Bluey, and other kids' TV shows you're praying will make up for your inadequate parenting

HAVING children really is a lot of work. Someone should have warned you. But when your parenting skills fail here are some TV shows that will hopefully pick up the slack.

Bluey

A modern cartoon classic from Australia. The emphasis here is creativity, ‘play time’ and ‘make-believe’. Your kid might turn out a bit soft, but at least they’ll f**k off and invent their own bullshit games. Hopefully their imagination will become so developed they’ll think they’re playing with you, when actually you’re down the pub.

Peppa Pig

Watch more than five minutes of this and you’ll realise Peppa is a naughty little shit who’d do more good in a Sausage McMuffin than on TV. But it IS an accurate portrayal of family dynamics. She relentlessly bullies her younger brother George and exploits her stupid dad’s good nature while her downtrodden mum looks on smiling weakly. Very educational.

Sesame Street

Why teach your kids stuff when you’ve got the ‘72-inch LCD screen babysitter’? Plonk them in front of Count von Count – maths is the creepy vampire’s problem now. Who cares if they develop a New York accent? If they get lippy and start asking what species Big Bird is and that sort of thing, tell them Cookie Monster will bite their faces off in their sleep.

Grange Hill

At some stage your children will reach school age. Spoiler: they’ll hate it. Luckily 80s reruns of Grange Hill are hardcore: non-stop bullying, overt racism and Zammo off his tits on heroin. Stop their strops at breakfast and bleating about tests by claiming there’s a nearby school just like Grange Hill and you can always enrol them in that.

Pingu

By the time your kids grow up, the ice caps will be gone and many species extinct. So introduce them to nature while you can. Attenborough is a bit advanced, so start with a plasticine, stop-motion penguin who spends his entire life gorging on fish and going ‘noot noot’. The show also develops your child’s language skills when they suddenly say ‘Please, I’m begging you, can we change channels, Mummy?’

Mr Benn

It’s never too early for your kids to start learning about the world of work. In this 70s classic a man does a different job every day – the perfect representation of the gig economy! Of course, if it was made now, Mr Benn’s careers wouldn’t be knight or spaceman, they’d be Uber, Deliveroo and OnlyFans.

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The six 'favourite' albums you haven't played in years

REMEMBER that album you reckoned was the best you’d ever heard, but haven’t bothered playing for years? Here are some currently gathering dust on your CD rack.

The Joshua Tree, U2

Back in 1987 you had it on loop for weeks – which is part of the problem. If you ever have to listen to Where The Streets Have No Name again, you’ll scream. You also don’t want people to misinterpret your appreciation of this album to mean ’I love Bono’. Because you don’t. He’s a pretentious, orange-goggled twat.

Meat is Murder, The Smiths

Back in your student days the Smiths seemed able to read your thoughts. But you grew out of your vegetarian phase and it doesn’t feel right to listen to it now while munching on a chicken curry. Again, there was a problem with the singer turning into a dick. Was The National Front Disco a cautionary tune about far-right politics or just what Morrissey did one night?

Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses

You genuinely thought this was the greatest rock album of all time, and possibly that Axl Rose was the sexiest man alive. If that was true it’s definitely not now as his weight has ballooned and with that ridiculous hair he’s more like one of the Muppets. If the Muppets wrote songs that are uncomfortably misogynistic now.

Definitely Maybe, Oasis

It was the mid 90s, Britpop was in its pomp, and along came these Mancunian rebels to upset the applecart. Even losing the not-terribly-important battle for number one with Blur was cool. Then you realised they were even bigger twats in their own way. Tragically, they sound as edgy as Status Quo now, and no sane person wants to hear f**king Cigarettes & Alcohol yet again.

Music for The Jilted Generation, The Prodigy

Anarchic, cutting edge electro-punk – until you’re afflicted by age and you start to feel it’s an aggressive din which actually makes you quite stressed. With your responsible job and paying your bills on time you’ve become the type of person you always vowed to hate. That said, Keith Flint, rest his soul, never followed the herd and might have liked a bit of Acker Bilk.

Who Can You Trust?, Morcheeba

Trip-hop heaven back in 1996, when all you had to do was shut the curtains, light up a spliff and lose yourself amidst its waves of ambient, trancy overtures. Now you’re trying to get the kids to bed and you can’t waste half the night off your tits listening to music, even if Skye Edwards still has the sexiest come-to-bed voice on the planet. Sorry, Skye, but those socks need putting in the washing basket.

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