Watch Ranczo and other Polish telly online

This won't be one of my normally long posts, as it's about getting a simple message out simply. If you like Poland's most popular comedy/soap Ranczo, you want to watch it even if you don't live in Poland. If you live in the European Union, you can watch direct from the station's website TVP.PL. That means for example, if you live in the UK, you too can log into the page and watch Ranczo and an entire range of other Polish television programmes and news from Poland.

Are you living in the Polish diaspora  in Canada or the USA or maybe Australia? By getting a VPNUK account and setting it to Great Britain, you to can watch all 6 series of Ranczo. As well you'll be able to access hundreds of hours or other top quality historic and comedic programmes.

You get an easy, reliable, stable and safe access to hundred of hours Polish telly you mostly have to hunt for anywhere else. Plug back into your heritage, get a fix of home anytime you want and as a bonus, watch UK telly ( BBC, ITV, 4od, 5 )

Use this simple link to sign up. If you need help, the team at VPNUK will guide with a live chat. Start watching Poland's highest rated soap Ranczo from the beginning, then move on to other shows like Czas Honoru. I've tried other Eurozone countries and in short, if you can read the language you can use the telly web site. Good luck, let us know how it goes, it works for me.

You can't say feckin on Coronation Street

Every couple of months it gets too much and I have to stop watching Corrie. This last Corriecation has been triggered by the appalling rape story line that has dragged like cat sick on the floor  that  even Phil Collinson speaking at the St Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre's annual conference, could not clean up. Standing behind the story  despite admitting procedural errors in the trail and the post trial depiction that allowed the victim and the acquitted rapist to be alone with each other. Initially rape reports increased when it appeared that something was going to be done. What happened was exactly less than nothing. Frank the rapist was found not guilty and the Chinese whispers leading up to the trial were enough to cause a crash in rape reports. The further use of the current relationship between Carla Connors and Peter Barlow as an excuse to dismiss evidence was further proof that Collinson was more interested in ott drama than realism or thinking of the repercussions of the story. If a woman is raped, it doesn't matter who she is sleeping with today, even if and I stress this strongly, if she is having an affair. The only question that should have been discussed was if a rape occurred, if it did, GUILTY.  It's hard enough for sex abuse victims to come forward, but to have arguably the most popular show on telly scare off genuine victims of actual real rapes, is a crime. So what if the actress involved publicly let producers off the hook, so what if the Sexual assault centre let the show off the hook, the end result was butt clenchingly uncomfortable maddening telly that told people only one thing. If you're going to rape, make sure you rape a woman who is troubled, having an affair, and what ever you do, don't have any witnesses, that way it's your word against hers. I'm all for justice, I'm all for fairness, but this story line wasn't about a man unfairly accused, it wasn't about some slag throwing herself at some man and regretting it later, it was about a violent attack that a rapist got away with.

If you're watching this week, the aforementioned dastardly Frank is at it again, he gasp, threatens Carla again, very likely also the gormless Sally Webster and is, we're promised, going to be found in a pool of his own blood. If it gets rid of him, fine and good, but I'm thoroughly sick and tired of the over the top drama. A few months ago when Phil ( I used to do Doctor Who) Collinson did the great Tram Crash, I asked myself if it would get back to a more normal Corrie, would they have the more realistic stories that are just as compelling as well as returning the humour to the street. The short answer is no. Corrie has only gotten sillier, opting for the far vistas of American soap where small children are witches, couples on the rocks prefer to torture each other in increasingly bizarre displays of  ratings grab theatrics and the last time anybody did anything remotely nice to another person, they were punished for it. Corrie hasn't just missed it big style on rape, but teen pregnancy as well. In a story ripped straight out of the hysterical Daily Scum Mail, Corrie are banging on about the epidemic of teen births and hopelessly unfit young mothers with no help. The only problem with the plot is that the teen birth rate is at it's lowest in years, and the young girls who have been unwise enough to sprog at such a young age do have and know about a wide range of services they can access. The Daily Mail OMG look at that freshly imagined horror agenda is only part of the problem. There is a Tory tone in the air since at least the last two years. On a street in a town devastated by Her Meanness Margaret ( phtoo) Thatcher, characters old enough to remember what it was like are heard to say things that hint at how the country was better when her nastiness ran the place. My wife having read the omnibus book of Corrie from the start to about 2000 assures me that Audrey Roberts, during the worst of the Thatcher years, had not a kind word about her. If this was properly written , she'd be heard wondering where the death party was going to happen. Sadly, Corrie has taken the opposite view of great writers and is allowing crazy ratings grabbing stories to guide character development. For every realistic story such as Roy's mother being a nasty stick in the mud and all that means for Croppers, we are accosted by fires, murders, rapes, utterly unrealistic Steve and the even more reprehensible Tracy Barlow (herself out of jail on some invented special deal) finding new ways to make us want the segment to end faster than an Adele song.

So why do I watch?  Why does anybody watch?  Well the truth is, if you take the the viewing numbers of BBC 4's Road to Coronation Street, and subtract the proportion of casual curiosity, you are still left with a whopping 15 to 20 million viewers who have abandoned the show.  Phil Collinson admits "We are not broadcasting to people who are very educated and knowledgeable about this subject. We are broadcasting to young people, and it's very important that we draw attention to these things." So it's young people who aren't that bright and otherwise watching X factor? I am part of the vast army of those who have dropped Coronation Street from TV time. When there is so much better out there, why should I and others bother watching. I'd love to get back into it, but the trend is going the wrong way, too many stupid stories, repellent characters and Tory arse licking.

I am however still madly in love with my alternative Manchester based soap, Shameless. Yes they swear. Yes you see ugly naked people doing things we might not want to see all the time, but they are, unlike the folk over in Weatherfield, real. The violence is real, the relationships are real, the jeopardy people are placed in is real. And yet the humour that courses through the entire narrative is so strong that there is not a single plot in the last few years I would have used to sort my pants or clean the cat litter. Frank Gallagher while no longer the centre of attention, still is the one fixed point on the Chatswoth estate that brings plot twists even as late as two week ago. Shameless does in spades, what Coronation Street used to do till about 8 years ago. Paul Abbot's vision continues to fuel top quality telly at C4 while Phil Collinson is driving the original Northern drama into insignificance. While Corrie takes liberties in the name of drama, Shameless looks at unvarnished life in the Estate and translates it into entertaining television without cheapening the experience or soft selling the issues people involved are embroiled in. I won't lie, it hurts to see Corrie go down the shitter like, but I won't miss it if dies from this. Intelligent continuing drama need not jump the shark to stay relevant, they need only to stick to basics, likeable characters, stories that don't make an episode of Doctor Who seem realistic, and most importantly, remember your cast and characters know where they've been. If you take a life long sport hater into a sudden football fanatic for the purpose of a haphazard story, or you make somebody irrationally turn gay or perhaps make a man stab his best mate in the back so the show can have a controversial affair that wrecks a long standing street family, they will let you know. Actors are not programmable drones that will say and do anything that pops into your head. Fans are not going to stick around if you pretend they don't exist, worse yet, established fans won't be happy when you tell them they aren't important. If you ask ans actress who's been playing a role for years to do something her character would never do, you're not just insulting the viewers, but the actress as well. On Shameless when a character runs it's course, he or she leaves, they sometimes come back if the chance exists to get a few eps out of them, but as a rule, the useful life of an actor or actress are measured by the persona dramatis' to sustain themselves in the role. When the stories ran out for the Gallagher children, even if we liked them, they were sent away. Neighbours have come and gone, power brokers and circumstances have changed the estate but never once has anybody been forced to be anything other than what they are. The other way to look at Shameless is to look at it as art. In one scene the Lilian the madame and Kelly the prostitute have a perfectly rational near mother daughter talk about business, all the while this Feliniesque circus of freaks and oddly dressed people parade past busily doing what could only be described as performance art. In another scene, Frank descends into his own mind and channels Pinter or Shakespeare while he jousts with himself.

So while you can't say feckin on Corrie and Jamie Maguire will never suddenly become police inspector, I know which show is the one that's an insult to my intelligence and values. I also know which show will accurately reflect, warts and all the Condemn Nation and the effects of it on poorest of the poor.

Staying on the subject of drama and jumping the shark, Upstairs Downstairs is back and save a bit of lezzing up that was so tame last night I could honestly admit to have done more to my cat,  has stayed the course with well written sub plots that play well into the main theme of the phony war and the decline of the big houses. I must admit to having bizarre fantasies regarding Alex Kingston. I fully expect her to draw a gun or pick up her blue Tardis shaped diary. Tho only one hour long once a week  for only a few weeks, the quality of the cast, the sets and the scripts means I will glued to seat for the foreseeable couple of Sunday nights.Upstairs Downstairs does one thing well that Downton Abbey fails to do, it respects costumes, morals, ideology, facts, chronology, and still manages to be entertaining. Hair and clothing, especially for the women, is based on the fashions of the time and actresses that will not wear the full kit soon learn they can't do costume drama at the BBC unless they are prepared to wear the clothes too. Chronology is also pretty basic and obvious, but clearly not a important enough for Downtown to pay it any heed. Lastly, to give you an idea of how the two shows rate, when my father who lived in those houses down to the silverware in the 1930's, watched both, he muttered constantly about how the Downtown help and family would never have behaved like that, even reaching crescendos of indignation for wasting his time,  but during Upstairs, he quietly does a running commentary confirming the best and the worst of all the behaviour and taste on display be it the family or the servants. It's just a play you say, but when doing these things, especially in the literary classics, you have to be reminded that these films will be going into schools. People will be learning from them. Why, if you can, do you not then make the effort to be as precise as is possible? It's not like it's a stripped down Hamlet with one light, one chair, one skull and a hand puppet. These dramas cost vast sums of money and getting it right is as important as having a fun script.

Another treat you cannot afford miss is the brilliant Inspector Montalbano on BBC4. This adult drama in Italian, is rich in humour and reflects an albeit stylised representation of life in Silvio Berlusconi's Italy.  Salvo Montalbano is a 40 something man married to his work but trying hard to satisfy his  matrimonially itchy girlfriend of 8 years. The relationship plays out in the background as the team led by Salvo tries to get to core of matters all the while not upsetting too many apple carts. Comic relief is provided by the inept desk officer who has a hard time remembering important messages and cannot pronounce names to save his life. As detective fiction, it works best if the viewer understands that by 60 minutes, you likely know all you need to solve the crime of the evening.  If you missed any, BBC iPlayer will be holding onto the films for two months after broadcast AND there will be 10 in total with more to come we hope. Fingers crossed, the axe poised to drop on the jewel that is BBC 4 will not stop the buying of wonderful foreign language productions like Montalbano, The Killing, Spirale or Borgen. Watch it while you can, you know before the powers that be dumb it all down to about the level of BBC 3 or ITV 2.  


If you have a moment, please send a strongly worded message to the BBC that they should leave BBC 4 alone. I mean, if a bunch of people who didn't listen to a load of pretentious twadle on radio 6 saved it, why not the actual lorry loads of actual people who watch the actually well rated science, history and drama on BBC 4.

Comedy round up and random bits that crossed my mind this week.

Some days you wonder if it's worth getting out of bed at all. This last week has been one of those days. Between the flu, the cat costing us the entire budget for Hanukkah in meds, and the filthy disgusting cheating things that run football robbing England blind, makes me wonder if it wasn't all a nightmare I just need to wake up from. Let me pinch myself.... nope still here.

I'm told it snowed 3 feet in Newcastle and a catastrophic two inches in that London, considering what happened next, I was pissing myself laughing. You'd think the only snow that ever fell on Borisland was in a film. If I may point out something rather important,  this is the third year  at about this time, it's snowed, maybe it's time to get some snow tires and send out a quango to Canada or Finland to find out how it's done. Not that any of this matters as we've been housebound for the last three weeks, missed a funeral, the 100th anniversary of Polish Scouting and was made to suffer through some intensely bad music on the current play list at Radio Newcastle.  There's an alleged song by "The Script" that is more lament for the terminally tone deaf so bad it feels the need to start rapping/talking dramatically, then sandwiched in between the regulars like Julio Iglesias who has always made me want to slit my wrists, they threw in the Yech factor cover of a Bowie song, then poor Amy Wino and Elton John also have songs murdered by different cover artists. I may just decide to stick to the all news format till I get better. You have to feel for Simon Logan, some of the stuff he's forced to play.  Thanks Simon for the Queen and Pogues tracks this morning. Life for Simon has been hard this week, a normal 10 minute trip up the Salter road now takes several hours till the gritters come and "SALT " Salter road.  You're right Keef, there is a joke in there.

The other joke of the week is the alleged scandal fact from the House of Commons. Apparently MPs from the North of England are the most prolific users of  expenses this year since they last told us what our elected representatives are up to. Just tossed out with not so much as a crumb of explanation, these poor MPs are left to dangle out there with untold innuendo and the mild smell of wrong doing about them. Could it be , oh I don't know, that it's far from London, maybe it cost money to drive, take the train, run two residences, keep  surgery hours without using the moped issued by David Cameron for MP's who live farther north than Kent. How are we expected to keep quality politicians of any party if they are made to feel deep shame for travelling in any logical way with a modicum of comfort or care for their family lives? If ever made public, the private sector expense accounts for mid level management and travelling salesmen would make these expense claims seem like the trivial fluff they are, but that's not how the news spins it. I sympathize with some public interest policy bodies intent on claiming news and the right the know; they need something, anything to create monsters where none exist, but are they prepared for the same level of scrutiny and  intrusion in their lives? I doubt it. My hat is off to the men and women of any party  who have given up normalcy for life in the fish-bowl to serve their constituents. One day some sense of perspective and rationality will come over these people, but I suspect not before they themselves stand for Parliament. Must be fun taking shots at people who are damned if they defend themselves and damned if they don't  Very brave indeed.

Thankfully not all the comedy however tragic was in the news. I had the pleasure of watching several excellent  sketches by Armstrong and Miller. They are, as some of you know, on a new series 4 eps in. Best new characters are the vampires based on the Gary Oldman version and the classic Bela Lugosi Count. These two continental gentlemen must try to understand the charvification of the world and still feed. They get help from teen vampire porn denizens more at home on Being Human than a Hammer set, and the results are hilarious. Not content to get one set of new characters, they created a brave amount of personas to replace stale bits that stopped working some time ago, Hairy Bikers piss take Flint and Rory  had me on the floor . The reworked antiques wrecking crew should have been left to die and the new Man from Reading is only funny if you don't speak French. Best running gag is the "Damn, I've forgotten to take the bins out" routine. I'm never sure when it comes but now I'm looking for it.

Two other efforts by the BBC are not so lucky as Armstrong and Miller. The outrageous lie entitled LOL from Northern Ireland  was billed as fresh new writing from brilliant new talent. I should have listened to that little voice telling me it was unadulterated compost worthy only of the big garden in Countryfile.  Despite being only 12 minutes long, it managed the near impossible, ...... being without a single  funny moment from the start to the instant I turned it off 7 minutes in. It was like watching a youtube video by two uni mates who film the completely unfunny thing they came up with the night before when on too much lager. Surely somebody must check these things before they go out?

The other disaster I risked my fragile health on was the Stephen K Amos show.  This washed up stand up comedian recycling jokes that weren't funny 20 years ago, has the comic timing of diarrhoea and a sneeze. I take that back, a sneeze during  diarrhoea is a 100 times funnier than Mr Amos.  He then brings in his mam  and alleged brother, who both stink up the room, doing ill performed jokes and routines done much better by Omid Djalili and that Nigerian comedienne Andi Osho. I love ethnic humour, but this was old and smelled like it had been in the attic to long. The less said  about these two so called breathes of fresh air the better. I will be sticking to Russell Howard, Mock the week, Qi and the rest of the safe side of the street. My life is too short to spend more than a few minutes to have a whiff of the new droppings from the increasingly desperate BBC comedy boffins who haven't found the new Python in such a long time one wonders just where the comic genius is, or is it that they're just not looking in the right place.

It's not hard you know, Getting on fits a niche and is good, Whites deserves a new series, Mongrels, despite not being able to rise above working/middle  class humour, was brilliant, Rev did for God what Father Ted and Vicar of Dibley did in their day. The fact is that a massive streak of humour infuses more than a few programmes, Top Gear, Man lab and Toy Stories, and yet the people who approved those projects have somehow lost the plot and have laid eggs like the desperately unfunny Impressions show, The Pursuasionists, Big Top and few other horrors I've since successfully put out of my mind. I would like to think that in the coming inspired times where ironic and dark humour, humans thrive on in difficult times, becomes abundant and  less difficult to spot. While I'm at it, the upper classes, the educated, the highly imaginative have a right to a laugh as well. Bring us the next league of gentlemen, Python and Of the manor born, charvs are not the only ones who watch telly. Rare tip of the hat to ITV, thanks a bunch for the latest series of Ladies of Letters. Please play it again  and make some more.

C4 has had it's new entries as well and I'm going to have a marathon of Peep Show next. I'll let you know how that went in due time. Good news if you haven't heard, Johnny Vegas surrealistic oddball comedy IDEAL has been approved for a new series, Thick of it is now writing scripts for the next series which will now of course include a third party. and Live at the Apollo has a whole new batch of stand ups just in time for Christmas. Remember if it's not funny, change the channel, and something else might be. Happy goggle boxing all.

BBC Peasants' revolts v Time Team's Real Vikings

In a head to head battle between history programmes on essentially at the same time and purporting to appeal to the same viewership, it is fair to compare the two episodes I had to watch this week. Keeping in  mind I had just watched 24 hours straight of Chilean miners being rescued in a TARDIS like pill. BBC coverage of which I wrote about here, and in which I praise the trio of BBC reporters who for all intents purposes  won the world cup of special coverage. It's important to note that they did it by making the miners real and constructing a well connected narrative you could follow and care about. Remember this when I compare the two programmes, it's mightily important.

First out of the block was the BBC Michael Wood's Story of England. In case you've missed this so far, the acclaimed Michael Wood proposes to tell the story of England entirely from the perspective of one town. The Village of Kibworth in Leicester.  In this week's instalment, Peasants' Revolt to Tudors
, he takes us from post plague peasant revolt ( say that ten times fast) to Tudor stability. Yet again he guides us through  a series of important document with the occasional scattered mention of prominent local families. The story is of Poll taxes which apparently have never gone down well, that lead to revolt and peasant reform. It's the less discussed rise of education through the increasingly self taught lower classes. By self taught, I of course mean they were given lessons by locals who gave of their time and made sure they created a large pool of educated, literate potential merchant class citizens of the future. I'll admit the information about the Lollard rebellion that prepared the way for the reformation was important and well presented.

Unfortunatly, the episode could not hold my attention. Of course I was knackered beyond words, even after a full day of rest from watching miners, but that's the point. A good programme would have held my interest. Most of the information and locations were nothing new. The perspectives were mere touches of information where less timid historians would have plunged into fearlessly. So many opportunities  to delve into specifics in a structured, less haphazard manner were missed. For example, when they visited the Brown house, they took a core sample that estimated the approximate age of various parts of the house. But they didn't give us a proper tour, section by section. Even the tantalizing view of the methods used to join the beams was rushed and sloppy. Yet again we are shown a series of maps telling of the changes in land ownership and land usage, but it's so fast and poorly explained, the assumption is that we are too stupid to understand or to care. In the previous week, we at least got to meet a jury and saw it at work. This week,  nothing really. Yet again, we're shown a field trip that concludes little and archaeology that turns up nothing of any real value as far as moving the story along. Despite  the Lollard uprising motto, "The fair society" ( which he  failed to mention) echoing through human history and British history,  little attempt is made to connect the dots.

If I have a major criticism of this entire series, it is this. If you are doing a ground up history from the more proletarian perspective, you need to establish a few threads that connect the entire narrative.  In a special about a merchant woman from the 1400's or 1500's , Professor Wood weaves a tale going as far back as her grand father and how he got the land and the market stalls she eventually fought to keep in the court of law. This programme worked because we had a solid connected story from grand dad to father to daughter to her children and her two husbands. In History of England, he should of selected three of the oldest families in Kibworth, a Roman one, A Saxon one, a Vikinger one and lastly a Norman one. By  tracing the stories of theses families from Roman occupation to the present, as best he could, we would have had a real sense of history attached to people. High borne people , lowly peasants and aspirational merchants. would have taken shape through the stories of those 3 to 5 families. Sometimes overlapping, sometimes eclipsing the other in influence. What is it to be a Villain, what does it mean to be a serf? What happened to the old Saxon nobility? They didn't just disappear. All of them continued in some form or another.  Sadly, we never get a clear picture of any of the families, if anything it resembles the sort of outline you present your professor when you propose a research paper. This has the feel of scattered un structured, un analysed data. I'm not opposed to old information being presented again, but I do demand that there be some point and logical conclusion that connects the data presented, and that it be done in a compelling way. If you've never studied the breadth of English history, this will be an eye opener, history 101.  But for the veteran history enthusiast, it's all a bit scattered and pointless with the occasional fresh bit of information.

As tired, sleepy and bored Michael Wood left me, the next programme woke me up like a cappuccino and biscotti served by a sexy waitress wanting my number.

C4's, The Real Vikings, a Time Team special.  presents us with a big question. Tony Robinson asks who were the real Vikings. Were they the cruel blood thirsty rapists or some kind of misunderstood farmers? Then they do a radical thing, they take the collected wisdom of recent digs and research and construct a new better more realistic picture of the real Vikings. Bereft of nobles and kings, this new version of history paints a picture of a mercantile people with far reaching commercial links as far as Russia,Afghanistan, Egypt  and as close as Ireland. From the brutal and tragic attack on Lindisfarne in 793 to the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. The Vikings ran the Danelaw bringing in thousands of settlers, farmers, craftsmen and metallurgists. Tony and company , via a new dig in the Hungate area of York, show us the mercantile side of the Vikings. Through it, we find a well organized group that urban plan a residential district and a warehouse district that separates the production, storage and merchandising of posh advanced goods as well as ivory and furs. Property and ownership are not alien notions. They do however prefer arcs over the Roman grid system in new developments.   Just how good at trade were they? A chalice from France filled with coins from around the known world of the day, shows they were masters of the sea long before Nelson and his mates built an Empire.

Were York's Vikings pigs? apparently not. They had an  area of cesspools well away from the rest of the work areas. This of course does not mean they were immune from the risks that even a well put together well chilled larder could not combat. In the cesspools, we find Viking Poo, yes 1000 year old faecal matter that sheds light on diet and health as well as variety of foods eaten. Though they may have had worms, these were not poor savages, but prideful wealthy people concerned with primping and appearance complete with bling knives made by metallurgists who would not be surpassed in skill until the industrial revolution.10th century Viking York, according to contemporary accounts, was crowded but organized, it had a population of at least 30,000 at a time when such a City would have been seen as a major world  centre of trade.  Representatives from every corner could be found there and they were clearly not suffering or poor.

Were at least some Vikings capable of great savagery? Yes, we visit a site in Northern Wales that shows the massacre of a family. Bound and then brutally executed.  You could conclude that this was all the proof you needed the Vikings were unparalleled bastards of the first degree. But you'd be wrong. Further south, in the Saxon borderlands, a pit containing the bodies of 51 men. Tied, necks cut clean through and jaws broken, these men were not just killed, they were mutilated. And they were all Vikings. So please, lets be clear on one thing. Saxons,  Romans and  Normans were all cut from the same cloth, capable of the same savagery when the mood struck them. The rules or values of one group were not their evil to our good. Again using sources outside of the Saxon chronicles and Viking Chronicles, we learn the Arabs knew them to be good traders and honest if you did not harm them first.


The culture that Vikings brought to England was poetic and epic, in the sort of prideful way all warrior cultures do but hardly Vogon bad, They bring us at least 2000 words we still use today and they did in short order accept Christianity. Going from burning Churches to  building them and attending older ones they had left standing. According to the Domesday book, in parts of the North of England, 9 out of 10 people still living there were of Scandinavian origin.

There is a lovely bit when one of the regular loonies from Time Time, visits the Orkneys to show us a selection of manky Viking graffiti.  " so and so was here with a maiden and showed her a good time " But not in those words. These were normal people like you and me, except that some of them were fierce warriors, but back then who wasn't? I can watch stuff like this all day long. And before I forget, they didn't wear those silly horned hats.

Last bit you'll not want to miss before C4 takes it off the player, 1066, The Battle for Middle Earth.   A dramatisation in not quite ye olde English of the three major battles that changed the face of English history. A fresh view told in the words and traditions of the people of the time. You  will gain a deeper understanding of the time and you'll never again read Lord of the Rings in the same way ever again. It's one thing to be aware of the inspirations of Tolkien, but to live them like this is a perspective changer. Must watch telly.

In case you're interested, mate of mine Mr Keith Topping has done a canny interview with Tony Robinson.

Nigella, Gordon Ramsay and brilliant comedy

There are days, dear readers, that start off with the best of intentions and are filled with the anticipation of greatness to be experienced. The salivation brought on by the knowledge that what you will see may in fact be better than you ever hoped for. This was not one of them.

My intention was to fire up the iPlayer and watch some cookery programmes I had missed during the week. One, Gordon Ramsay's best restaurant always leaves me hungry and I wasn't for a minute expecting quality from Nigella, but OH the horrors, what I did get was 10 times worse, and that was Gordon Ramsay. Nigella Kitchen...Nigella's new series for the brain dead, mammary enamoured, far exceeded my lowest expectations.

Now you may ask why I bothered with Nigella at all? Yes I know it was going to be only slightly better than the annoying Miss Dahl, but as an honest person I need to at least watch something before I tell you it's rubbish. If I may begin with the beginning, Nigella, they're prawns, I don't need an epic poem about your first lover or that the smell evokes summers with your Nan while visiting the Lake District. Tell me where to get them, what a good price is and for G-d's sake, de vein the damn things.  Just how lazy are you?  Oh I forgot , you're Nigella "you can just get the cheaper powder that taste the same" Lawson. The so called recipe for roasted potatoes suggested amusingly that  chucking in a few unpeeled bits of garlic in a pan would somehow miraculously flavour your tatties drenched in, I cant believe you said this, non extra virgin olive oil. I saw nary a sign of "seasoning", garlic is to be used sparingly so as not to offend any people without taste buds. The atrocities committed to the sea food was even worse, she double cooked her calamari before putting into a pan for roasting, great way to produce rubber rings that taste even worse, not that you would notice them over the bland over cooked shrimps with vein still in. Then there was the so called salami pasta in alleged sauce.  The sauce was a tin of tomatoes watered down with pasta water. Is that it????? where is the seasoning, the onions,  the garlic , the pesto , the pine nuts, the hint of chilli maybe, or grated cheese for extra zing? And why in heaven's name was she cutting the salami with scissors??? Had she never heard of a knife? I never did get past the 10 minute mark, but I can assume the assault, had it continued would have rendered me catatonic. What Nigella Lawson knows about cooking is not worth passing on to other breathing beings intent on wasting good ingredients. As for her pantry, it was too sparse and was too brightly lit. You want food to age faster, expose it to too much light. As for the contents, it was filled with rubbish most self respecting cooks would never buy. There was nothing in it she had made herself in advance and the packets of noodles were the kind my father used to keep when he cooked just enough for himself, her pantry was in fact, empty.  A proper pantry would have been groaning with spices, herbs, flours, yeast, lards or various kinds of oils, vinegars and pastes. I didn't see barley, lima beans, rice, polenta or dried fruits like raisins or prunes. I bet she doesn't even know the names of half the utensils artfully arrayed on her work area but never used in the recipes. People please do me a favour, do not watch this ever, if you like knockers, there are plenty of shapely well endowed women on the internet who are willing to show you more than a sweater. If however you wanted to cook for your family, watch a Jamie Oliver repeat, or perhaps pick up a Hairy Bikers book, loads of great ideas with real food and real cooking skills. Other than keeping her massive breasts in constant camera shot, how this woman gets commissioned for new series is a mystery to me.

SO what did I do to calm my nerves, reset my brain to default cookery senses? I watched episode 3 of Ramsay's best restaurants, Chinese. I expected to be in a food trance that would only be ended with Dim Sum on Sunday. Instead, I was even more furious than after the Nigella debacle. Normally the programme is spot on, the criticisms just and the tests fair. But the Chinese episode showed a cultural chasm on the part of the viewers and Gordon Ramsay himself in regards to Chinese cuisine. I can speak from experience about this as I was married for 14 years to a Chinese woman and by extension her family. My father in law was a chef and we ate all sorts at home. If we went out it was only to proper, REAL, Chinese restaurants. My current (and best) wife is Jewish and raised in the belief that if pork is served  in a Chinese place in Queens, it's kosher. Any way you slice it, neither of us or my ex wife or my now deceased former father in law, would set foot in The Kai or You Yue. Both are what you call "White Devil" places. One tries to posh up to the level of the Fat Duck or one of Gordon's places and the other is just basic Chinese for non Chinese customers. Little wonder they were recommended by the ordinary Briton who thinks they make strawberry somosas or lamb chops in China. Dover Sole is also not a big seller in Hong Kong or the mainland. What the average Chinese person eats, even far from home, is so much more varied than what the white bland Briton is prepared for.

As for our Chef Gordon, I know for a fact he has not spent more than a few hours in a proper Chinese restaurant. If he had , he would be aware that cooks, sous chefs and family , SPEAK LOUDLY AT EACH OTHER! It's normal, it's in the blood and you cannot tell them not to do it.  Presentation and service are also not the same as you would expect in a normal European eatery. Chinese food comes often, all at once in several large plates and bowls. In fact you're supposed to eat it all with a bowl of rice you put things on. I hear some of you ask  what's wrong with just a plate of large cubed beef? Chinese cuisine makes sure the meats are not alone on the plate or in your mouth , they are prepared to last and stretch and mingle with your veg, nuts and sauces. In essence to pick up anything that large with chopsticks is impolite and a waste of food. Half that amount sliced, could have fed an entire family. Meats are served on a bed of various kinds of noodles and seasoned in more than just rice wine. During preparation, meat. like all ingredients in Chinese cookery, is sliced thin for easy marinating, cooking, and eating.  Oriental food is the art of the delicate mouthful that merges sweet, sour, crunchy, soft, slimy and pasty.  In fact my former Father in law cooked with sherry, whiskey,sesame oil, and fish oil for starters. The array of spices I learned to use from him and others like him, is far greater than those on display at either of the kitchens in the ep. Furthermore, to subject the Chinese chefs to a kitchen without a real wok station is to handicap the gentlemen in question. It was sad to see these fine cooks reduce their cuisine to a series of fake Chinese to please white devils who wouldn't know real Chinese if it crawled out of the bowl and said hello. I have eaten , kidneys, mushrooms, vast amounts of fish, octopus, abalone, shark, pork, beef, assorted offal, chicken and duck. Tea, an entire separate level of ceremony, seems to have been completely dropped and the desserts in no way resemble anything you would be offered in a Chinese home or eatery. You don't need to take the piss out of the cuisine or dumb it down to make it palatable, to have a food adventure. The handful of Chinese dinners in the third test were hardly quoted and far too polite to say the food was rubbish. In the case of the Kai, to equate it to so called Michelin level Chinese is an insult to the grand traditions of Chinese cuisine that include food so fine, rare and delicate that only Emperors were allowed to eat it.  There is of course the intermediary level reserved for high holy days, weddings and  foods prepared in honour of the seasons. There is a reason why things are done the way they are, and it is bound up in the rich traditions of face, communal dinning and the high wire act of selecting the best morsel from your side of the plate without offending the eldest or the most important person at the table.  Try this one for fun if you're with Chinese people in a restaurant, .... try paying, the acrobatics and diplomacy involved in this is worthy of a screen play. Gordon Ramsay got it horribly wrong.

And finally .... I watched with great delight, The Rob Brydon show, free of James Corden, he had on Stephen Fry, rising young comic Daniel Sloss and Seasick Steve. The half hour went by far too quickly, but not before we heard Rob Brydon accompany Seasick and have Stephen Fry give us a useful definition we can all apply daily... Countryside....To kill Piers Morgan. For a chaser, one tuned into Qi XL- Hoaxes and 8 out of 10 cats. I learned a few interesting things. Cauliflower is misunderstood, Sean Locke is mostly not funny on Qi or Cats, Daniel Sloss IS funny, and Stephen Fry has some strange ideas about oranges.....Oh and the hoax item on Qi??? I won't tell you, you can watch for yourself.

Have you missed  BBC 3's Ideal? Fix that now. A sitcom about a variegated group of unique individuals, starring Mick Miller, Johny Vegas and our own Alfie Joey. If you don't get it, just spend some time in an older building in a neighbourhood of artists, dreamers, writers, musicians, con men, schemers, gays, sex workers, students, and assorted nutters the NHS has deemed safe to walk the streets. Their unique views on the world get credence from each other, feeding and encouraging schemes only slightly less insane than the current story line on Ideal. I have partied with these people, they are real, well almost all of them, I've never met Cartoon Head.

Next post is Strictly Strictly, far too much to say in one short paragraph. Laters all. Howay the Lads, Good Luck against Manchester City!