A Schedule of Shit….

Guest post by Matt Geraghy

Matt Geraghty accosted by a fan.

It is with an air of sadness that I approach the Christmas TV schedule.  The sadness of expectation borne upon a tide of past experience.  

A lifetimes experience of disappointment, delivered, hand over fist, year on year.  Disappointment conveyed with a methodical concussive force.

Does it have to be this way?

If Christmas is a time of joyful expectation – why is it that what I expect is disappointment.  And why am I never failed?

Disappointment with all the trimmings.  

A schedule to leave you weary of eye and slurred of thought. 

When conversation hits a lull I want a pick-me-up.  Television to enliven and galvanize.  Not fodder heavy as porridge (the pudding not the programme.  Though rest assured the programme will be close to hand).

Each year the powers that be serve up a schedule of TV so threadbare as to be virtually transparent.  For how long can they continue to shovel this mass of shit our way?

Forever apparently.

How many times can the Two Ronnies, or Morecambe and Wise be disinterred?  Given the length of time since the original airings you would think it would be the greatest comeback since Lazarus. 

Morecambe and Wise - not this pair of dead comedians again?

If it weren’t for the fact that they reappeared with such regularity.  Sucking the life from a festival so corrupted, it may work part time in Investment Banking.  Or politics.  Or the police. 

The Two Ronnies sing one of their hilarious ditties in drag... AGAIN..!

It should be renamed Consumermas – a time to celebrate the family buying experience.  With everyone gathered round the 52 inch, 3D television.  Sated by their TV dinner and indulging in a family ‘live buying’ session, on some sales channel, before flicking over to watch the 24/7 feed of ‘Britain’s Best Adverts’. 

And cheering wildly at every product ever purchased from the list.  With the winner chaired around the front room on the family commode.  Whilst expelling the seasonal log.

We should slay this festival.  Club it to death.  Along with all the greed and stress it produces.

Perhaps instead we should celebrate the coming of the light, with a mid-winter celebration at which the only presents to be exchanged are those made by yourself.  Or maybe the only gift is your presence.

In fact let us call it exchanging presence. 

Where over a jointly made meal we unwrap each other’s presence, through conversation, food and fun.

And as for the TV?  Leave it to sleep until the spring.