Britain’s got talent ... but oh boy, is it excruciating

AH, EASTER! For some a celebration of the resurrection of a saviour, for others a reminder of our ancient pagan past, but for most of us a chance to watch telly for three days straight and eat chocolate until it leaks out of our ears and cacao-bonds us to the sofa.

Now normally I am firmly with Homer Simpson on the matter of television and only refrain from similarly hugging the set's trailing cable to my chest and exclaiming in wonder: "How can one little insulated wire bring so much happiness!" because it would require moving 18 DVD box sets out of the way first.

But watching Britain's Got Talent is not like watching a television programme. It is like having a scab ripped off night after godforsaken night. How did we collectively come to a point where we can not only bear but enjoy — actually thrive on — the very particular pain of watching others embarrass themselves?

I know I have a stupidly low threshold for this kind of thing. It takes me four hours to get through an episode of The Office because I have to pause it after every David Brent scene to neck some Nurofen, change my sweat-soaked clothes and gaze out onto some soothing vista for 20 minutes to recover my equilibrium. And he's fictional. I know that.

But how can anyone watch The Apprentice without biting his or her hands in horror at the possibility that one day one of them might become self-aware and have the knowledge of what he is and what he did and said suddenly be revealed to him? Or her, of course. Or the auditions for Pop Idol and The X Factor? They are not entertainment, they are endurance tests.

Most recently there's the BBC's The Speaker, which, as a programme that follows the search for Britain's best teenage public speaker, manages to compress more human suffering on both sides of the screen into an hour than scientists had previously thought possible in a lifetime. I'm having to type from the foetal position just thinking about it.

There is something quietly brutalising about these programmes. They are packaged and sold to us as harmless, entertaining fun. But in fact, in order to watch them the viewer must perform a strange psychic split.

You must keep your basic faculties online while closing off the tender inner core of yourself that writhes in agony whenever someone who has absolutely no business trying to hit a high note, move to a beat or make a wooden dummy speak attempts to do exactly that.

The outpouring of audience emotion when someone like Susan Boyle, who let rip so effectively and unexpectedly with I Dreamed a Dream on Saturday night that she even caused Amanda Holden to show a flicker of genuine feeling, is not joy. It is relief that the warring sides of the brain can be briefly reunited.

It is almost impossible to avoid these programmes now without doing the unthinkable and giving up television completely.

Those of a sensitive disposition should simply trade in the remote control for a Thorazine drip. One little drug-filled wire will bring so much more happiness.

Long way to go for a takeaway

LAST week I travelled from my house in very, very south-east London to a friend's house in Kilburn for supper. When I eventually arrived, he informed me that he hadn't been in the mood to cook but would send out for a pepperoni pizza.

By dint of some strangulated cries and emphatic gesturing I gave him to understand that the journey (by bus, train and foot) had taken me 90 minutes and a roundel of greasy dough, cheese and pig bits would not suffice as reward.

"I suppose you're right," he said, after mulling this over for a moment, "I mean — I wouldn't travel from here to King's Lynn for a takeaway, would I?"

Well, quite.

I offer this useful yardstick to anyone else burdened with a south-of-the-river address and slightly useless friends.