MY BRAIN IS NOT AMUSED

Some TV companies put a lot of their budget and effort into making quality programmes that are informative, intelligent and pleasing to look at. Channel 5 make Brainteaser, nuzzled in there between Family Affairs and The Farm. As bad as those two are, they don’t (quite) make you want to whack yourself on the head with a saucepan. Brainteaser does. Seriously, who thinks up this shite? The presenters look like they were picked from the toy section of Woollies and then doused in hairspray to stop any of those annoying signs of life emerging. I’m sure the background set is on sale there too, masquerading as a girl’s pencil case.

Now ok, the questions for the contestants themselves aren’t all that easy, but those open to the public are possibly worse than Richard and Judy’s used to be (‘What’s the capital of France? . . .You don’t know? . . .I’ll give you a clue, it begins with a P’). But more patronising. And much, much less interesting. I’m definitely not going to be watching it again. Absolutely. Never.

As an aside, I have to admit feeling sorry for Alan Titchmarsh. I was half watching ‘History of the British Isles’. At one point I was listening to him saying that he was being turned into a Neanderthal. I took a peek and saw him sitting in a chair, thinking that it was a pretty good transformation. Then the make-up artists started to work on him. Sorry Alan, but even you admitted that Neanderthals weren’t all that different from the rest of us!