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Seann Walsh decides late night TV is not for him
One thing we can definitely say about what they show on television at four in the morning is that, if you have any idea what it’s like, that reflects badly on you. There are few good reasons to choose to be up at 4am: a drinking session, a job involving night duty. Nothing else comes to mind, and neither of those two things should involve watching Teleshopping on ITV4. Twilight-hour TV is known only to feeble sleep-dodgers who have no reason to be awake in the morning.
Well, it’s 4am and I’m awake. Oh, and I’m watching Teleshopping on ITV4. It baffles me that this is broadcast. They’ve been talking in a disconcertingly evangelistic tone for 15 minutes about a mop. Admittedly, it is quite a handsome mop. But there is something fundamentally wrong with the sort of person who willingly expends great effort on enhancing a cleaning device designed to soak up puddles of waste.
“They’ve been talking in a disconcertingly evangelistic tone about a mop for 15 minutes”
There is a man who appears to have been dunked in a vat of orange candle wax, and he is passionate about this mop. Passionate! About a mop! Then come the unconvincing testemonies from gormless ‘customers’: “I can’t get over how good this is.” “You have to see it to believe it.” “It’s changed my life.”
If you didn’t know they were talking about a mop, you’d never guess. You’d assume it was a revolutionary medical treatment, which, coincidentally, they all look as if they need. Either that, or you’d assume they were talking about a religious cult they’ve joined. Following all this, the same treatment will be given to some other gadget, like an inflatable trouser press, or a digital corkscrew – some other life-changing, soul-enriching tool.
One of the sadder aspects of our society is that it’s impossible to escape from spiritless deceit-mongers trying to sell dreck. They cold call us. They go door to door. And they take over ITV4 (as well as other channels) during the twilight hours. Of course, we ask for it. This is a consumerist society. And now, with online shopping, teleshopping, cold calling, we can combine our previously incompatible desires of buying rubbish and becoming fat and agoraphobic.
There are also the various rolling news networks, struggling to find news, as if the world were crisis-free. I’m not doing this again. I’ll isolate this viewing experience, call it research, or an experiment. Tomorrow, by 4am, I will be asleep.
