Shropshire Magazine

Strictly speaking, Vanessa bemoans the decline of Auntie’s dance-fest, and welcomes Wogan’s retirement

Vanessa Lloyd Thomas.

Sell-by dates have been popping up with strange regularity this month – and it’s not just food that passes its best it seems, but people and programmes too. 

It all started at a ball, as many things do in the autumn. It had obviously been a slow news day, and the Saturday papers had been full of stories that families regularly throw away up to a third of the salad and veg they buy each week.

The gents – bless their naivety – thought this amazing, and that ladies in general paid far too much attention to date stamps. The conversation troughed when one fellow, a farmer, recalled finding a two-week-out-of-date pre-packed egg sandwich down the side of his Landrover dashboard and it was still delicious. Who needs ‘use by’ dates on food? Certainly not farmers it seems.

It’s just as well autumnal balls are plentiful, because there is very little incentive to stay in and watch television as the seasonal reality-fest that is head-to-head X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing comes to the box. 

I’m sure I wasn’t the only person in Britain who raised a hearty cheer to the news that Big Brother’s days were numbered – it really had got to the stage when the only people watching were in prison, in hospital or simply insane. But is it time that some other programmes were ‘Reduced for Quick Sale’ too? 

I was more than ready to turn my back on X Factor this year, whose Sunday morning repeats have hitherto been a guilty pleasure along with chocolate croissants, and a News of the World tucked inside the Sunday Times. The adult in me knows it is so wrong to find Simon sexy, Louis funny, and Cheryl and Danni girls you would love to have cocktails with, but I do find their chemistry irresistible. 

Simon Cowell is also nobody’s fool – a fresh new format for the show, which now sees contestants auditioning before a live audience, and, it seems, more TV time for the talent and less for the talentless has kept this a ratings winner. Five minutes and I was hooked once more. 

Strictly Come Dancing has been easier to avoid this time for the simple reasons that there are no celebrities and the people that have turned up can’t dance. If I wanted to watch people I didn’t know gyrating badly, I’d go to a nightclub and save myself the licence fee. 

Strictly dross.

Dreadful

I’ve always had to fast forward through the dreadful footage of the amateur dancers moaning, groaning and weeping their way through practice sessions as if they were actually working for a living, but in the early days it was a delight to see the professional dancers making samba silk purses out of proverbial pigs’ ears.

Now in its seventh series, with the only change being to ill-advisedly ditch dance-savvy judge Arlene Phillips, the barrel is being well and truly scraped. From the line up I recognise only four faces: Gravy Ad Lady, the ex-wife of a Rolling Stone, and a couple of people who might or might not still be in EastEnders.

Talking of the BBC and sell-by dates, I really am hugely grateful to Terry Wogan for realising it is his time to say goodbye. Eight million TOGS, or Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals, will disagree strongly with me, but I welcome the younger Chris Evans to this prime radio slot. 

As a girl, Radio 1 was my radio channel and Radio 2 my mum’s. My pals and I listened to chart music on a little battery radio, and mum listened to Tel and his jokes about Dallas and JR in the kitchen. The world was on its axis and everyone was happy. 

There’ll be tears from TOGs around the nation . . .

Since hitting my 30s and 40s I’ve been in Radio ‘no man’s land’. I still like the music on Radio 1 but the disc jockeys are becoming more like squabbling teenagers in need of a curfew; I switch to Radio 2 and the disc jockeys are older than my dad and every record was cut before I was born.

I only wish a few more ‘celebs’ and programme planners would follow Tezza’s lead and quit while they’re at the top of their game rather than hang around like that stale egg sandwich!