Deary me, the Strictly row...
Also, weeing in paddling pools, skateboarding, grubby pillows and the silliest headphones every invented
I’m going to kick off this week by saying, look, TV snobbery is extremely boring. Anybody who tries to make another person feel small by mocking what they watch (or read, or listen to, or eat or drink etc etc) is a berk. I find people who sneer at others for watching soaps particularly tiresome. I watch Corrie whenever I go home to Mum’s and am always in awe of how the writers come up with and interweave the plots. Steve and his endless moaning! Roy! The knicker factory! Affairs! The odd murder! Corrie has it all. Mum’s now been watching it so long she says she can tell when the script is particularly good and was written by one of the better writers compared to, say, one of the less good writers, but let’s not go off on a tangent. The point is Corrie is good and TV snobbery is bad. Or at least even if you don’t think it’s good, then don’t try and make someone feel bad for thinking otherwise.
Which brings me to Strictly. Now I, personally, have never thought Strictly was good. For a start, it’s about 90 hours long. Why does it go on for so long? ‘Come over for dinner, but do you mind if I have Strictly on in the background?’ one friend said to me last autumn. I didn’t feel like I could say no (see the above), but it went on ALL NIGHT. Don’t get me started on the theme nights. I don’t want to watch a weatherman dressed do the rumba dressed like Frankenstein, thank you very much. Absolutely fine if you do, and MILLIONS do given that Strictly is approaching its 21st series and National Treasure status, it’s just not my bag. I know, I know, it’s a proper, Saturday night show that multiple generations love and can sit down and watch together. Great. Good for them. For whatever reason, I just find it twee and self-congratulatory and annoying.
And now this new row, which is making me feel even less charitable towards it. Two of the dancers have been suspended/sacked for bullying, and now various other contestants seem to be speaking up to say they too felt bullied and abused. Yesterday, another dancer was accused of pushing a contestant too far by making him jump off a table, which he now says has caused him ‘lifelong pain’ in his knee. Laura Whitmore says she cried every day during training; someone patted someone else’s bottom; ‘mean’ words have made others feel upset. Multiple contestants, some who appeared on the show years ago, seem to be consulting their lawyers about whether they also might be able to file a complaint. There have been suggestions that the top brass at the BBC knew what was going on and ignored it. ‘Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly tipped to quit,’ says yet another headline this morning.
I don’t wish to condone bullying, obviously, but come on, everyone. The world is on fire (America! The Middle East! Ukraine! Landslides in Ethiopia! Hurricanes in the Caribbean!). Are some of these grumbles not a tiny bit feeble in comparison? Is it not *slightly* embarrassing that while actual problems are going on elsewhere, we’re tying ourselves in knots over a dance competition? And what’s the definition of bullying, these days? Do mean words really count as bullying? If that’s true, then shouldn’t Alan Sugar (Lord Sugar! Sorry!) be under caution for the way he’s talked to basically every contestant on The Apprentice? And Gordon Ramsay up for the same? Get Paddy McGuinness on the block for making people feel rejected on Take Me Out!
I find myself in the unlikely and faintly alarming position of being in agreement with both Anne Widdecombe and Edwina Currie, former contestants who’ve spoken about the row in recent days.
‘Actress Amanda Abbington says last year's series left her with post-traumatic stress disorder. Eh?’ thundered Anne over the weekend, in typically ebullient form. ‘This was a dance competition, not Operation Desert Storm. If she thinks the TV show is stressful, what a shame she never met my grandmother, who came up from an air raid shelter one morning to find she had no home left. My mother, meanwhile, never knew if my father's ship was going to be torpedoed.’ Always hard to top, a comparison to someone’s conduct in the war, tbf.
Then came Edwina, talking about the drama on This Morning yesterday, saying it had changed since she appeared on it in 2011. “It was dead, dead, dead hard work. It really was and that’s a big surprise to people…’ she told lovely Alison Hammond. ‘I think the issue today is that they have a lot of influencers. People who become famous for beautiful eyebrows and lounging around on sofas in lovely places. I don't think they realise how much sheer, hard work goes into doing something like Strictly."
Hmmm. Perhaps, because I’ve always found the fawning over Strictly so annoying, I’m less sympathetic about all this than others who love the show. I just think everyone needs to get a grip. Pour a bit of concrete in their spines, as my grandmother would have said. Probably Anne Widdecombe too.
Picture of the week
I had some pals with children over on the weekend, so I bought a paddling pool (which split while I was filling it, which is possibly why we don’t buy £10 paddling pools from Amazon. Although Paul then heroically patched it up with Gorilla tape). Admittedly, I also bought the paddling pool for Dennis, who enjoyed it very much and almost certainly peed in it. But that was alright because the first child that got into the paddling pool also peed in it, as did various other children. The smallest of the children, Maggie, then toddled over with a paper cup and started scooping up the water and drinking it. It’ll be good for her immune system, I said uncertainly. Apparently dogs are good for the immune system. Did you know that? Someone told me last week. It’s not only that dog owners get outside more and are generally a perkier bunch, but also that they’re exposed to more germs.
I just googled this for evidence to back it up and discovered this: bed pillows in particular in households with dogs supposedly harbour more than twice the bacteria of pillows in households without dogs. But luckily that won’t apply in my house because of course I have a very strict ‘no dogs on the bed’ policy.
Recommendation of the week
This is sort of a recommendation but also a question: does anyone work for a company which gives them an annual sum of money to donate to a charity of their choice? I ask because last week I went to a summer party thrown by Team Lewis, a big global marketing agency. I snuck in with Paul because, nine years ago, he set up his charity, The Skateboarding Foundation, which aims to teach disadvantaged children confidence and resilience through skateboarding (should, perhaps, some of the former Strictly contestants sign up to it too? Ha ha ha..)
A few months ago, Paul got a call from a guy who works at Team Lewis, saying he’d been given £1,000 from his employer to donate to a charity of his choice, and he was choosing The Skateboarding Foundation. Apparently Team Lewis gives each of their hundreds of employees £1,000 a year to donate to whatever charity they like, and I don’t want to sound too worthy, but isn’t that amazing?
Since launching in 2021, apparently this scheme has meant they’ve given away over a million quid to various causes. Cool, right? You hear a lot of business muttering about CSR programs these days (Corporate Social Responsibility), basically initiatives that businesses sign up to in order to make them look better. We recycle all our printer paper! We’ve cut back on carbon emissions! We donate 0.01 percent of our profits to disadvantaged hamsters! That sort of thing. But I’m often sceptical about the posturing that comes with it.
And yet here’s a business giving each of their employees direct responsibility for where their money goes, which means they reach more charities, as well as smaller, grassroots ones like Paul’s which might otherwise be overlooked. While at the party, held just behind Westminster Abbey, I also bumped into a great guy I interviewed a few years go, William McGranaghan, who founded Dads House, a charity based in Barons Court which offers legal help to single fathers, as well as operating as a food bank. After yet another glass of wine, I then got chatting to a lovely woman called Samantha Dodd, who works for a charity called Path To Prosper, based in Uganda and set up by three British medical students in 2006, which provides young people there with professional training they would in no way have access to otherwise, so they can go off and become pharmacists or mechanics or tailors and so on.
So this sneaks in as a recommendation because imagine if more businesses did this! Or perhaps they do and I don’t know about it? I think it’s brilliant.
Nonsense of the week
Am I the last person to know about the MAD Dyson head phones with an attached air purifier? LOOK AT THEM:
Wired declared that they looked like a ‘high-tech gimp mask’ and I don’t totally disagree. Would you rather catch Covid or be seen in public wearing the above? Tough call.
Anyway, the high-tech gimp mask earphones with an air purifier came out last year but I only learned about them a few days ago, when I got an email from Dyson announcing their latest headphones. These ones don’t have an air purifier attached but they do claim to be the best noise cancelling earphones in the world, will play for 55 hours before running out of battery and can be colour customized. Is that exciting? I don’t know. I feel like everyone’s lost the plot when it comes to headphones these days. I lose my Airpods roughly five times a week and quite long for the olden times when I had cheap pair of wired headphones that were constantly getting tangled in my bag. Why do we spend so much money on earphones now when I’m not sure I can absolutely tell that the sound quality is better than the wiry ones?
Dyson hasn’t announced how much their new ones are going to be yet, tbf, but given the gimp mask ones cost from £579, probably not cheap. A tiny bit silly, if you ask me.
And well done Sophia for remaining so charming and polite in the face of such smug pomposity
Agree so hard re Strictly. People base their social lives around it - and by 'people' I mean folks I socialise with and respect the opinions of in every other sphere. Unfathomable, takes all sorts etc. And it seems to be filling the papers every day!
I have to confess I read pretty fast, because I wanted to see a picture of Dennis - and you didn't disappoint.