It Could Even Be Worse Than This Description Of It

Holy flagellating hellfire! Now, I have suffered through a lot of bad, bad television in my time, but nothing could quite prepare me for the scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs, smash-your-skull-repeatedly-into-a-brick-wall, fall-down-sobbing-on-the-floor levels of rage and ire that the over-titled demonic dancing festival of pointless egotism that was Charley Boorman: Ireland To Sydney By Any Means would provoke inside my mild-mannered belly. We're talking anger of an epic and monstrous scale, anger that would rend asunder the seas from the skies, anger so volatile that it caused the folks from the black hole factory in CERN to shift uneasily in their seats and hastily check the escape routes to their nuclear bunkers. Man, it made me tetchy.

I'll be interested to know how long I will be able to describe this programme before descending into constant swearing and the random clumps of letters generated by chewing on one's own keyboard, so here goes: Charley Boorman appears to be a non-famous friend of a famous and charismatic film star. He has been in two programmes before where he has ridden a motorbike across the world with his film star friend to raise money for charity. These previous efforts have escaped me entirely, but one can assume that watching the beard of a famous and charismatic film star slowly grow accompanied by vistas of Africa and lashings of liberal guilt could hold some televisual appeal. This new programme is broadly the same, apart from it contains no f+c film stars, no hint of any charitable impulses, and absolutely no point whatsoever. It is basically a documentary about a completely uninteresting and unwatchable man travelling across the world because he feels like it and because, and this is the real sucker punch, THE BBC ARE PAYING FOR IT.

The whole thing seemed to be designed to rub that last fact into our feckless, rubbery faces. Charley Boorman goes to his HUGE warehouse in west London and skateboards around like a tosser while his team of photogenic early-20s researchers plan his epic round the world trip with our money. Charley Boorman goes to a custom motorbike manufacturer and coos over the high-spec vintage motorcycle with chrome and leather he has had made with our money. Charley Boorman shows off the valuable antique monogrammed suitcase his friend "sourced" (Gah! Vein in forehead just popped) with our money. Charley Boorman goes to the beach and sacrifices a goat then burns it on a funeral pyre fuelled with our money (maybe).

It's a real struggle to know why this is on TV. Is it a travelogue? Well, no - it has a flimsy gimmick, in that they are trying to travel from Ireland to Sydney without using planes, but that seemed to be secondary to their main aim of riding their shiny bikes wherever they damn well feel. (They, incidentally, being Boorman and his new sidekick, who will probably end up with his own show in 2010, starting an endless cycle of talentless no-marks trotting round the globe which will only be stopped when fiery apocalypse causes the annihilation of all life on this planet.) Charley Boorman is such a complete dunderheaded idiot, he is incapable of passing any comment on the places he drifts through, save for saying it's great to be there and oh by the way, look at my motorbike! Isn't it shiny! In fact, the programme makers play up his idiocy as if it's endearing or something. His road trip companions chuckle indulgently as they point out he's no good at planning or taking instruction, as if he's a four-year-old, or a monkey in a business suit. In one excruciating moment, Charley fumbles a phone receiver and laughs directly into the camera for twenty minutes, while around him the photogenic 20-somethings bray compliantly. No, programme makers, he is not a lovable buffoon. He is an incapable sponger who has had it too good for too long, and must be stopped. This oughta do it.

Note: Admittedly, I only got to the 36-minute mark of the first show, by which time we had had 34 minutes of looking at oh how fucking brilliant Charley Boorman was and about 2 minutes of travelling, so there's a good chance the programme perked up after that. I have an excuse, though - they'd just got to the Isle of Man and were, for some reason, repeatedly showing in slow-motion a TT race bike crash where a rider got flung 100 yards like a rag doll, and I drifted off into long an happy fantasy involving Boorman, his stupid fucking motorbike, and a piece of piano wire stretched across a blind bend. Mmm. Relaxing.

Additional note: for a more succinct, coherent and generally professional slagging of this show, check out Sam Wollaston.

A Clarification, And A Little Rage

Just because there is the slightest of minutest of whisper-thin slivers of a chance that my n&d will happen upon my previous post and get all misconstruey... It is not a stone-cold declaration of love absolute. (Although being both near and dear, my n&d is well aware of my thoughts concerning The Brooker, or, as he is known in our abode, "your boyfriend!", said in the most whiny, sarcastic manner it is possible to affect at such a tender age.) It's just that when reading such an article and being confronted with an image of a lovelorn man missing his moment completely, I can't help but create a little Hollywood-style happy ending to the tale (speeding cab, frantic knocking on door, sudden realisation of mutual attraction on the street, probably, let's face it, in the pouring rain) featuring, well, me.

Not because I want to be in that situation, as that would mean NOT being in my current situation, which would rather dramatically rend me asunder. It's just that having the happy stable relationship, blah blah blah, means that I will never be in that stomach-lurching, heart-fluttering, oh-my-god-is-he-going-to-kiss-me? Or-am-I-just-being-drunk-and-overconfident? state of mind again, without encountering some rather large morality issues. (Well, hopefully, anyway. There's a good chance this rather pathetic explanation will have me out on my ear'ole by Xmas) But is that a terrible thing, or a thing to be celebrated? Will there ever come a time where I am so in need of that kind of excitement again that I will be tempted to stray, philander, or indeed become a certain CB's pathological stalker?

The answer, of course, is unequivocally no, absolutely not. The benefits of the perma-boyf far and above outweigh any sort of minor thrill of the chase, and if you don't mind, I will take my leave of this train of thought and march swiftly back into safer, ranting-at-the telly-based territory.

A postscript. To those who choose to have their own little firework display in their back garden, replete with bangers and crackers and noisey-noise noise, at 11:45pm, right in the middle of a residential area, when I have to get up early for work on a Sunday, and are possibly the same people who recently had a karaoke party in their garden till 2am with the noise cranked up to Wembley Stadium levels and whose star performer was a screeching Amy Winehouse fan or possibly a cat in a mangle, really, truly, and I mean this with all sincerity, fuck right off.