Just say no to telly
There was, I used to think, a faint air of smugness surrounding those who said ‘I don’t own a teevee’ and didn’t exhibit the obvious poverty that seemed to me at the time the only rational explanation for not having a goggle-box.
Adults who did not have a television were considered eccentric and cruel. Eccentric because I couldn’t understand how they filled their time, cruel because they often had children (possibly answering my first point) and depriving these kids of The Clangers and Mr Ben was an act of monstrous cruelty as far as I could see.
Today, television is less widely watched than it used to be. This is because a) it’s shit and b) everyone is too busy firing up the interweb or their Gamecube to bother catching up on the latest developments in Albert Square.
So now, when somebody says ‘I don’t have a telly’ the automatic assumption is that they used to have one, but it got buried one day beneath a mound of consumer durables and hasn’t been seen since.
Certainly now I reflect on those that didn’t have a telly then and those that don’t now, the question remains the same ‘what did you do in the evenings’. Being quite naive I thought that they had interesting hobbies and pastimes. Now I strongly suspect they were involved in folk dancing, choral singing, wife-swapping and other unsavoury pursuits. These are the people with perfect scale model villages in their attics, body parts in their freezers and calluses on their palms. Certainly the telly-nots of a decade ago, living in monastic isolation are different from the telly-nots of today, simply bypassing the idiot box in an orgy of broadband, game console and porn.
The trouble with telly for my generation is that the greatest telly moment in history has passed for us. The moon landing may have defined telly for one generation but for me it was when that second world trade centre tower came down. What is ever going to equal that again?
Mind you, Portillo losing his seat was a pretty good moment too.
Thinking about it, the vital television moments have all been real life ones. (The exception is any Dr Who episode and the Christmas one in particular - but that’s event telly, part of the enjoyment is knowing that millions like you are sitting on their sofas awaiting this moment, and that you’ve stayed sober to enjoy it - an effort you didn’t even make at your wedding!)
I don’t know if telly really is worse* or whether there is just more really cool shit competing with it for our time these days. The alternative used to be masturbation, conversation or model making and an attempt to combine any of the three used to result in embarrassment or a trip to casualty. Now you can access radio from around the world or, if you really are an old fart, watch seven seconds of QVC, think ‘this is shit’ and read a book instead.
* It’s worse. For reasons far too dull to go into I was awake in the wee small hours at the weekend and, surfing for something interesting** came across what can only be described as a camera pointing at a sofa on which were a couple of women who man a chat line. My brand of fascination was ‘horrified’ as I realised that there are blokes out there who will spend pounds a minute just to talk to a woman. I hope, at least, they were talking about model making. Judging from the way the blonde one was laughing, I suspect not. Sordid, just a little. Better than those ‘quiz call’ channels, oh yes.
** Porn
Adults who did not have a television were considered eccentric and cruel. Eccentric because I couldn’t understand how they filled their time, cruel because they often had children (possibly answering my first point) and depriving these kids of The Clangers and Mr Ben was an act of monstrous cruelty as far as I could see.
Today, television is less widely watched than it used to be. This is because a) it’s shit and b) everyone is too busy firing up the interweb or their Gamecube to bother catching up on the latest developments in Albert Square.
So now, when somebody says ‘I don’t have a telly’ the automatic assumption is that they used to have one, but it got buried one day beneath a mound of consumer durables and hasn’t been seen since.
Certainly now I reflect on those that didn’t have a telly then and those that don’t now, the question remains the same ‘what did you do in the evenings’. Being quite naive I thought that they had interesting hobbies and pastimes. Now I strongly suspect they were involved in folk dancing, choral singing, wife-swapping and other unsavoury pursuits. These are the people with perfect scale model villages in their attics, body parts in their freezers and calluses on their palms. Certainly the telly-nots of a decade ago, living in monastic isolation are different from the telly-nots of today, simply bypassing the idiot box in an orgy of broadband, game console and porn.
The trouble with telly for my generation is that the greatest telly moment in history has passed for us. The moon landing may have defined telly for one generation but for me it was when that second world trade centre tower came down. What is ever going to equal that again?
Mind you, Portillo losing his seat was a pretty good moment too.
Thinking about it, the vital television moments have all been real life ones. (The exception is any Dr Who episode and the Christmas one in particular - but that’s event telly, part of the enjoyment is knowing that millions like you are sitting on their sofas awaiting this moment, and that you’ve stayed sober to enjoy it - an effort you didn’t even make at your wedding!)
I don’t know if telly really is worse* or whether there is just more really cool shit competing with it for our time these days. The alternative used to be masturbation, conversation or model making and an attempt to combine any of the three used to result in embarrassment or a trip to casualty. Now you can access radio from around the world or, if you really are an old fart, watch seven seconds of QVC, think ‘this is shit’ and read a book instead.
* It’s worse. For reasons far too dull to go into I was awake in the wee small hours at the weekend and, surfing for something interesting** came across what can only be described as a camera pointing at a sofa on which were a couple of women who man a chat line. My brand of fascination was ‘horrified’ as I realised that there are blokes out there who will spend pounds a minute just to talk to a woman. I hope, at least, they were talking about model making. Judging from the way the blonde one was laughing, I suspect not. Sordid, just a little. Better than those ‘quiz call’ channels, oh yes.
** Porn
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