God, it’s dusty in this blog.

*wipes away cobwebs from TV screen and blows dust off the remote*

Let’s switch this TV blog back on.

*zaps blog into life*

Of the many wild notions I’ve had in life, becoming a TV critic was probably up there with, er, becoming a neuropsychologist. But for a few months or so the possibility of the former profession did cross my mind.

As I approached the end of my psychology degree, I needed a new outlet to continue contributing trashy articles to after I’d finished my prolific spell on the SU magazine. I thought becoming a telly addict could be a definite possibility.

My style in this respect was definitely influenced by Shelley (Jim rather Percy Bysshe). I used to read his Tapehead column like Osama reads the Koran. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen, and had no intention to see, the majority of the programs he reviewed. He made them seem far more entertaining than they were ever likely to be in reality.

And reading his columns made me realise one golden cathode rule.

Write the review in such a way that it doesn’t matter whether or not the reader has seen the program.

Esoteric stuff was out. Synopsis, then take the piss.

Having discovered the magic formula, I had to find an outlet beyond my own blog.

Now unless my Google searches are less than lateral, I struggled to find many online TV review sites I could submit my stuff do.

Apart from one.

I shan’t name it here, and it has (sadly) put itself into the deep freeze for the time being, but this site had it all: informative, knowledgeable, yet quite irreverent with it.It also had a formidable back catalogue of reviews.

I’d been reading it for a while and was desperate to see my name amongst the list of contributors. At the same time the standard was pretty high, and I was somewhat nervous at sending in my articles. However, I finally got round to submitting and attached a Hugh Grant-esque bumblingly diffident email with my first review.

And I got no reply.

A few more days and still no reply. My affection for the site bottomed out.

Then one day I came home and found my name on the front page with my submitted review. Admittedly it was spelt wrong, but it was my name they’d misspelled.

Over a few months I regularly contributed, including one review I’m particularly fond of. But as the last entry date on this blog will show, one day in December 2006 they came to an abrupt halt.

A couple of factors intervened, but the main one was the growing realisation of the critic’s lot in life.

The reality of being a critic of any kind is that, invariably, you have to spend your time watching / hearing an awful lot of bollocks (and, as a food critic, you may even have to literally eat bollocks).

I read an interview with a film critic and he said he probably watched over 500 films a year. Of those he thought maybe 30 of those would be any good; 250 of them would have him reaching for a revolver.

So much for a life of culture.

I also took up the guitar, and trying to practice for around three hours a day doesn’t leave time for much else (of the many wild notions I’ve had in life, becoming a good guitar player was probably up there with being a TV critic).

I also had no idea where else to start in order to get paid to do this. And watching an episode of Russell Brand’s chatshow made me realise I had to get paid to do this in future. So I stopped watching TV, apart from downloading episodes of The Wire and The Shield.

On trips back to my parents’ house in Wales I was shocked at some of the programs on during primetime hours. The One and Only, presented by that charmless cunt Graham Norton, was a cultural Auschwitz. Still, anything that namechecked a Chesney Hawkes song had to be shit.

It was going to take something special to get me watching and writing about TV again.

So thank God for the return of The Apprentice.

Seeing Sir Alan Stalin lumbering through the boardroom doors like undiagnosed Alzheimer’s in a pensioner’s brain was a joy.

Scanning through the contestants, I had the same sensation Daniel Plainview had in There Will Be Blood whenever he was about to rob a family of their oil deposits. Even after a cursory glance I spotted a Sugarbabe lookalike, at least two Young Conservatives, and plenty of cannon fodder.

That the first show of the series ended with the firing of an obnoxious chinless posho was just the icing on the cake.

For this new run of the Apprentice, I had to make a comeback.

So until the series finishes:

You’re unretired!