I was reversing the Audi out of one of those badger-cul bolt-holes in St. John’s Wood — the ones that look as though they’ve been designed to take a tentful of Sudanese refugees and a packet of Corn Flakes, and no more — when the Bonde opened her mouth and said, “Look at the clouds; there not white, they’re just a whiter shade of grey.”
Well, great. And that’s just what you’re getting for Christmas. Once again,the Tristrams have been doing their deadly work with life-affirming precision: “Above all, it’s got to be Christmassy.”
I despair, I really do. Saying tel- evsion at Christmas should be Christ- massy is like being sodomised by a humpback whale and telling it to make it painful. I t goes so stupidly to the point that it never gets there at all, and hangs around pointlessly, like Sartre on an oil drum in Paris in ’68. What you must understand about Satre is, he had a lumpy old orange for a head. He actually had a lumpy old orange for a head. I mean, why didn’t Michel Foucault go up to him and tell him: “Monsieur Sartre, je regrette d’annoncer que vous avez une vielle orange pour une tête”? Ah, but it would have brightened things up a lit- tle.
Anyway, I suppose the lovely people at Times House want me to write something about this godforsak- en sop to a decadent walrus’ family, so here it is. Judi Dench is thoroughly unwatchable; you’re better off with Del Boy. There, I’ve said it. Now leave me alone. I’m not writing about TV again till next Christmas.