WHAT’S your ideal TV show? Something well scripted, deftly acted and clad in pastry?
If so then you’re in luck – from Monday night the haunted fish tank in the corner of your lounge will hum to the highbrow sound of Greggs: More than meets the pie.
Yes, you read right. A TV show about Greggs.
Yes the people behind the steak bake. No, I’m serious.
Apparently the new show, and I quote from a press statement here (you see the things we have to read to bring you a paper six nights a week) will feature an “array of colourful characters” who will create a “warm and charming” show.
I presume “colourful character” is TV speak for someone who would be marginally amusing if you worked with them for 10 minutes but would want to make you drive a six inch nail through your forehead and directly into your brain’s frontal lobe in order to destroy your own short-term memory if you had to spend 37.5 hours a week in their presence.
And I’ve watched enough telly to know that “warm and charming” is only used about the working class.
We’re warm and charming when we’re at work – basically we realise we’ve got 40 years of this hell to get through and then, if we’re lucky, we may get a meagre pension – if it’s not been gambled by some braces-wearing braying halfwit who works for a taxpayer-owned bank. This means we think “blimey, we better have a bit of a laugh.”
If the show featured the middle classes you could describe them as “cold and aloof” or, heaven forbid someone with blue blood got onto our screens, you’d end up with some hackneyed phrase like “forthright and outspoken” which basically means barking orders at people and then swearing at a confused woman called Tilly or someone else wearing a pearl necklace and Hunter wellies.
But what really baked my sausage roll was the fantastically horrendous quotes from the people behind the show.
Executive producer, Neil Grant, said: “What a fantastic opportunity and privilege to make a fun access series behind the scenes with the nation’s high street icon – this will be popular television at its very best!”
I would suggest Mr Grant use whatever money he gets as a wage to pop down to a bookshop and purchase himself a dictionary. Alternatively he could do what I just did and put “icon, dictionary” into Google. He’ll then see that an icon is described as “an important or enduring symbol.”
I’ll let you make your own mind up whether a shop that flogs cheap baked goods is an icon. I can see it now; Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Princess Diana, sausage rolls – three for a quid.
The person who commissioned (ie, said go on then) this programme to be on your tellybox is a lady called Siobhan Mulholland. In her promotion blurb, Siobhan, who I’m sure is always dreaming of eating one of those baked bean bake things, said: “The access is impressive; the cameras will be in the shops, following the delivery trucks, following characters and even in the usually confidential tasting labs.”
Impressive access indeed. There’s only millions of people everyday who see the inside a Greggs shop – whether that’s as they queue up or use that new invention, the transparent glass window, to look inside one as they pass.
But Andrew, I hear you cry, the programme follows the delivery trucks. DELIVERY TRUCKS.
Well, clear out Monday night at A&E – I’ll be coming in with a severe case of excitement and a recurring condition which means I can be knocked down with a feather.
What exciting things will we see with the deliveries – traffic jams, boxes being unloaded maybe the odd box dropped?
Nurse, I need new socks because mine have just been blown clear off.
Now here’s the best bit.
It’s on Sky. Yes, licence fee payers who had to fork out for the bowel-movingly bad Total Wipeout, fronted by tiny crash magnet Richard Hammond, don’t have to pay a penny for this.
Sky subscribers (of which I am one) will be paying out to see the antics of June/Paula/Tracey from Warrington/Sunderland/Falkirk as she dresses up for Halloween/Children in Need/Satanic Mass.
But, what really takes the biscuit (!) is that you can watch it in glorious HD. Imagine that.
What’s next? Wetherspoons; Blood, sweat and cheers? Starbucks; A whole latte love?
If Neil and Siobhan are reading this then I claim copyright.
