

Sound familiar?

Rather than recognising she’d become a clone of my father and respond to the psychologist’s suggestion she be more demonstrative in her loving, Angela responded that she [the psychologist] was "going on like a broken tape-recorder". Well, at least she didn’t wack her on this occasion.

When the good doctor went to Devon to visit Martyn and Amanda there was slightly more insight (or guilt) and a contrast in results. On viewing the footage for the first time Martyn looked visibly uncomfortable, especially the extract where Mitchell was told to "keep your fuckin’ legs forward". As Lucy pointed out, Mitchell was simply curious at to what his dad was doing and turned around to watch him. Partly as a consequence of seeing his own behaviour Martyn had decided to stop smacking his eldest son, although it’s inevitable in these type of programs there has to be a 'happy' ending in the narrative, no matter how contrived.

The vast majority of the parents featured were unaware of the change in the law in 2005 which states that if the inflicted punishment leads to more than an actual passing mark the parent could face up to five years imprisonment; I’m not sure what the sentencing options are for putting pepper in your kid’s mouth. As was pointed out by the health professionals, small children are often unable to see the connection between the smack and the misdemeanour, and become increasingly desensitized to the physical punishment. They also tend to be focus more on the punishment received rather than what they are told they’ve done wrong.

With the ending of corporal punishment in state and private schools and the outlawing of the practice in the family other European countries (and a subsequent reduction in juvenile violence) it’s probably only a matter of time before a bill is introduced before Parliament, which will end the techniques employed by the appropriately named Andria Bowes-Adolfess, using smacking to show "wrong from right".

Little Hitlers, one and all.

Loose Women, ITV, 12.30 p.m. 20 September 2006.

Despite the best efforts of the Government to conceal the true casualty figures, British troops are struggling to cope with the ferocity of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. However, I have a cunning plan with which to undermine the fighting ability of the Taliban shock troops. I’d sit down with Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and make him watch ITV’s Loose Women, because by the time we’d got to the loose morals section I’m quite sure he would recognise the need to reverse the Taliban’s opposition to educating women and insist all Afghanistani women are educated to at least doctorate level.

As part of the lightweight TV programming which makes up ITV schedules from today’s GMTV to tomorrow’s, Loose Women aims to transfer to TV the blend of features found within the magazines my mother is so fond of purchasing when she does the shopping: a bit of diet info (“lose 10 pounds while sitting on your arse eating chocolate!”); some celeb fluff (“Peter Andre on his best buy coffee machine!”); a real life story (“My son learnt maths by selling drugs!”); and, my favourite part, the problem page (“My Man keeps badgering me to have a threesome – should I?”). The answer to the latter is a definite yes, as long as it’s another woman he’s talking about bringing to the conjugal bed.

The show is reasonably anchored by main host Kaye Adams, although holed below sea level by crewmates Coleen Nolan (ex-Nolan sister and ex-Mrs Shane Ritchie), Carol McGiffin (Chris Evans’s wife before Billie Piper) and Denise Welch (ex-Corrie). What use an anchor is to a sinking ship is a moot point as, despite Adams’ best efforts to avoid icebergs, her crew is set on a constant collision course with icebergs due to their constant internecine bitching.

The show kicked off with some diet chat as Coleen talked about her non-solids diet, which was rather apposite considering the last time her BMI was in reasonable shape was during her pre-solids days. Coleen wittered on about changing her relationship to food, although you’d think the human-food relationship is pretty one way: you eat it; it doesn’t eat you. Unless it’s some form of GM killer tomato.

Rarely able to focus on a topic for long when the co-hosts fill time, the conversation set sail for distant shores. Coleen, apparently, is big in Japan, although judging by the size of her arse she’d be big in any country she chooses to visit.

With the show shipping water fast, and this being ITV, the show moved onto its premium line competition plug, with the following challenging question to win £2000:

Albert Square is the setting for which soap:

(a) Neighbours.

(b) Emmerdale.

(c) Eastenders.

I thought the government was supposed to be taking action against these kind of no-brainer £1 a minute quiz lines? It’s completely obvious to everyone that the answer to the question is Emmerdale.

Just in case the above question was a little taxing, on came first guest Todd Carty (ex-Eastenders) to jog your memory. At this point I began to wonder if Carty’s microphone was playing up as I was unable to hear anything he said due to his low-talking. To summarise, I think the conversation went something like this:

Loose women: Coo! Coo! Tucker Jenkins!
Todd Carty: Mmm, hmm, hmm, mmm.
Loose women: Coo! Coo! Mark Fowler!
Todd Carty: Mmm, hmm, hmm, mmm.

Carty was asked about his views on corporal punishment, serving as a none too subtle plug for ITV’s forthcoming ‘documentary’ I Smack and I’m Proud, which gave the girls a chance to extemporise wildly about their own personal experiences. Both Colleen and Denise were in favour of kids and smack; Carol doesn’t smack her kids, although that’s because she doesn’t have any (well not since her divorce). At this point the tension between the women re-emerged as Carol’s liberal stance was defensively met by cries of ‘you don’t have kids so you don’t know what it’s like!” With such sisterly solidarity is it any wonder the patriarchy survives?

With Carty gone and another plug for the competition, the show moved onto its version of the problem page with its loose morals segment. Neil from Manchester had written to the show as he was worried his girlfriend was a bit of a lush due to her aggressive and abusive behaviour when on the grog. How should he broach the subject with her?

Rather than an attempt at empathy, Carol, Denise and Coleen became instantly defensive as if their own drunken antics were on trial. Carol gave the advice you’d expect from an ex-wife of Chris Evans: she suggested he get inebriated with his woman so he didn’t notice her behaviour (two drunks always being better than one). She also added it was a bit much of a man to criticise his beau’s behaviour just because it "changes after a couple of drinks”. At this point the show sunk further under the weight of the hosts’ bitching, with Carol once again being the group scapegoat. Kaye accused Carol of being “stroppy and deluded” when drunk; Colleen told her she never felt concerned about leaving her “in many a gutter”; Denise, having quit the grog due to her own embarrassing behaviour, said she hates being around drunks and pretty much accused Carol of being an alcoholic (Carol: “I’m not ill.” Kaye: but you are defensive.”).

With the lifeboats at the ready, on came Monarch of the Glen actor Hamish Clark (no, me neither), so the girls could inevitably ask him about his kilt and “which part of it he wore out” on set (Denise). Clark was about as coherent as Carol on the lash, although she at least has alcohol as an excuse.

With the show a wreck on its way to Davy Jones’ locker, there was just enough time to plug the competition again with the promise that the answer would be revealed the next day, as if this was necessary. Emmerdale was so obviously the answer!

Womens’ magazines perform a valuable function, providing housebound WAGS mental relief from the interminable rounds of hoovering, doing the washing-up and getting the dinner ready for their subjugating partner. However, a live TV equivalent includes the gormless fuckwittery that a Now! editor would prevent from going to the typesetters. When the regular sections (e.g. soap star interviews) fail, the segments where the girls bitch chat amongst themselves are like watching a crew firing a cannon at its own deck.

But that’s not to say the Loose Women format doesn’t have potential: shifted to a post-watershed timeslot and with the girls allowed to get loaded in the green room before the show starts, the inevitable drunken catfight that would erupt would be preferable to the watery death the show suffers at its current midday scheduling. Until this time, in shipping terminology, if the show was a deck it would most definitely be the poop.

Don’t Get Me Started. Five: 7.15 pm. Tuesday 12 September.

I know this might sound strange, but I feel a tad sorry for Ann Widdecombe, MP. Like many backbench Tory MPs, Widdecombe is clearly out of place in modern society, which makes her (and their) influence on the laws of the land an uncomfortable notion.

On Five’s Don’t Get Me Started, Widdecombe squeezed into the pulpit and delivered her modern life is rubbish sermon: people today are far too obsessed with worshipping the false god that is the physical (or the “outer crust” in Ann’s winning phrase), infatuated with celebs, diets and image in a society where “stick thin twiglets reign supreme”.

Course they do. Only the other day Kate Moss was introducing legislation to tackle social exclusion while sentencing a couple of paparazzi to death by stoning.

In case we think it hypocritical of the recently blond dyed Ms Celebrity Fatclub to lecture on the dangers of physical vanity, Widdecombe preempts this by informing us her participation in the show was “all for health” reasons, although it’s somewhat more difficult to defend dying your hair blond on that basis.

Widdecombe trod the increasingly familiar path of current health and lifestyle issues, leading to a superficial examination of the £2 billion diet industry, the negative perceptions people have of fat people (their perceived laziness and slovenliness), “health establishment” scaremongering over clinical obesity (or being “mildly overweight” as Ann prefers), alleged collaboration between the “health establishment” and the slimming industry, cosmetic surgery and spa treatments, plus the obligatory facile observations from media commentators and clueless Joe Publics.

Personally, I would have preferred to hear a cardiologist detail the detrimental effects of a build up of fatty deposits on the heart rather than hear a vacuous psychotherapist publicise his half-baked theory (the “Adonis syndrome”) about the significance of body-image in Western society. There was also a total absence of a discussion of the implications of a population developing increasing rates of diabetes and other ailments as a consequence of obesity levels, but Ann would no doubt accuse me of being too fixated on the physical.

Widdecombe waddled around completely unable to grasp why some people might be so fixated on body-image, as might be expected from someone who’s never had to try and get laid in life. This made for uncomfortable viewing when seeing her interview an unfortunate woman whose plastic surgery had gone wrong, Widdecombe barely able to contain her ‘I told you so!’ expression. Her later confrontation with a cosmetic surgeon (“you trade in vanity!) was almost as memorable as her incredulity at “designer vaginas!” (Me too. It’s hard to believe that some women are going for the Kidman nose and the Widdecombe snatch.)

Granted, the continued pursuit of an unobtainable physical ideal is not the most rational course for people to pursue but, being a fully paid-up member of the God squad, Widdecombe should be more aware than most of how the irrational can inform people’s beliefs.

But getting underneath the ‘outer crust’ of the program, Widdecombe’s real concern is not there’s too much fat in your diet or too many glossy magazines on your coffee table but that there's not enough God. “As a Roman Catholic” (well she was Church of England until they ordained women) Ann turns “to the church for the meaning of life”, with “this life not the be all and end all”.

Well she’s rather fucked (for once) if it actually is.

So bring on Father Christopher Jamison, Abbot of Wirth, for a smug and conceited chat over whether life is “pointless” for the great unwashed trapped in a consumerist lifestyle and whether they’ve “lost direction”.

Well based on falling church congregations they’ve certainly lost the directions to certain places.

Apparently, “modern life does not provide the moral framework – it’s all about me, me, me”.

This from a member of the Conservative party?

Both Father Jamison and Ann concur that there’s a “big hole in too many people’s lives” (yes Ann: it’s called their mouths and is the reason they’re getting so fat), as if re-introducing the influence of the church into people’s lives would resolve everything.

Widdecombe probably would have been happier being born around several hundred years ago when religious clerics and their superstitious dogmas influenced the decisions of the day, and in the absence of modern sewerage systems would stick their corpulent backsides out of the privy window and defecate onto the street.

The fluidity of modern life and the bewildering array of lifestyle choices filling the void since the collapse of religious institutions have perplexed many, as displayed by Ann in her challenge to a spa therapist as to “how a hand massage raises your spiritual awareness?” The therapist’s answer of “we’re all different and that’s the beauty of life” was more worthy of an Amen than Ann’s intolerant approach to views she doesn’t share (i.e. the majority of the population’s).

But, to humour Ann for a moment, I thought I’d post a couple of before and after photos to emphasise the dangers in concentrating too much on the ‘outer crust’:

Before makeover

After makeover

So people today aren't focussing enough on inner beauty? Methinks the lady protests too much.

Peaches Geldof's Beginner's Guide to Islam.
C4. 11.00 pm. Tuesday 5 September.

If anyone needs their beauty sleep then it’s TKK. But if C4 thought they’d escape a TV Tanning for Peaches Geldof’s Beginners Guide to Islam by sticking her on at 11pm they were much mistaken. So face-pack applied and Horlicks at the ready I parked myself in front of the box to watch her address the defining spiritual question of our age: shopping or praying – which is best?

Before I start whipping Peaches (minus the cream), I have to mention something I didn’t think possible: a likeable Geldof. The real star of the program was Pixie, sadly only featured very briefly at the start. Despite looking (and sounding) like a young Ann Widdecombe, in those brief on-screen moments she managed to convey a charm that suggests having the surname of Geldof doesn’t automatically mean you empty a room just by booking a concert in it walking into it.

Unfortunately, it seems the next generation Geldof we’re going to be throwing shoes at the telly whenever they’re on is Peaches, as this is now the third show she’s fronted, which means she’ll be doing Newsnight before we know it.

Peaches, at least momentarily, showed herself to be in touch with the viewer by noting “I’m probably the last person in the world you’d expect to be presenting something like this”. Well apart from the Pope, or Nick Griffin, she’s correct in that respect: having a wannabe Sloane ranger to present a guide to Islam is not the most obvious choice. What next? Abu Hamza’s guide to nightclubbing?

Rather than Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, Peaches takes the Marrakech express, which she informs us is “just like Camden market”. Well not really, at least not if you’re trying to score opium in a hurry. The first twenty minutes of the program were spent getting right to the heart of the Islamic experience with devout eighteen-year old Nadira, which boiled down to Nadira trying to find a jilbāb in the market that Peaches will actually wear. It was somewhat rich for her to be sneering at what was on offer considering this is someone who’ll wear green leggings to a party and allow herself to be photographed in them.

Eventually she finds something to wear, but not without complaining how oppressed she feels wearing something so unfashionable, and how baggy and shapeless the program jilbāb is making her look. Sorry, Peaches, but it appears there’s a dresscode for paradise as well as for parties. However, this doesn’t stop the Marrakech men from shouting “Fatima” (or was it “fatous”?) as she walked by. Despite being informed by Nadira that Fatima was a wife of Mohammed, Peaches is unable to take the cultural compliment adding it was all “nice, but just a tiny bit pervy”. Maybe she’d have felt more at home if they’d wolf-whistled and bellowed “tits out” instead?

After junking the jilbāb (with an aside to the camera of “do I have to wear this for long” – yes, if you don’t want a bloody good stoning), Peaches is off to check out an arranged marriage, where the Muslim women are dressed more to her taste and “shaking their booty”. Hilariously, Peaches’ critique of arranged marriages leads to her being ejected from the party, much to her chagrin. Sadly they didn’t show the bit where she must have bawled “do you know who I am?! My dad organised Live fuckin’ Aid!" TKK’s advice: get used to it luv: I can see this experience being the first of many.

Peaches is clearly ignorant of the custom that, at any wedding, even if the bride looks like a bag of spanners and the bridegroom is trying to bed a bridesmaid, you err on the side of tact and shut up about contentious conjugal issues. I don’t blame the 38-year old bridegroom from ejecting Geldof considering she was trying to put ideas into his bride’s head (about twenty years his junior) about the feasibility of arranged marriages. Considering the divorce rate in the Western world maybe we’re not the best society to lecture on what makes a stable marriage, and considering her parents’ activities she certainly isn’t.

The remainder of the program sees Peaches failing to appreciate the more ascetic side of the spiritually devout, whinging about having get up at six o’clock and observing that “to be a good Muslim it helps if you’re a morning person”. Yes, it also helps if you have to work for a living as well. We get a dose of her singing Elvis with a taxi driver, proving she’s inherited her father’s singing talent (i.e. she’s shit). She also proves a more appropriate presenter than, say, Jeremy Paxman (or “Jezza” as Peaches calls him) by asking a trainee Imam if there were any “sexy Fatimas” about the place he fancied. That really was the question we all wanted her to ask. Not that Peaches seemed to be convinced by his lifestyle, judging “four years learning the Koran (to be) a waste of your life”, especially when you can just read Islam For Dummies, which she does later on.

A trip for some mountain meditation is Peaches’ “worst nightmare” as she’s “scared of heights but we’re on a fuckin’ mountain”. When asked what she meditated about she was at least honest enough to confirm what we’d already guessed: shopping. Later on she finds the ceremonial slaughter of a ram contrary to her ethics as a vegetarian, although if it was being killed to make a nice handbag she’d probably not whine as much. Her deep concern for animals is later shown as she asks whether their “donkeys had sex with horses”.

And, as in all these culture-clash programmes, there has to be a lesson learnt at the end. Peaches has discovered that “not all Muslims are psychotic fundamentalists” (er, does this mean before filming she’d assumed they all were?) and “it was nice to get somewhere spiritual and think about my life. (pause) That was deep.” Well at least for you it. It’s quite ironic that the daughter of Bob “gimme your money so I can save my career the Third World” Geldof is such a spiritually vacuous consumerist bore. And being a teenager doesn’t excuse her either.

Having an egotistical sulky seventeen-year old present a program inevitably leads to a superficial slant on any topic, not that C4 were exactly taking it seriously seeing as they had an advert from Nuts in the middle of it. Who it was aimed at I’m not certain, apart from smart-ass reviewers in the mood for harpooning a whale stuck in a swimming pool. If this was aimed at other ignorant teenagers then surely it should have been on earlier in the evening, and it was hardly the most comprehensive introduction to the subject, bordering on the stereotypical at times. The only thing that scares me more than another Peaches presented programme is one being made by an Islamic TV company who film her going about her daily London life, leading their viewers to the conclusion that the average Western citizen is this spiritually bankrupt and shallow.

Or maybe they could just show horses fucking donkeys instead.