Tonight: Is TV Too Rude?
ITV 1
Panorama: Have I Got Bad Language For You?
BBC 1
Horizon: Why Are Thin People Not Fat?
BBC 2
HOW does television tackle the burning issue of “taste and decency” – swearing and bare bums – on its own airwaves? Not by herding a bunch of us into a TV studio, screening a few “controversial” clips of recent programmes and asking for a show of hands on which of them we’d quite like to ban. Is TV Too Rude? – a recent edition of Tonight – was a shining example of televisual fatuity, purporting to be an exercise in audience democracy, but actually a display of competitive tutting and ranting, generating not a single original or helpful thought.
Then again, the usually more heavyweight Panorama fared no better with Have I Got Bad Language For You, sending comedian Frank Skinner off to probe the same issue for us, his brow knitted to show how seriously he was taking it all.
Several interviews with the usual suspects later – former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore, “blue” comic Chubby Brown, a genial and evasive Michael Grade – we were none the wiser. But Skinner had put up so little fight (if society had changed, he’d humbly “follow the new set of rules”) that you started to fear hard economic times may yet expose us to the forces of narrow-minded repression.
However, nothing could beat the smugness of the 10 human guinea pigs in Horizon: Why Are Thin People Not Fat? Not only did the 20- something slim people boast they could eat whatever they fancied and never gain an ounce, they came over all queer at the sight of a perfectly reasonable table full of pizzas, cakes and chips.
The idea of the experiment was to turn the focus of obesity research away from the fatsos and onto the preternaturally slim, finding out exactly how fat they could get if they doubled their calorie intake overnight. This reviewer has already put in the hard work on this one. I could have told them exactly how I did it – for a reasonable fee.
It was an irritating youth with lank hair, Amish-style beard and no moustache who turned out to have the lowest level of body fat before the whole gimmick – sorry, experiment – kicked off. But he was soon laughing on the other side of his face. Banned from taking a stroke of exercise and forced to stuff down 5,000 calories a day including whole tubs of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, he began feeling distinctly queasy.
His fellow volunteers were also floundering, the hopeless lightweights, even missing their calorie target and complaining: “Every mouthful I take is a struggle”. Some of them were not really trying – typical of young people today.
When it wasn’t listening to the young whingers, the programme regaled us with all the latest theories of what causes obesity: it’s a Stone Age defence against starvation, it’s your mum’s fault for being fat herself, it’s a virus, it’s all in your mind.
And the upshot of the experiment? A few of the subjects put on a smidgeon of weight, some got a bit fatter, but looked exactly the same, and one actually put on more lean muscle. What’s more, within a few weeks, the whole shower were back to their old weights, without even having to diet. I’d like to see them all do the same experiment again past the age of 40.
And the helpful conclusion for the rest of us? Some people just stay naturally slim. The obese among us will have to live with hunger pangs for the rest of our lives if we want to resemble them. Meanwhile, get this: it’s easier to keep off a little extra flab than a ton of it. Groundbreaking stuff. I’d never have guessed it, would you?
Helen Chappell
