Judging by the television channels in international hotels, Europeans must think Anglo-Saxons are the most boring people in the world. While Italian, French or German stations show a mixture of soap operas, game shows and other cheerful nonsense, English-language channels are confined to news bulletins and the kind of rolling financial programming once parodied by The Day Today.
This means I am often reduced to watching foreign television simply to relieve the monotony. A rare high point was when I beat both contestants on Des Chiffres et Des Lettres, the French precursor to Countdown, with an eight-letter word, though admittedly the word was ‘minigolf’. The strangest moment came when I was watching a mainstream German station and, in what seemed to be a Teutonic version of Wainwright, three sturdy middle-aged couples in walking boots hiked around the Bavarian Alps, enjoying the beauties of the landscape. This continued for about 15 minutes, at which point they removed their clothes and… well, let’s just say it all got very guttural.
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