Speeding punnets

It's easy to knock daytime talk shows. Not magazines shows, with the likes of the lovely Phil and Fern, or the breezy 'debates' a la Loose Women; no, I mean the Trisha-type programmes, those modelled on such US imports as Jerry Springer and Ricki (Lake). The ones in which ordinary British folk act as though they've been raised in a trailer park in Tennessee, and not a nice one, but the type we genteel Europeans look down upon from our olde worlde cottages. The type that likely don't exist outside of Britney Spears biographies, the ones where the womenfolk marry their brothers while momma smokes a pipe.

I hope most of the misanthropic males and hectoring harpies on the British iterations are just acting up, copying the shenanigans of our American friends in order to get their 15 minutes of particularly lowbrow fame. But the rows and tears are starting to look real and I'm beginning to suspect that the learned behaviour is becoming internalised, and a mutation is taking place. Soon there'll be reports of babies born with cute little caravans on their backs, clutching DNA paternity tests and throwing cots at each other.

All of which is a preamble, really, to my snorting laughter at noticing that The Jeremy Kyle Show (that's him looking ever so concerned, caring yet tough) is no longer sponsored by the terribly respectable Learn Direct agency. Nope, the scoundrels and harridans who take over the TV every morning are now with us courtesy of . . . a vegetable supplier.