Jade Goody - Hoodie

YOU know you’ve made it when…your name is rhyming slag.

So here’s Alan Whicker (knickers) telling the Mail: “Why I hate today’s TV dimwits.”

No mention is made of Big Brother or Jade Goody (hoodie) specifically. Whicker concerns himself with the more generalised “curse of so-called reality television”.

Whicker, the preternaturally aged travel show presenter who always looked like a brigadier on leave as he toured the exotic colonies, says the end of his career coincided with the “twilight of TV’s glory days”.

That’s some coincidence. But Whicker is wrong. TV is now front-page news. Jade Goody is front-page news. TV sets the agenda. Foreign TV crews study Jade as Whicker once chatted to Papa Doc.

But what would life be like without telly, without Jade? Would we be free to do more travelling and experience more cultures first hand rather then eyeing them through the magic box?

For an insight into what a world free of TV would be like, the Mail travels to Zhengzhou Zoo in southern China. This is the “Circus of horrors.”

With no Big Brother, the Chinese make do with laughing at talented animals. Can Jade ride a motorbike over a hire wire with a girl balancing beneath on a chair? The brown bear can.

Can Jade ride a bicycle? Not, an exercise bike but a real bicycle like they ride in, well, China? The bears can.

Has anyone ever seen Jade on a horse? The bears can ride horses at the circus. What is more, they ride side saddle. Would Jade adopt so dignified a position or sit legs akimbo?

But rather than applaud these bears and marvel at their genius, the Mail wants us to pity them.

We hear from David Neale, UK director of the Animals Asia Foundation. He says the bears are beaten, declawed, threatened and forced to perform.

Says he: “Unfortunately it is happening across China. People do seem to enjoy the spectacle. There is a lack of awareness of the needs of animals across the whole country.”

It is a terrible thing. This is something Alan Whicker could have highlighted on one of his TV shows.

But there is hope if the Chinese can be turned on to the delights of watching an overweight bigot team up with a half-inflated painted balloon and a midget singer.

If the Chinese can be retrained, the bears can be put out to pasture.

And then eaten…

Gander

Posted: 23rd, January 2007 | In: Tabloids Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink