WHETHER you’re an average middle class person or a Guardian TV reviewer, you may want to watch mindless pleb fodder in a knowing, superior way. Here’s how to do it.
Be ridiculously enthusiastic
Have an unnatural level of excitement at tonight or last night’s episode of Strictly, I’m A Celebrity or Vernon Kay’s Chip Shop Challenge or whatever. Isn’t it hilarious that people genuinely enjoy it? Okay, you’re also wasting hundred of hours watching crap, but that’s different.
Drop all normal critical standards
Entertainment has certain basic requirements – drama, a degree of professionalism, skilled performers, etc. Britain’s Got Talent’s menagerie of oddballs, such as a fat bloke and his son doing a few Riverdance moves, are more like something you’d see at 2am at a particularly grim pub lock-in. The simpleminded proles don’t notice though, and you’re watching too. You’re so egalitarian!
Intellectualise the brain-dead shenanigans
The true mark of the ponce. Wasn’t the expression on Matt Hancock’s face as he ate a wombat’s urinary tract reminiscent of Goya’s Saturn devouring his son?
Develop a frightening level of knowledge about total crap
Be able to list all the nobodies or D-listers on a show, complete with utterly useless biographical information, eg. ‘Did you know Fazer worked in Next?’ Your first from Cambridge really honed your ability to sift and retain large amounts of information, although it’s somewhat wasted on Mike Tindall talking bollocks.
Eat un-proletarian TV dinners
You may be watching low-brow TV, but there’s no way you’re eating Birds Eye frozen beef burgers with baked beans and curly fries. Time your meal kit preparation to coincide with the start of Love Island so you’re enjoying Serrano ham and butternut linguine while the islanders talk gibberish like: ‘She’s leng, but I don’t want all me eggs mugged off in one basket.’
Sound as if soaps are real
Really immerse yourself in the crudely-drawn ‘working class’ residents of Coronation Street and Albert Square. If you’ve had a borderline posh, closeted upbringing you may actually believe working class areas are EastEnders-style micro-economies where everyone works within a 100m radius and, eerily, never leaves. (Except when they get murdered.)
Have a party
Organise a more-trouble-than-it’s-worth Strictly party where guests have to wearily wear a sparkly outfit. Actual working class people tend to just watch slumped on a sofa after a hard day’s work, but simple folk don’t understand irony.
