My own fault, I suppose, for turning on the television. Not an action I undertake very regularly these days, because I am trying to be a nicer person. Some time ago, Charles Moore wrote in his Spectator diary about a hitherto ghastly, bitter old woman who had suddenly become much more pleasant to everybody. What had effected this change? ‘I have stopped reading the Daily Mail,’ she explained.
So it is with me and the idiot box. I become so enraged at being clubbed over the head by the politically correct dwarves of death who inhabit that poxed machine in the corner that I stamp around and make everybody miserable with my ranting. Not just the news programmes, either, although they’re the worst. Every programme these days has those dwarves hammering away with cudgels at your head, frantic to get their fatuous agenda fastened deep inside your skull. There is never an alternative view.
So all I watch (very occasionally) is a programme called How It’s Made, which explains, factually, how things like cotton buds and motorbikes and dog collars are manufactured. The dwarves haven’t caught up with this forgotten late-night half-hour yet. But they will, they will. Sooner or later I’ll turn on and the announcer will say: ‘This week on How It’s Made — the patriarchy, racism and slavery.’
Anyway, my wife wanted to watch a new series on ITV called Liar and, being nothing if not uxorious, I agreed to enjoy it with her. Big mistake. It’s a six-part series in which, at the outset, a woman accuses a man of rape after a night out. The man denies it. Hence the title — the drama resides in guessing who is telling the porky.
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