I had thought that today was
going to be the day that I finally brought the ridiculous idea of writing a
daily blog to a crashing halt, as nothing of any real note happened all day.
Friday is the day that I record The Sound of Nottingham UK,
and even that went off without a hitch apart from one sound issue at the end. My
obsessive need to write 500+ words about today wasn’t looking that good at all.
Until teatime that is.
After recording the show and
sending it across the Atlantic, I had a shower. The two things aren’t
connected, I don’t get especially dirty or sweaty making radio shows, although
it is quite warm in my office. Mandi had made dinner while I was recording, and
I had timed everything to perfection to ensure that we were both sitting down
in front of Eastenders with our meal. I hadn’t eaten
two mouthfuls when (as part of a long drawn out sub-plot about the council not
emptying the bins in Albert Square) the camera panned to a close up shot of a
rat running across the kerb, followed by several other shots of this same rat
scampering around. My throat closed up, I grabbed the remote and changed
channel, and then ran to the kitchen to spit my food into the bin. When I’m
eating I am rather squeamish about what people talk about or what I see on
television. Mandi said it was eight o’clock and therefore acceptable to have
this on screen as it was way past teatime, but I disagreed. We no longer live
in a 9-5 society where we sit around the table for our evening meal at six o’clock.
Besides, eight o’clock on a Friday is about the right time to be having dinner,
and it is my opinion that the BBC should have put a warning at the beginning of
the programme.
Although we weren’t eating my
favourite meal, or even one of my top ten meals, the meal that we were eating
is now forever associated in my mind with rats, albeit on television, and I can’t
ever eat that particular meal again. It was several hours before I could eat,
and had to make myself a whole new meal because of the BBC and their ridiculous
scheduling policy.
I have written a letter to the
BBC, in particular the producers of Eastenders, to
complain about this and have asked for a small compensation for the cost of
tonight’s meal. If they are unwilling to stump up this amount of money, I will
be taking it off my next TV licence payment. The BBC are under enough scrutiny
at the moment, what with their policy on employing rapists to present children’s
television programmes, paying people too much public money, closing down BBC TV
Centre for no reason and other things without putting people off their fucking
Friday night dinners too.
Mandi tried to reason with me
that it wasn’t a real wild rat but a trained animal actor that was probably
very clean in real life. That is probably the case, but the animal was a
fucking good actor as it put me right off.
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