I can make you hate Read Free Page B

because I’d gladly kick a hospital to death for half a teaspoon of it. In an instant, I understood in my bones why people become heroin addicts.
    I went light-headed, then more light-headed, and then I can’t remember what happened. I was dimly aware of being moved back down a corridor. Before I knew it I was back in a cubicle, wondering whether they’d even been near my neck at all. The doctor came in to check on me, and I asked him if I’d been unconscious.
    ‘No, no,’ he said cheerfully, ‘you were talking a fair bit.’
    Talking? I was talking?
    ‘Yes; we held a conversation with you throughout. You get a bit of amnesia, but that’s it. It’s good stuff.’
    I’ve never had a blackout; never been knocked unconscious; never drunk so much I can’t remember the night before. This wholesale deletion of recent memories is entirely new to me. And it’s kind of creepy. During the blank phase, was I still me? If not, who was doing the talking on my behalf? Roger De Courcey? And where was I while this was happening? Delivering milk on the moon? Window-shopping in the afterlife? Hovering over Plymouth? Was I dead? Dead-ish? Or merely very obedient? Did they make me do terrible things with vegetables and film it and put it on the internet? Time will tell.
    Whatever happened, whoever took over thankfully hadn’t felt the need to flail like a salmon when the spike went in. Clearly they’re more responsible and less neurotic than I am: they can have the job permanently if they like.
    That evening, as I left the hospital, I realised I’d caught a cold. I spent the night sneezing and staring at the ceiling, keeping myself entertained by working out how to swear by blinking alone.

This is the news
25/09/2009
     
    Finally, vegetables have a TV show of their very own. Not human vegetables. Don’t be daft. This is way beneath them. I’m talking about actual vegetables: carrots, potatoes, turnips, cauliflowers … such is the target audience for
Live From Studio Five
.
    Clearly too stupid for human consumption, it is instead aimed squarely at cold, unfeeling lumps of organic matter with no discernible minds of their own. And it succeeds brilliantly at keeping them entertained. I watched last Monday’s episode in the company of a clump of broccoli, and it was held in a rapt silence throughout. Well, most of the time. To be honest, I think it drifted off a bit during a Backstreet Boys report. And I had to slap it awake at the start of each ad break. Apart from that, it was spellbound.
    Yes, here is a TV show that makes any and all previous accusations of ‘dumbing down’ seem like misplaced phoney-war hysteria. A show providing less mental nourishment than a baby’s rattle. A show with a running order
Heat
magazine would consider frighteningly lightweight. A show that boasts Melinda Messenger as its intellectual touchstone. A show dumber than a blank screen and a low hum. Anyone who willingly tunes in to watch this really ought to be forced to work in the middle of a field for the rest of their life, well away from any technological devices (such as motor vehicles or microwave ovens) with which they might inadvertently cause harm to others.
    In short: this is quite a stupid programme. It’s hosted by Messenger , Ian Wright and Kate ‘The Apprentice’ Walsh. Inoffensive in isolation, once combined they demonstrate the sort of chemistrythat could close a public swimming pool for twenty-five years. For one thing, they all stare and smile down the lens throughout, as though they’ve been asked to imagine the viewer is a backward child at a birthday party. Kate in particular grins like a woman being paid per square metre of dentistry.
    According to the official website the show is ‘a mix of celebrity interviews, gossip and banter wrapped around a popular news agenda that everyone’s talking about’. In other words, it’s a torrent of flavourless showbiz porridge interspersed with occasional VTs about Ronnie Biggs or