CC3: Sureality TV

The technology behind TV is really quite amazing. A satellite, 22,300 miles above our heads, beams a signal into a dish on your roof while pissing around the earth at about 6,000mph. This signal is then sent, via a fibre optic cable, to a receiver which un-scrambles the image and sends it to your TV which displays it. All this happens roughly 50 to 60 times every second so your brain thinks it's a moving image.

Which makes it even more amazing that these signals contain some of the worst shite that has ever seen the light of day. Television is just fucking awful now and all the signs point to the fact that it's going to get much worse before it gets better and reality TV is the herald of this mind-numbing onslaught taking place on over 500+ channels. The only choice is what group of sub-human retards you want to be repulsed by more.

Celebrity love island was one that really pissed me off. A show whose quality was so low the word "celebrity" has been forever tainted and was actually dropped from the title after the first season. It was essentially group of Z-list no-hopers lolling around on a beach like dying sea-lions trying desperately to form some sort of a flagging career. As if any more proof was needed the first season was "won" (although it'd be like winning a dog-shit eating competition) by Fran Cosgrove. A man whose fame is so low he actually doesn't exist outside of reality TV. Seriously. The second the production comes to a halt he literally fades out.

Thankfully it was killed off after season 2 ended but even at that early stage it was stretching the term "celebrity" to new and horrific lengths. They were drafting people in who were only related to celebrities. Pretty soon you won't even need the DNA link to qualify for these shows.Hell, I live around the corner from Pauline Mclynn so I'm pretty sure I'll be available for the next series should one of the producers receive a large blow to the head.

Slightly less distressing is LivingTVs' laughably titled "most haunted". Billed as a factual paranormal investigation programme it ends up coming across as a mix of Scooby-Doo and the Blair witch project. Featuring a bunch of twats holding seances and going "wooah" to any little noise it frequently has guest mediums in to channel spirits (translation: talk bollocks). It used to feature Dave Ancorah, a man so hilariously transparent he might as well have "fraud" tattooed onto his forehead, until it emerged that one of the researchers was just making shit up about the locations and pissing himself laughing as he watched this "phychic" get possessed by ghosts he just made up. It is quite possibly the only "investigation" show to be cleared of charges of deception on the grounds that it shouldn't be taken seriously.

If a group of bell-ends standing still doesn't get you going how about a group of them running around? Such is the basis of Dog: the bounty hunter. I'm pretty sure that if a penis could pick out it's own wardrobe it would look like Dog Chapman. In fact, the entire family dress like OTT 1980's action heroes especially Dog himself who stomps about in boots, leather, sunglasses (all year round) and a haircut that makes him look like a cross between a vampire and a gay lion. It's worth tuning in for that hairstyle alone. Until he starts talking and it becomes quickly apparent he has all charisma of a paving slab.

ITVs' run of trash-talk shows has reached its' peak (or its' bottom, whichever you fancy) with the Jeremy Kyle show or to give it its' real title: human bear-baiting. Here members of the social underclass are paraded in front of an audience so shockingly ugly they'd make John Merrick spew down the front of his face bag. Jeremy once stated in an interview that people often think he has the eyes of Satan and I have to agree. He has one of those gaunt, hollow gazes that are so soulless I'm half expecting him to walk on stage and give one of the guests the penance stare. He probably does too but I wouldn't know as I'd rather shatter my jaw on a concrete bollard than sit through an entire episode of this cack. The show was made as a lower form of Jerry springer. Quite a task when you consider Jerry Springer is lower than snake piss.

Which brings us neatly around to the king of this crap-fest: Big Brother. (i would go into a rant about X factor but they're aren't enough hours in the day so I'll just leave it by saying that Simon Cowell is so robotic that were he to be in a blazing car-crash, we would not need to worry because, his exo-skeleton would probably pick its' way out of the wreckage and continue judging the show) Big Brother has got my top spot for bile since it gave the world, or rather exposed it to, some of the most annoying people on planet Earth. I'm sure if you started a chart depicting the exponential growth of human stupidity you'd start low at series one, run out of space at the top around series five and would resort to just doodling on the page past series six. This is due to the fact that the contestants' are scarcely human. They're human-shaped androids fueled by pure vanity.

There are others but to be honest this all highlights my point.
Kurt Vonnegut once likened TV to the lead that poisoned the Romans and drove them all mad.

Have to admit; the man has a point.........