Reverse Anthropology, My Arse.

Just when I think modern life can't be anymore vapid, banal and just plain wrong, I can always turn with a jaundiced sense of certainty to the fuckwits and concept whores who make our television programmes.

I hope they're pleased with themselves. More details here.

I'm going for a lie down.

Quincy.

I am much enjoying watching Quincy on ITV1 at the moment. Quincy was made in the 70s, when old blokes had as much right to be on television as anybody else, and the sight of a man of a certain age entertaining a young lady on a yacht wasn't likely to provoke a police investigation.

Now, of course, if you're over 40 you're forbidden to appear on television, let alone wander around solving crimes in a sensible jumper and tie combination. Those few crime-fighters who break this rule and have the temerity to be on the wrong side of the middle-age divide are usually offset by television producers by being surrounded by junior coppers with an average age of about 12 to do all the hazardous root-top chases.

Not so with Quincy M.E. - his mates are also ancient, from the portly, greying police detective to the guy who runs the bar he's always sitting in supping scotch and watching what I believe is called a "ballgame."

It's good to see that Quincy, however, doesn't stoop so low as to date a lady of his own senior years. When I'm in my 80s it's definitely going to be the lifestyle for me.

The Planet Plan.

My congratulations to our old friend Pluto which appears to have won its battle to remain classified as a planet - just about.

It's been demoted from the classical planets and reclassified, heading a new category of planet called Plutons, which are nothing more than icy dwarfs

However, it appears as if immigration into the solar system is accelerating, what with Pluto's equally undernourished twin Charon, which sounds too much like Sharon for my liking, and the abysmally named 2003 UB319, which is actually larger than Pluto, about to be invited to join us in orbit around our sun.

You'd think with hundreds of astronomers all meeting in the same place they would sit down and give the poor thing a decent name. As if ploughing a lonely furrow in the dismal outer reaches of the solar system wasn't bad enough, being saddled with 2003 UB319 must be a downer, even if you're nothing more than an asteroid with a pretentions.

More Evidence I'm Naive.

Apparently supermarkets are promoting isleading "half price" discount deals in which they introduce a wine at a higher price, say, £7-99, and then put them on sale for £3-99, in order to encourage gullible buyers like, say, me, to snap them up off the shelves.

Sadly, I've fallen for this trick at least twice in the last four days, which is pretty poor by anyone's standards. However, I can confirm, rip-off or not, the both bottles tasted alright as accompaniment to a Sopranos dvd marathon. We're only on series two and I'm going to be walking past Sainbury's a little later so I'm not confident I can change my ways.

And, in any case, the finger has been pointed by the UK boss of Jacob's Creek, a wine which tastes like rotgut at any price, methinks.

The Chase.

My attempts to interest the family in my long-gestating plans for non-fundamentalist world domination are going badly just at the moment.

Sunday is traditionally the evening we go over the logistics, pore over detailed timetables, and check our account online in preparation for the great day, however the missus has started watching The Chase on BBC 1 which is most inconvenient.

The Chase is another of those mediocre dramas in which a members of a close Northern family bicker and then pour their hearts out in alternate scenes. Cheerful stereotypes abound and, for good measure, the whole thing is set half-heartedly in a countryside vet - veter - vertnar - vet's practice called The Chase, from which it takes its title, so there is the occasionally slapping on of plastic gloves. It's all very depressing.

I had high hopes when I saw there was going to be a series called The Chase on the telly - the name is redolent of a possible '70s American existentialist movie, maybe directed by Sam Peckinpah.

Sadly I discovered the series was actually directed by a BBC robot, written-by-numbers by Kay Mellor, who knocks out generic drama about ladies by the cartload, and inevitably stars her daughter, the one from Coronation Street - although, I think, most of the cast have at one time or another been in Coronation Street, or the one set in the hairdressers.

So I'm off to listen to something on Radio 3 about H.G. Wells.

Those Ocean Finance Ads.

You'll see them on Four and Five and the digital channels during the afternoon, reaching out tenderly to the unemployed, the bankrupt and the elderly.

Other adverts for secured loans are available, of course. There's the one with the prat on the tightrope, and I'm thinking the comedy elephant may be for loans of some sort, but the Ocean ads are the like the Citizen Kane of the debt-busting commercials.

In the latest ad, a chap labours over mowing his front lawn, which is very long and hard work by the look on his face, and his family are watching from the front-door, and the whole thing, of course, is a metaphor for the massive debt this typical family have managed to get themselves into.

Things go from bad to worse and eventually the lawnmower goes up in smoke and the family dog, humiliated by his master's inability to mow a simple lawn, fucks off back inside the house to do something more constructive like lick his balls. Everyone's wearing that face, the one you get when you're hopelessly in debt .

Everything's looking a bit grim and the lawn is looking like a jungle, the metaphor is being stretched longer than Joan Collins's neck, but then Ocean Finance comes to the rescue.

All of a sudden the lawn is looking just great, it's short and lush and lovely, which makes me think there's no hosepipe ban in place where this guy lives. The father is riding at about one mile an hour on his new tractor-style mower and the daughter is bouncing around on a new spacehopper. There's a big, fuck-off car in the drive and everything's looking good. Even the dog's come back outside.

Because presumably this man's combined all his debts into one managable sum. But clearly, with all these new household items, plus a brand-spanking new car in the drive, he's not learned his lesson.

In that sense the ad's like the old Ocean Finance ad where the strange looking tubby guy has managed to become marooned on the world's smallest island. He's dragging rocks onto the sand and setting fire to wood in order to get saved by some passing ship. The sun is beating down remorselessly. We watch in horror as he becomes slightly uncomfortable, hot and bothered. All this is, yes, another torturous analogy for debt.

But he's in luck, along comes a lovely big yacht, the kind of ship you'd rather be saved by, as long as Billy Zane's not aboard. The weird, tubby guy jumps up and waves. He's spotted - hooray!

But he's learned nothing, because the next thing you know he's sitting on deck, his scruffy beard shaved and his hair washed, and he's drinking a cocktail. A few seconds ago he was stranded and in starvation mode on a remote island, now he's living the life of a playboy.

Thank you, Ocean Finance.

Welcome, Sit Yourself Down.

"I know a man who once stole a ferris wheel."
- Dashiell Hammett