The great thing about television is that now, in 2017, pretty much any idea is marketable. So much so that there are now programmes about watching people get married, watching people having babies, watching people having opinions and watching people watching television. Personally I am looking forward to the programme where you get to watch people watching people watching people watch television, mainly because it might cause the universe to implode. Either that or Alan Partridge’s suggestion of ‘Monkey Tennis’.
My suggestion for broadcasting is called ‘How Thick Are Ye?’. It’s a very simple concept; we take a nice middle class family living somewhere down South who do not know any better: sensible adults, adorable children etc.. They earn a generous wage per month yet seem to spend an awful lot of it in the supermarkets. For whatever reason, they buy far too much food and then throw most of it away.
Our experts would travel to whatever godforsaken county these imbeciles live in to watch them spend £300.00 on a weekly shop and then despair that they have nothing to eat. After ten minutes of pointing out to the viewers just how wrong they are, they then jump out at the family just for kicks. The experts then spend the rest of the programme berating the family for being so stupid and telling them to stop shopping at Waitrose and try somewhere more reasonable such as Tesco or Aldi.
The family are rated on a scale of one to ten as to how thick they are. If they’re found to be less than five, they wake up the next morning to find themselves tied up and all of their worldly possessions have been thrown in a skip, covered in manure and crushed in a junkyard. The now frightened onlookers cradle their children, desperate to change their ways and look at the world in a different light. The experts untie the prisoners and let them return to their empty residence.
It would be a light-hearted one hour programme, perfect for the Wednesday night schedule on BBC1. A life-changing journey for all. I was considering Chris’ favourite Gary Wilmot and Dale Winton for the roles as experts. They’re decent enough to pull of a premise such as this.
9 comments on “How Thick Are Ye?”
The great thing about television today is that the programme you describe exists and has been on BBC One since 2013. It’s called Eat Well for Less and it’s presented by the shiny one from Masterchef. He trails people around supermarkets and then has a go at them for spending too much money. I’m not aware that manure is involved, but perhaps you should have a word with the producers about adding that element to make their show more marketable *finger window*.
I was just gonna say that, but when I clicked on the comments button you had already said it. So I won’t.
Even before the two of you were considering replying to this post I was already thinking about responding to your comments. Isn’t that weird?
Funnily enough, the opposite happened to me. I wasn’t going to say that, but when I clicked on the comments button you hadn’t, so I did.
I only did because Kev hadn’t. And it was his lack of response that caused me to not tell you about it, because really it wasn’t something that had happened.
As long as you’re aware how right I wasn’t; that’s the most important thing.
I only didn’t do it because Chris already had. So in that important respect we were both fully aware of how wrong you were and probably are.
I’m wrong squared. We all know this. I’ve got more wrongs than anyone else, and I’ll sit down quietly in court and whisper that to any who’ll dare to listen.
Yes, I am fully satisfied that both Kev and I have independently reached the same conclusion about your wrongness on this and many other matters, and we will shortly be publishing a short paper in the British Scientific Journal about how it has now been scientifically proven that you contain more wrongs per person than anyone else.
It’s friends like you that make me glad I’ve got my matador.