The perils of all these ghastly TV freak shows

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The perils of all these ghastly TV freak shows

May 28th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By
Peter McKay

PUBLISHED:

18:29 EST, 27 May 2012

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UPDATED:

18:29 EST, 27 May 2012

The 63st, 19-year-old Georgia Davis, whose house had to be partly knocked down so she could be removed from it to hospital, had appeared on TV as Britain’s fattest teenager.

She was sent to a ‘fat camp’ in the U.S., where she lost 15st. But she piled the weight back on after returning to her 13,000-calories-a- day diet of junk food.

Her stepfather, Arthur Treloar, puts this down to Georgia discovering he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. ‘She took it very badly,’ he says. Georgia herself attributes her revolting binge-eating to the death of her natural father.

63-stone Georgia Davis appeared on TV as Britain's fattest teenager

63-stone Georgia Davis appeared on TV as Britain’s fattest teenager

Might she also have taken badly her return to obscurity after a brief taste of TV fame? Returning from fat camp she told a newspaper: ‘I like my face and the way my body is shaped. The world is my oyster and I feel I can achieve anything.’

Do these confessionals ever help? Our TV screens are filled nightly with otherwise obscure people who suffer gross physical deformities. The justification for exposing them is that making public the difficulties of such lives is a healthy, cathartic process.

But are the producers’ motives any better than those who ran freak shows in Victorian times, as depicted in The Elephant Man?

Drastic measures: Emergency workers had to knock down a wall and construct a ramp to remove Georgia from her house and into an ambulance

The TV shows pull in a lowing herd of undiscerning viewers who, in turn, attract advertising from firms which prosper by targeting this demographic.

I don’t know what combination of psychological imbalance and family background caused Georgia Davis to gorge herself to 63st, but exposure on TV and newspapers as Britain’s fattest teenager can’t have helped.

It’s all part of a strange modern process in which the old rewards of individual attention seeking — the grudging support of friends and relatives — have been magnified countless times by TV projection. Tout le monde is apprised of your self-harming drama.

People who could never normally have expected to be seen on television will achieve acceptance by controllers of the magic lantern if they agree to expose their abnormalities or fetishes.

Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies flatters itself by proposing that showing the disfigurements, or ailments, of credulous volunteers is performing a public service. Perhaps it is if it encourages them to have their problems addressed.

But why would anyone choose to flaunt their naked flesh, including private parts, on TV instead of in a doctor’s surgery? It’s the same with TV pairing up people who are abnormally fat or unfeasibly thin.

Nothing is done for them on TV which could not be more simply achieved in private — but that’s not the point. Turning themselves into a public exhibit is a thrilling departure from humdrum reality.

They have set off down the road of morbid self-absorption, the stars of their own melodrama.

Once shown on TV, their problems cease to be of interest to the programme makers, or the public, unless they are involved in a new, difficult-to-ignore drama. Having her house demolished to get her out of it has restored Georgia’s story to the news schedules.

Perhaps there will be a fresh attempt by TV to get her back to fat camp. But those who care for her might consider doing so privately, and resisting the lure of cheap TV offers. Being stupid isn’t a crime, thank goodness, as most of us would find ourselves up on charges regularly.

But having it exposed on TV is never a solution.

Nick Clegg to TV interviewer: ‘Can I just finish the point — it’s very important?’ It wasn’t, of course. Just another soundbite. Clegg could talk non-stop political ballast for 24 hours. In any sensibly-arranged world, he’d be driven from politics at the 2015 election. But our politics isn’t sensibly arranged.

We reward failure by booking berths for the biggest of them on the EU gravy train. Westminster experts now say Clegg will be sent there as one of our commissioners. And there’s nothing we can do about it except seethe.

Joke: Frank Skinner with girlfriend Cath

It’s one small joke for Dad…

Comic Frank Skinner, who has become a father at 55, names his son (by ‘beloved girlfriend’ Cath Mason, 43) Buzz Cody — after the second man on the moon, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Wild West hero Buffalo Bill Cody.

Skinner (pictured with Cath) adds: ‘Oh God, he’s going to be so funny when he grows up.’ The poor laddie might have to be hilarious to live with his father’s little joke.

Who are our real masters?

We paid £270 million last year to re-employ civil servants sacked by the Ministry of Defence, it emerges.

This was ‘dreadful value for the taxpayer’, points out the public accounts committee unnecessarily.

Worst of all, the MoD isn’t sure how many they have re-hired as consultants. It doesn’t seem to matter, though. They’ll just keep sacking and re-hiring as they see fit.

Do you ever wonder why people are described as civil servants? Does it ever feel as if they are serving you?

My own sense is that I am serving them, providing better salaries and pensions than those enjoyed by workers in private industry and allowing them to waste prodigious sums and/or make mistakes costing billions with no penalties.

The chair of the public accounts committee is Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who says: ‘The MoD has gone ahead with cuts . . . without a proper understanding of what skills it will need in the future.’

Which suggests the Coalition is to blame. But the MoD inherited from Labour a £38 billion hole in its finances and is trying to save £4.1 billion by reducing its civilian workforce as well as military personnel by a total of 54,000.

Year after year, decade after decade, our ‘servants’ — MPs, Whitehall, local government, the BBC — waste tens of billions. Political parties score points by tallying the waste figures, but no action is taken to control it, far less prevent it.

Our huge debt would be cleared tomorrow if a serious attempt was made to cut government waste but too many interested parties — civil servants, consultants, and those who work the welfare system — have their snouts in the trough. Civil servants? Masters more like.

Big-headed: Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls

Calm down, Dessie – leave the Balls to Labour

David Cameron’s parliamentary private secretary Desmond Swayne, who likes to be known as Dessie, gees up Tory MPs via email to support the PM with a ‘protective wall of sound’ when Ed Miliband gets to his feet in the Commons.

‘Please show sufficient stamina for full half hour,’ he says, referring to the duration of Prime Minister’s Questions.

Since Labour MPs do the same for Miliband, we get a fairly continuous wall of sound. Personally I don’t find it nearly as distracting as the elaborately-phrased, self-conscious attempts by Speaker John Bercow to stop the uproar. For my money, Cameron usually wins these encounters. He is prepared to be nastier than Miliband, and his barbs are funny.

But he is damaged, too, by them. Saying Miliband isn’t up to the job is the kind of insult that should be reserved for special occasions. Better to allow others to come to that conclusion.

He also allows Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls (above) to get under his skin. Last week he had to withdraw his remark about Balls being ‘a muttering idiot’.

Balls, who has a repertoire of teasing gestures and comments which enrage the Prime Minister, said yesterday in an interview: ‘Cameron can dish it out, but he can’t take it.’ He says Cameron looks at him and thinks, ‘This guy has found me out.’ A little big-headed? He, too, might be better served by allowing others to come to this conclusion.

Maybe Cameron is more concerned that some of his MPs are amused by Balls’s harassment. Swayne’s cynical advice to MPs via email underlines their lowly position, which can’t help.

‘If Ed grudgingly acknowledges anything positive in today’s unemployment figures then instantaneously bring down the roof,’ is one example from last week. Can’t have made them feel better about themselves, or the PM.

Scrawl: Tracy Emin's portrait of the Queen

Scrawl: Tracy Emin’s portrait of the Queen

Tracey Emin is taken seriously as an artist — by herself, if no one else. Talking about her talents, yesterday she told BBC TV: ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it.’ Also: ‘I’ve done seminal works of art. Most artists don’t do that.’

Ms Emin was commissioned to draw our Diamond Jubilee Queen. The result (above) isn’t a likeness. It’s a nothing-like-ness. A child could do better. Yet she is Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy. Why? Because she attracts publicity, I’d guess.

Her modest skills and common touch don’t intimidate the population at large. Those who control art can feel superior to her.

A friend once knew a tipsy, tinker bagpiper in the Western Highlands called Tobermory who played very badly but people were generous with their donations. He made them feel relaxed about their own musical shortcomings.