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REALITY television is big – and serious – business.
In fact, if you stripped our screens of it, there'd be precious little else to watch.
Presently, most of us are tuned into shows such as The Apprentice and Britain's Got Talent – both fairly compulsive and great for water-cooler conversation.
Regularly, many of us tune in to watch people singing, dancing, cooking, ice-skating, surviving in the jungle, living in a house with a bunch of misfits, trying to secure jobs that pay six-figure salaries.
But I am beginning to wonder whether there should be territories into which reality TV should not venture, boundaries cameras should not cross, subjects that should be deemed taboo.
On Bank Holiday Monday evening I was settling down to a bit of knitting in front of the box, only to be confronted by open-heart surgery. Live on TV. In front of millions (no doubt) of viewers.
Now it's all very worthy stuff. Don't get me wrong. The cardiac team at Papworth is nothing short of a bunch of miracle-workers – to whom many probably owe a new lease of life.
We should all be thankful these people exist and that they have perfected ground-breaking techniques to keep us alive.
I'm just not sure I want to see these techniques beamed into my living room.
"Right, we're going in now, through the sternum. The bone's a bit tough so the saw has to be strong," chirrups one heart chap who has been brought into a makeshift studio to commentate on a fellow surgeon.
At that point, my knit one, purl one went slightly awry so there'll be a bit of unravelling to do when I next pick up the needles.
It was high drama TV, no doubt about it. And very emotional when you realised that it was going to change the quality of life for the patient on the table, whose major organs were on show for all the world to see.
Presumably he or she gave permission to be filmed. You'd have to assume that.
And this is exactly my point. It never fails to amaze me how many people are willing to go in front of a camera and bare all, literally.
Take the Embarrassing Bodies programme, for example. The title tells you everything you need to know.
Week after week people approach the telly doctors with their ailments and problems, most of which involve stripping off and baring their nether regions.
Why would they? The whole point of the show is that they are too embarrassed or ashamed of their problem to go to their GP. Quietly and privately.
So instead they go on mainstream television and show the nation that they have haemorrhoids the size of golf balls.
Surely television is meant for other purposes. Entertaining us, perhaps?
Yes, it's definitely time for a re-run of 'Allo 'Allo.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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