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Why we’re hell bent on privatising Channel 4 when there’s more important shit to do, by Nadine Dorries

WONDERING why the government is obsessed with privatising Channel 4 when there are more pressing matters at hand? The Culture Secretary explains.

We can’t take criticism

Just ask the BBC. They do their best to remain neutral and impartial, but even Photoshopping a Russian hat onto Jeremy Corbyn didn’t quell our bloodlust. Meanwhile Channel 4 news replaced Boris Johnson with an ice sculpture during a televised debate, so if anything you’re lucky we haven’t nuked the broadcaster from orbit by now.

They bollocksed up Bake Off

It pains me to say it but The Great British Bake Off was better on the BBC. Back then it had Mel and Sue and Mary Berry and that guy who threw his baked Alaska into the bin. On Channel 4 it’s all woke and diverse which scares me. It’s only saving grace is that it still has Paul Hollywood. He’s an absolute stud like the men in my raunchy yet highly literary books.

It’s what Thatcher would’ve wanted

Yes, Channel 4 was set up under Thatcher’s government in 1982 as part of an effort to disrupt the media landscape. But if there’s one thing Maggie liked even more it was privatisation. By that logic, taking ownership of the broadcaster away from the people is the most Thatcherite move possible. Even though she openly objected to this idea while alive.

We’ve ruined everything else

Energy prices? We f**ked them. NHS? Crushed it. Public faith in government? We shat on it years ago. And with Brexit taking care of everything else there’s really not much left for us to destroy, hence why we’ve been forced to attack the last flickering glimmer of what made you proud to be British.

I’m thick as f**k

I’m fundamentally not very clever. Up until a few months ago I thought Channel 4 was publicly funded but apparently that’s not the case. And even though I have no idea how media works, I’m positive that privatisation will allow Channel 4 to compete with Netflix and Amazon. Which I understand are sort of like Ceefax.

Newsround, and other childhood TV programmes that could f**k off

WATCHING kids’ TV with an orange barley water was the high point of your childhood. But for every Scooby-Doo there was a lot of stuff you hated. Like these shows…

Screen Test

Dull film quiz, the highlight of which was a kid sending in a crappy film they’d made. Would your tightarse dad buy you a cine camera? Would he f**k, and that’s the sole reason why you aren’t a top director banging Kate Beckinsale. A waste of airtime that could have been devoted to high-quality fare like Space Sentinels.

Newsround

Being aimed at kids, it was naturally a bit bland, with no politics but lots of uncontroversial news such as frigid pandas, an RAF helicopter delivering a dialysis machine or British climbers scaling Everest. Basically what today’s adult BBC news will be like after a few more years of the Tories.

Jackanory

After a hard day at school, more f**king books. And for some reason it always seemed to be Johnny Briggs and his uninteresting gold belt. You’d have put on more Battle of the Planets. That had a proper story, albeit the same one every week as Zoltar built an unnecessarily stylised robot to conquer Earth. Maybe he should have streamlined production to missiles and tanks instead of a ‘space terrapin’.

Button Moon

ITV decided what kids of the 80s wanted was a kitchen utensil-themed show with cheap, jerky string puppets that made Muffin the Mule look like The Empire Strikes Back. To give some idea of the paucity of ambition, the main character had spoons for arms and was called Mr Spoon.

Ivor the Engine

In a fictional part of Wales so stereotypical it was practically racist, Ivor the Barely-Animated Engine did nothing very interesting. With other toss like Ludwig and Willo the Wisp in the same end-of-kids’-TV slot, it’s hard not reach the conclusion that the BBC was telling you: ‘You’ve had your fun, sunshine, now f**k off and let your dad watch TV.’

Why Don’t You?

… fill your life with crap to keep you occupied during the school holidays? This was the nefarious purpose of the show, so you wasted hours doing things like splitting the end of a matchstick and adding a drop of washing-up liquid to make a ‘speedboat’, which at least taught you a valuable lesson about life being full of disappointment.

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