Post Operative Media

By Disgruntled of Martock

The pictures show my surgeon tools now safely back in their stowages after another successful outing.

It is now a suitable time to expand on one of the spin offs from my recent operation. By necessity of the situation, I have had a surfeit of listening to the radio and watching TV, especially at strange times of day and night. Here are some of my thoughts and observations on my mindless media studies:

• Some TV is very relaxing as background noise and a definite help to bring sleep on. Snooker was quite relaxing as it was totally undemanding and the story line could be picked up when one felt conscious enough to care. Darts was also quite good except for the sudden disturbance when someone would shout 180!’
• On the whole the terrestrial channels were extremely limited and the Day Time TV was of pretty gormless standard, and also overlapped in so many areas such as Property Improvement programmes and also derivatives of the Antique Road show focused on junk in sale rooms. The number of crass quiz shows is just an embarrassment.
• Quite the worst programme I experienced were the four hour long premium line phone in ‘Cash Prize’ programmes screened between 0100 and 0500. Clever, I admit, as many screwy people are obviously addicted to them and spend considerable money in this disguised form of gambling. Who on earth are the gullible fools who watch them? Is it mothers doing the midnight feed or night security staff?
• In fact there is one programme worse. That is Celebrity Big Brother where at night you get black and white film of the so called ‘celebrities’ asleep. Why anyone should want to see anything so boring is beyond me and it certainly did nothing for either my blood pressure or my attempt to get to sleep. To be positive, at least they weren’t opening their mouths during this time.
• The radio is the winner. Yes, I am a radio 4 listener and even during the small hours when it is switched over to the World Service, this is a great programme to listen to or doze off to. I can, however, never forgive the BBC for taking the Radio 4 Theme Medley off the air at 0525 every morning. What pathetic and totally unconvincing arguments they gave to support this outrageous and ill informed decision. Turkeys!
• I was given a Digital radio for Christmas and I can not speak highly enough of it. I think many of the actual designs are pretty awful but the quality of the sound is just such an advance I thoroughly recommend these sets – what possible reason is there for having second best?
• Maybe I am in the minority, but although we have Freeview, we do not have Sky. The main result is that the amount of decent sports programmes is severely limited. South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and so forth, all have excellent terrestrial sports channels. Make no mistake, in contrast we are definitely the poor relations and held to ransom by Sky. Sad times.