No. 12 The Village Idiot and Talent-Free TV

There was a time when you knew where you stood with the common or garden village idiot. He (for they were invariably always male) would sit on his wall at the edge of the village watching the world go by in blissful ignorance, only stopping every once in a while to fall off.

But nowadays, it would seem, the tranquil pace of village life and the occasional loaf of gratis stale bread are not enough. For the villages are missing their idiots en masse.

So what evil has lured the idiot away from the safety of his wall and thatched-roof cottage upon the village perimeter? Well it would seem that like moths to a living room lamp on an unbearably hot day, the village idiot is being drawn to the deceitfully bright lights of television.

In this day and age the idiot has ditched the smock and felt hat, become an equal opportunities vocation, and now appears on such high-brow televisual delights as Big Brother, the X-Factor, and Britain’s Got Talent. Some have even gone so far as to purchase a wide-awake suit so that they can demonstrate their falling off a wall technique on the fame-hungry-parasite-fest that The Apprentice has descended into.

When once a village idiot may have been content with amusing the occasional passer-by with a heart-felt rant at a turnip; nowadays they find it more appropriate to parade themselves in front of millions on a daily or weekly basis; all in the name of so-called entertainment. Which, unfortunately, brings us to one particular specimen of this type of ‘reality’ entertainment that’s been poisoning the airwaves over the last decade.

Britain’s Got Talent is relatively new to the genre, but it is as nasty and as calculated a piece of feculence parading as television, as you’re ever likely to find.

It is first most a complete and utter misnomer and possibly open to prosecution under the ‘Trade Descriptions Act’ of 1968. It has also well and truly dredged the slurry ditch when it comes to not only programme quality, but its overall moral fabric. A viler mission statement would be difficult to find outside of a 1980’s Conservative Party manifesto.

Not content with having in Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan, two of the most officious, smug and talent-free chancers ever to force their objectionable views down the throats of a viewing public - stick Jeremy Kyle in between them and you’d have dead-cert winning prial - acting as, of all things, judges of other people’s dubious talents; they also have an audience of baying, gurning rent-a-loons on hand to heckle, abuse and ridicule said village idiots as they perform elaborate variations upon their falling off a wall act.

It brings to mind a pack of wild animals toying with an incapacitated bunny rabbit for an agonising length of time before one ends the torment and tears out Thumper’s throat. Is this how we treat the village idiot nowadays? With purple-faced, rabid howls of derision and moronic sheep-like chants?

To witness this vile bear-pit of a spectacle in action really makes you question whether Darwin was right when it came to placing us at the top of evolutionary scale. That goes for all concerned. Is this really the mark of a civilised nation?

You can apply this to all those other identikit examples of televisual diarrhoea that operate under the thin guise of light entertainment, where the spotlight is briefly shone on the bewildered, the misguided, and in some obvious cases those a couple of sandwiches short of a full picnic; for the ‘amusement’ of us, the viewing public, sat at home. Where you have the effortlessly slimy judges - I declare John Barrowman exempt from this for his services to Doctor Who and because both Jeffman’s mom and wife like him – who for some unfathomable reason get treated as though they’re royalty, when perhaps they should be treated in the same way that the Bolsheviks dealt with their royals; trying to keep their thoughts from the huge piles of cash waiting to be counted as soon as they get back to their gold-plated castles, long enough to compose some reprehensible putdown that’ll destroy whatever shred of confidence the already troubled individual on the stage was hanging onto and possibly the sole reason they had for getting up in the morning.

The village is sorely missing its idiot. And the village will continue to miss its idiot so long as there’s somebody out there not only willing to exploit and get rich off of their naivety, but to treat us, the viewer, with the utmost of contempt by clogging up the schedules like a cholesterol-dammed artery with this steaming pile of botchalism-ridden excrement.

The TV companies should be ashamed… Nay, the portion of the British public that make up the viewing figures should be ashamed for not only allowing, but actively encouraging these Roman circuses of contemptible tat to continue.

I say to the village idiot out there, one and all; return to your wall. Do not be fooled by the shiny lights and pretty colours; they are mere tinsel and trinkets carefully laid down to mask a much darker path and lure the deluded and the unwary into the very centre of the spider web.

And as with all spiders’ webs, there’s something very nasty waiting there for you.

You have been warned.

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