The question is ‘why?’, not ‘how much?’

Channel Hopping

I am quite the connoisseur of diets. I have tried loads, some for about a day others for an hour or two. In fact, most Irish women can claim to have been on a diet or two in their lifetimes. We all delude ourselves that we are just one disgusting cup of cabbage broth away from a svelte body, rugged boyfriend, sports car and yacht.

In essence, we all want to be like the women in a Duran Duran video – ripping through the Caribbean on a sailboat, the wind in our hair and an ’80s swimsuit on.
I want to be Rio and I want to dance on the sand Godammit!
The reality, however, is all too different and the fact that the mere mention of a swimsuit sends me, and most people I know, into a blind panic is testament to just how unlike Rio I actually am.
Healthy BMIs notwithstanding, most people feel they could lose a few pounds. But the real question is not how much do I need to lose but rather how did I get here?
This is the question television presenter Becca Wilcox was asking on Monday night on BBC Three. In preparation for her wedding, this BBC presenter was engaging in some wishful Rio-like dreaming. She wanted to look great and as we all know in this day and age, we equate beauty with thin. (Why this is so is a rant, I mean calm and well-reasoned discussion, for another day.)
However, she took a similar angle to me in that she asked “how” rather than “why” she found herself with a spongy bit of blubber hanging over her belt.
The introduction to the programme was very enticing. “You’re going to love my programme about obesity because for once, it won’t make you feel guilty,” she said. And we did.
It was a great look at obesity that focused not on what we have all been doing wrong in finger-pointing in a Gillian McKeith way, but on how we are victims of a “feeder culture” that was encouraging us to stuff our faces with junk even though we knew that it was bad for us.
Wilcox wanted to show that, while we know we shouldn’t eat bad food like sweets and biscuits, there was a lot of unhealthy stuff we weren’t aware of in what could traditionally be termed “healthy food”.
In many ways, she succeeded in bringing her point across. Especially when she looked at just exactly how much sugar was contained on seemingly healthy foods. Sometimes, the gimmicks she used got a little strained but in general, her documentary was high-energy, fact-filled and a lot of fun. It was the essence of BBC Three in a programme.
Wilcox herself may have borrowed more than one documentary technique from Michael Moore but her grin made it all the more watchable. Watching her standing, microphone in hand with some candy sellers screaming at the Sugar Bureau for an interview was reason enough to watch it. As was the fact that she was removed on more than one occasion by security after she staged an aerobics session outside an NHS hospital that housed a Burger King.
Wilcox’s determination was admirable and her get-the-interview-at-all-costs approach definitely served at least her own presenting profile well.
There was nothing particularly impartial about what she was doing and I am sure a former journalism lecturer or two of mine would not rate her work but I enjoyed it.
I liked how the made nice montages of people’s PR nonsense and slogans.
The poor man from Morrisons Supermarket will never live down his continuous use of “healthy food at affordable prices”.
This combined with her glee at showing the corporate affairs director of the same supermarket how to use a wipe mate for toilet tissue certainly sealed her commitment to the job and her ability to merge fact and entertainment. Very enjoyable.
It’s not often a children’s programme makes it in to this column but Roy, which is currently showing on the Den is certainly worth a mention.
Roy is about a young boy who is growing up in Dublin. He is just like any 11-year-old boy. He lives in an average house in an average place and has the same fears, dreams and ambitious as anyone else.
However, there is one difference, Roy is animated. He finds it very difficult to fit in because he knows he is different. He turns blue when sad, green when jealous and a bump in the playground can mean a flock of circling birds. Roy, comes from the same place as Badly Drawn Roy. A very funny and entertaining short about a young man named Roy who was also animated. He left his home in Dublin and travelled across the pond to America to become an actor, although it didn’t quite work out. This children’s programme builds on this original idea but enhances it greatly. Roy is very well voiced and scripted and the other children are fantastic.
They interact with the animation as though he was a real boy and the whole package is very entertaining. There are a host of well-known Irish faces also in the programme, which is as much about the fun of being a child as it is about bringing messages of isolation, acceptance and growing up to a young audience.