Like many colleagues of a similar age, I am endowed with a small but visible embonpoint below the waist - well, to be honest, above as well - and instead of, come to that - so I awaited with breath-baited last night's "Horizon" entitled "Eat, Fast, Live Longer".
What a fiasco.
Thr program opened with the usual BBC plonky-plonk music and some artistic shots of trains in Arizona (or perhaps in California) crossing deserts. And then some more, crossing mountains. And then some more, crossing other deserts. With lonesome train horns. Finally Michael Mosley, the UK protaganist, playing the usual witless "oor, er, isn't it a wonderful honour to be in the USA" British ingenué ended up in the LA lab of a trim-figuered Italian professor who claimed by his diet to have developed a new species of man.
Mosley visited one of his new species at his "wunnerful home", who claimed that by eating masses of fruit & veg he would live for ever. He was filmed preparing his breakfast, a huge bowl of fruit, but not, as one would think, fresh fruit, but all from the freezer. Strange that, in CA. Or is it ?
Back to the lab where the Italian proclaimed that the fruit-nibbler would never have a stroke or contract cancer. Note that: NEVER. Obviously the possibilities of a brain aneurysm, ingesting pollution, going out in the sun, or any other external factor were eliminated by consuming the contents of the deep-freeze for breakfast each day.
Next on to another lab with a similar-but-not-identical steely eyed Italian expat in LA, this one driving a Ferrari 308 GTS Spider, and yes I do lust after this car....this professor took us to Ecudor where a small group of people have a syndrome which inhibits production of Human Growth Hormone, causing them to only attain 3' in height, but they never contract diabetes or cancer.....although their lifestyle which embraces drinking, smoking and fatty foods, doesn't do much for their life expectancy. So ?
Then there were the genetically modified mice.....
Finally, or at least it was for me, Michael Mosley underwent the sort of three-and-a-half day diet which can only be carried out on a Californian beach, staring into the sunset, or perhaps sunrise, who knows, while his large camera crew and production team from the UK sent out at great expense (are you reading this, BBC Licence-Fee Payers ?!) had a huge bacon and eggs fry-up, and cliché scenes of fast-food advertising hoardings played in the background, to show what La Mosley was missing.
During this sad period Mosley had one cup of soup a day - not, you won't be surprised to hear, made with fresh ingredients, but from a small packet of powder. And at the end of this fast, he felt "different".
More plonking music, more desert scenes, more plonky-plonk music, more freeway at rush-hour views, and wow ! yet another American 'expert' - possibly Italian but I couldn't tell - turned up to tell us of a radical new approach to dieting......
With my brain turning numb at all these wonderful people in California telling us about their studies - of which British and European nutricionists are obviously unaware - and fearing some new plonky-plonk music, trains and desert scenes would introduce yet another Californian slim-trim professor of this or that at whose altar Michael Mosley could kneel and worship in wonder - I packed up and went to bed.
What a pathetic waste of what could have been an interesting subject, handled sensibly. And an even bigger waste of the UK licence-fee.
Location: uk mostly, desert lots, searching for lost posts
Posts: 2,190
Quote:
carried out on a Californian beach, staring into the sunset, or perhaps sunrise, who knows,
... errr, almost certainly a sunset, given the likely orientation (occidentation?) of a Californian beach ......
..... but then I gave up geography in the 4th form.....
My current anti-BBC (and other meeja) hate concerns - peripherally - the Olympcs opening ceremony. Amongst items there represented was the first immigrant ship from the West Indies in 1948, the MV Empire Windrush.
... at the ceremony, and in many meeja references since, it's been called the "Windrush". Has Empire become a dirty word??
And the irony is ..... the image above comes from the BBC artchive ......
I'm a bit confused (part of my normal state ) as I've heard by commentators several times on the BBC during the Olympics that when wanting to focus on someone in the GB Team that they had no control over the cameras implying that it wasn't the BBC filming and they were relying on the coverage through a third party. I thought the BBC were the main Olympic broadcaster?
OFSO, I didn't see the programme, and I'm glad of that, because reading your glorious rant above has 'educated, informed and entertained' me enormously, in equal measure.
In fact, those three words are the legacy of the BBC's first Director General, Lord Reith, who was adamant that they summarised the function of the Beeb as he saw it. So not having actually watched the Horizon offering which so irritated you, I have enjoyed at second-hand those very three experiences that Reith made the bedrock on which the BBC is founded!
Well done, OFSO. Have you ever considered taking up TV Review work? I often enjoy reading the critics' opinions of a programme that I missed the previous evening, probably more than I would if I had seen it!
Have you ever considered taking up TV Review work?
But who would print such vitriolic ravings of mine ! It was all I could do not to mention my bete noir Brian "The Pimple" Cox...oh blast, now I have.....
What really annoyed me was there was a gem of a good program in there, but, well it's the BBC who think:
"Lets send a team to the USA, they do things so much better there, hey let's make in California, it's the dream of every Englishman to become American and live on the West Coast, isn't it, so who better to get an opinion from..."
And yet it doesn't have to be like that. I loved "All the Gear, No Idea", for example, which mocked British shabbyness AND American brashness in the same program, but in a nice way. And the presenters weren't self-opinionated and pompous pr*cks.....
"Lets send a team to the USA, they do things so much better there, hey let's make in California, it's the dream of every Englishman to become American and live on the West Coast, isn't it, so who better to get an opinion from..."
Auntie Beeb has been at that game for yonks. I was at school with James Burke, who was a spotty herbert like the rest of us, but had the nous to apply to them for a presenter's job, got it, and fronted 'Tomorrow's World' following Raymond Baxter, for a time. Then landed the Beeb's series of Apollo launch presentations, including the 'One small step for a man' piece by Neil Armstrong. Right place, right time, right face (the spots had cleared up by then). From there on he was 'in' with Auntie, and could do no wrong ...
They built a whole expensive series, 'Connections', around him. Off to the Great Barrier Reef to do a piece to camera about 'this', fade to show him standing and still talking to camera on Malibu Beach about 'that', then off to the Galapagos Islands and still talking about 'the other' (and giant tortoises), you get the idea. Super fun for James (who actually answered to 'Jack' at school, but nevermind), and pretty successful telly at that time. He was living in the US and an author when I last checked, and good luck to him, I quite liked the fellow. Clearly, so did those who produce these programmes at the Beeb, and if they think the public likes a TV personality, they do sometimes allow them considerable indulgence to make that sort of programme appealing to 'butterfly minds'.
Well I thought it was a most interesting and informative programme. So much so that I am starting on the 2 days in 5 fasting regime that the guy eventually decided on.
... I had recorded this to watch at a later time; I won't bother now!
Tis a shame because Mosely has made good programmes in the past, most notably the one that covered medicine in Camp Bastion and how advances made during conflicts can benefit civilians.
I've seen one of the subjects of last nights programme before, the nut who peels apples then eats the peel, bins the rest.
He claims to be very fit and look young but my inpression was that he looked like crap.
A drift from a BBC rant to a comment about fitness: we have known slightly overweight people who developed some debilitating illness, and wafer-thin (apple-skin eating) individuals who developed debilitating illness, and the slightly overweight people lasted longer, simply because in our ignorant layman's opinion, they had more internal reserves to go on.
But hey, what do I know, if you want to grow up to be three feet tall, live in Ecuador, and live for ever, or at least not die of diabetes, why not ?
As I have said on here a number of times......er, perhaps lots of times................or maybe even zillions of times...............
the BBC is stuffed full of trots and Pinkoes.
They got so scared that they were becoming commercial with their magazines that they sold them off. The only thing that they could make a profit in, and they sold it. (BUT ruined the deal for the taxpayer as the BBC held on to the Pension liabilities of the folk they sold with the business).
The BBC is like a lot of organizations,they should eb dismantled top to bottom every twenty years, after a decade or so they all suffer from the same syndrome,their prime directive becomes not the reason they were actually created for ie in the case of the BBC,making programs for the edification and enjoyment of the public who finance them,it is the well being and continued existence of the organization itself to which management devote 99% their attention,charities are the worst offenders,and look no further than the UN to see the most glaring example.
) as I've heard by commentators several times on the BBC during the Olympics that when wanting to focus on someone in the GB Team that they had no control over the cameras implying that it wasn't the BBC filming and they were relying on the coverage through a third party. I thought the BBC were the main Olympic broadcaster?
