The Chattering Classes

The recently-demised writer and broadcaster Alan Coren once said: "Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we should have people standing in the corner of our rooms."

I had a great respect for Coren – he was witty and erudite and was possessed of a dazzling intellect, but I have to disagree with his treatise on television. How can the endless round of ‘celebrity’ reality shows, cookery/gardening/housebuying ‘documentaries’, expositions of chavvy families behaving badly, or educationally subnormal victims being whipped into a fight by a supposedly ‘sensitive’ interviewers be more entertaining than holding a lively conversation with one’s friends?

We were promised, when the explosion of channels took place a few years ago (I’m old enough to remember when there were only two), that we would be offered more choice, more control. Not so. I wanted to watch something the other night whilst doing my ironing (yes, my life is so exciting I know) and the choice I had was A Place In The Sun: Home or Away; Katie & Peter Unleashed (groan!); Gardeners’ World Special; and Are You Smarter Than a 10 Year Old? (not if you watch crap like this, you’re not). Anything else on the digital channels is either a repeat, or worse still - a repeat of a repeat.

I’m not the first person to say that what we need on television is more good thought-provoking drama. But maybe what we need more than that, is less television all round. We need more people standing in the corners of rooms engaging in energetic conversation. I think I might invite the Oxford Union Debating Society to hold its next event in my living room and I’ll serve sherry and Madeleine cakes as well. I think I might also take an axe to my TV whilst I still have the brain cells to use one.