More Grumpy Letters

More I am thinking about writing another grumpy letter. This time the victim is living tv. Living tv is home to great programmes such as America’s Next Top Model and the brilliant Four Weddings, where brides attend each others weddings and then slag them off. I love living tv, so I probably won’t write to them as it would be heartbreaking for both of us. However I am very upset with them, so maybe when Four Weddings has finished and before the new series of America’s Next Top Model I will perform a brief boycott. A week or so, but not when there is anything I actually want to watch on.

The strop is prompted by an advert that I saw the other day. It’s for a programme called Dating in the Dark which is due to start soon (and looks appalling). Three girls and three boys go on blind dates together, but here’s the twist, all the dates take place in the pitch black. They see how they get on and then the lights are turned on. In the advert one girl is seen snogging a bloke in the darkened room. Then cut back to her chatting to the other girls where she is flushed with embarrassment and says in the tones normally reserved for telling someone you’ve run over their cat “and then the lights went on….and Sean was ginger”. Cue raucous laughing and gasps of horror from the other girls. How charming. I have a feeling if she’d come out and said in horror “then the lights went on and Sean was Chinese” it would be met with embarrassed silence at her racism and discrimination. But ginger – that’s fine. Let’s tell the world how ugly gingers are, let’s be embarrassed to find them attractive.

It’s just rude. But presumably if this poor Sean guy turned round and said “well you have a massive nose, so big it’s repulsive, what’s that about Schnozzy?”, he’d be told off for bullying and being rude as it’s a feature about herself that she can’t change. Unlike hair colour which presumably should be dyed on emergence from the womb.

I am only slightly ginger but it still gets commented on regularly. Perhaps people envy my ability to grow interestingly coloured hair. Perhaps they are just bored. Maybe I shall start a bizarre streak of prejudice against people with brown hair. Everytime someone with brown hair walks past I shall collapse in to paroxysms of mirth whilst pointing and going “oh my god you’ve got brown hair”. “poo head!”. I don’t really think anyone would take that as the brown haired person having the problem. I however would look very special indeed.

That was quite a rant but I do find it irritating. In my mind I should be celebrated (and not just for my hair colour). I have never had to dye my hair. Surely we should be mocking the people born with such non descript mousy hair who have to pay to get theirs dyed? People who have curly hair? People whose hair is too straight? Or perhaps we should all just get on with it.

Gosh that was a bit of a rant. Perhaps I won’t send it to living tv. Perhaps I should send it to the UN as a call for peace. Just call me Kofi Anan