clivemurray.com

I need to ask you a favour, and it’s important. And also I need you to not just do as I’m about to ask, but I need you to spread the word - I implore you, tell your friends, make them promise make them swear that they will also do what I am about to ask of you.

It matters.

Please please please please boycott Channel 4 tonight between 9pm and 10pm. Please. I’m deadly serious, and the reason is this.

For fuck’s sake. I’m not sure where to fucking begin.

Firstly, it’s a reality TV show. This is a much debated subject, I’m sure, but personally I can live without yet another window onto some other bugger’s squalid life. I’m pretty happy as I am, thanks, and I don’t need to look at depraved screeching fuckspawn screaming into each other’s faces 24/7 to make me feel better about myself.

Secondly, it’s that bastard offspring of the reality genre, the “celebrity” edition, though in this case that word is surely stretched to near breaking point. Someone a while back must have had this thought process: “Hmmm the reality TV bubble is getting near bursting. I wonder how we can extend its life… I know! Celebrities! they’re so fabulous and interesting that people will watch them just sitting around and picking their noses!! My boss will love me now!!!” My minions tell me there is a whole new circle of hell under construction just for that person, and this is right and proper. You utter utter waste of skin.

Thirdly, one of the “slebs” chosen for this pustulent abhorrence is Jade “Danger To Pies” Goody. Famous for what, again? Please remind me? Oh yes, I recall. Being vacuous, dangerously moronic and generally appalling on Big Brother, the great fat sweaty granddaddy of reality TV extrusions.

But none of the above are the reason I see fit to call a fatwa. Oh no. This kind of fare is what I have come to expect from the “people” who decide what gets piped into our homes nowadays in the name of servicing the great entertainment gods. To be honest, I’m surprised it’s not on all five terrestrial channels for 18 hours a day yet.

What really gets under my skin and wriggles around under there like some parasitic worm from the Amazon is the other “celebrity” that has been chosen to “star” in this “programme”: none other than (until recently Major) Charles “My friend has a cold” Ingram.

Did I say celebrity? Sorry, I meant to say “convicted fraudster”.

This is the man who almost cheated the programme “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” out of its top prize but was caught out. He was reviled and dragged through the news, and people everywhere did point and say “Well, you’ve only got yourself to blame” as the army kicked him out and his life fell about his arse in tatters.

I’m not having another go at him per se - I’m sure he’s had a pretty hard time of things since then, and whatever punishment the courts have dealt him I’m sure in his grasping middle-class eyes it pales next to the loss of face and general pariah status that now follows him wherever he goes.

What bothers me is that he is now being paraded across our (well… certainly not MY, but you get the point) screens as a celebrity. Look at the word - celebrity. See where it comes from? Celebration. One to be celebrated. This from dictionary.com: “the state or quality of being widely honored and acclaimed.”

Widely honoured and acclaimed? Um… no. He’s a convicted fraudster. And let’s just highlight the word “convicted” here - tried by a jury of his peers and found guilty of fraud. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, the millionaire thing is not his only fraud conviction.

I’m getting too angry to continue with this post. Some would say that Jade Goody and Major Cheat deserve each other and locking them up together in a house is a fitting fate.

I say fine, fair enough, but a) don’t pollute the already piss-ridden airwaves with it, and b) have a think about what “celebrity” actually denotes.

I’m off to relax by strangling kittens with my bare hands so I can get my own talk show.