On allowing intimate personal items out of your sight

On allowing intimate personal items out of your sight

I've got a confession to make.

I have allowed my family - with malice aforethought - to sit down on a Saturday night and watch ITV.

There. I said it.

It started innocently enough with the very excellent Harry Hill, but this is - I now realise - just bait to draw you into Michael Grade's web of deception and filth.

For next up comes Primeval, brainless action drama with dinosaurs for the kids, and heaving bosoms for the grown-ups. The ideal combination - how could this programme not be a hit?

And then... they hit you with the big one. The frontal lobotomy that is Ant and Dec's House Party Saturday Night Takeaway. Shouty gormless trash for idiots, and I sat there , transfixed, brain chugging along in neutral.

"Which one's Ant?"

"Both of them."

"Oh."

The first part of the programme involved some sort of fake game show wherea member of the audience is humiliated in front of millions, and is then rewarded for past bad behaviour with a luxury holiday.

Mrs Foghorn, it emerged, won a trip to the Caribbean on the back of cleaning the toilet with her husband's toothbrush.

"That's awful," I said, "what kind of message is that putting out?"

"Too right," replied my lovely wife, "I did much worse with your toothbrush when you were playing up*."

"Meep!"

And:

"You did what?"

"MUCH worse."

She refuses to elaborate.

Anton Dec. You're a bastard.

* A lost period in my life which lasted from approximately February 1966 until last Saturday.