11th June, 2009 - Watchdog, Witches and Bad Karma

I do not generally get angry very easily. I am generally fairly even-tempered, and am often to be found in a state of karmic balance, where I am the universe and the universe is me.  However, once a week I get very irate. It is when I watch “Watchdog” on the telly.


“Watchdog” is a consumer programme where irate people who have been duped by conmen and rogue traders write in, and then the culprits are then entrapped by the journalist working on the show and are made to look like cretins. Now that's entertainment.

The difficulty for me is that I generally get far more annoyed about the banal content of the programme than I do about the culprits. The programme seems to have the habit of getting incredibly upset about matters that seem utterly trivial. Today, for example, we had a ten minute segment about a guy who claims to rid people’s houses of evil spirits. The journalist who was working on the piece had set the house up so that there were ghostly noises and so on, so that the guy looked like a moron.

And then – then!!!! – they casually mention that the guy isn’t actually charging the people who have the haunted house any money. He does this for a hobby. There’s great television for you eh? A guy who believes in evil spirits, helps out other people who believe they have a problem with evil spirits for nothing. How terrible. Call the police. Set him up on national TV. Hang draw and quarter him, and stick the witch’s head on a pike staff at Tower Bridge for all to see.

Honestly.