Television
Thanks, little brother
James Delingpole
Apart from a terrible falling-out with some friends of mine which I can't tell you about because it's too awful, my life has been bizarrely free of suicidal despair and self-hatred of late. Perhaps this is because I've just spent two weeks on holiday; per- haps — joy of joys — because I've finally learned how to video The Simpsons off Sky One; or perhaps, it's because I've realised that my job doesn't suck quite as much as I thought it did.
To give you one joyous example: the day after I resumed work, I got a call from the Express asking me whether I was a Big Brother fan. And, wonderfully, I was able to answer 'Yes', because I spent the second week of my hols with my couch-potato brother and sister-in-law Dik and Lyd veg- ging my way through lots of trash TV. So, thanks to them, I was able to turn countless hours of wasted time into a lucrative think- piece on the insidious charms of 'Nasty' Nick Bateman. And there aren't many jobs where you can do that, are there?
Another useful thing my little bro did was introduce me to a brilliant series I wish I'd caught before — Better By Design (Channel 4, Tuesday) — in which a couple of Porsche-driving blokes (one with a beard, one without) attempt to redesign mundane objects like supermarket trolleys and life-jackets. I have made it sound much more boring than it actually is, though. Its amiable stars, Richard Seymour and Dick Powell, are TV naturals and, if you're as visually and technically illiterate as I am, it's like watching alchemists transforming base metal into gold. How can anyone be so good at drawing freehand? And how come, when they encounter each new, seemingly insoluble problem, they don't just give up — as any normal person would?
Last week they dealt with the vexed sub- ject of kitchen waste bins. Well, it's certain- ly vexed in the Delingpole household. We've got one of those designer matt-alu- minium jobs, a triumph of form over func- tion because, in order to put rubbish in it, you first have to hoick off the whole casing. Our friends Dan and Nic down the road have a slightly better version with a slitted, stainless-steel top that you open with a pedal. The big problem with theirs is that it looks unappetisingly phallic, which is why it is known as the Penis Bin.
But I only told you all that so I could get in the phrase 'Penis Bin'. The other thing I like about Better By Design is the way it appeals to my worst cynicism about the world of commerce. Here are two brilliant men coming up with all sorts of clever, practical schemes which could genuinely improve our lives. And what happens almost every week? Why, the grey men in suits insist the designs aren't commercially viable. Which may not matter so much in the case of waste bins. But in the case of their improved life-jacket, you did rather wonder how many lives may be lost as a result of the ferry companies' chief suppli- ers' decision not to implement it.
Gridlock.• Bank Holiday Hell (BBC 1, Fri- day) was far, far more interesting than any programme about traffic jams presented by Nick Ross had any right to be. It was well- researched, intelligently scripted, diligently filmed (over 48 hours by at least a dozen different camera crews) and, most impor- tantly, it succeeded in answering all the questions we've ever asked ourselves when caught in a ten-mile tailback while heading south down the M5 past Bristol.
Like: what the hell caused it? It doesn't need a major accident to block a motor- way. Traffic can just as easily be brought to a halt by anything from rubberneckers slowing to gawp at a stranded car on the hard shoulder (even if it's on the carriage- way opposite, amazingly) to a single motorist braking slightly harder than is necessary, causing a shockwave to spread to the cars behind. That's why, as often as not, you end up being frustratingly denied a visible cause to blame for your previous hour's abject misery.
Is it worth weaving through slow traffic? Hardly. In an experiment specially con- ducted using three cars in an eight-mile motorway jam, the one which kept chang- mg lanes gained only a minute's advantage over those that stuck either to the fast and slow lanes. So all you're really doing, as the good Doctor put it, is getting on a horse on a ship. And: what's the only good time to set out? The middle of the night. Pity the programme was broadcast too late for any of this weekend's bank-holiday-hell victims to benefit from it. Or was it mainly an exer- cise in schadenfreude aimed at those of us spending the weekend at home?
Just a quick word in praise of Battle Of Britain (ITV, Tuesday): fine interviews, unsilly dramatic reconstruction, sober reflection — it seems that our documentary makers did rise to the occasion after all.
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