Back in the deep, dark mists of time I made some noises, some of which were musical. Being a drummer and sometimes hanging around with musicians, there always was a chance that this might happen. Since then a forrin word has established itself – amongst many – in the English language: genre. True, being a drummer and therefore of limited intellect, it took me a while to figure out how to pronounce it, but even before that I’d understood that it served to divide musical styles up into groups that were easily understandable by people who watched late night arts shows.
During my time of indulging in the rhythm method, I managed to thump my way through rock, pop, funk, military, alpine/oompah, country, skiffle, latin, reggae and what could only be called ‘edgy’. Most of the edginess occurred at Southern Studios, the forge 
from which Crass hammered out their mellifluous melodies, and where we discofied The Rockford Files, gave white voices to the Mau Mau, made the Sun Arise and generally tortured the air until it made the noise we wanted it to. One piece of edginess I was privileged to play on, Nik Nak Paddywack, was by a mad (as in angry) bugger from Belfast who went under the nom de guerre of Hit Parade (really Dave Hyndman). Prior to that Dave had released an EP (a seven inch vinyl disc featuring more than two songs for you whipper-snappers), Bad News, which raised questions in Parliament and had the Special Branch pulling ALL Crass recordings from record shops. Yeah: proper edgy.
Having been presented with a turntable for my sixty-third, I proceeded to spin some grooves and happened upon said disc. And one refrain hit me like a fresh turbot wrapped around a house brick… and it goes like this:
We don’t want your TV,
We don’t want your lies,
We don’t want to sit and stare at other people’s lives.
Now then, here is a list of programmes available during weekdays on the BBC (actually, today):
- Heir Hunters: Following professional people finders entrusted with the task of seeking out the third cousin twice removed of Findlay Munchbucket late of this parish and intestate.
- Homes Under the Hammer: Let’s watch as those quicker off the mark than we are go snapping up the housing stock to add to their ‘portfolios’.
- Countryside 999: Just what you need when you’ve had a run-in with a combine harvester: a camera crew to record your near death experience while medics try to elbow their way through to scoop what’s left of you into an air ambulance.
- Caught Red Handed: Prick-with-ears “Dom Littlewood looks at clever new ways that the police and the public are catching crooks red handed.” Or ‘If the Stasi had Reality TV’.
- Bargain Hunt: How dumb can people be? This dumb: buy stuff at an antique shop, take it to an auction to sell… to people who own antique shops.
- Escape to the Country: Watch as a couple of dimwits sell their two-bed apartment in Brixton and go shopping for a manor house, 20 acres and a small village in deepest Shropshire. Dimwits because their two-bed apartment will be ‘worth’ twice as much in a couple of years, once Homes Under the Hammer start recording.
- Flog it!: Nope, not a Saudi import about wife management, but a couple of mid-alphabet celebs encouraging a pair of numpties to root out assorted family heirlooms to sell for bugger-all at an auction so they can have their holiday of a lifetime on a floating housing estate masquerading as a cruise liner.
- Wanted Down Under: The Twonk family is jetted to the other side of the world to figure out that the exorbitant cost of nappies and spiders the size of a small car are no barrier to a life free of their overbearing parents and a thankless job in the NHS that is being eaten alive by marauding Tory bastards.
- Pointless: An exercise in pointlessness (but if you don’t know it: a game show).
- Too Much TV: “Telly legends, celebrity guests and TV insiders tell you what’s good on TV this week.” Really. This really does exist.
- This Farming Life: Watching farm folks do what they do.
That’s all in one day and like I said, it’s all on one channel, BBC1, and it’s all one genre: bollocks. The rest of the evening is a mix of panel shows, game shows, the laughable OJ Simpson silliness and the News (which is now just uber-reality TV).
So, Mr Hyndman, it seems that the majority of the population don’t agree with you: they do want the TV, they do want the lies and they do want to sit and stare at other people’s lives.
Why did any of us bother?
Because we could make a noise like this: I defy you to wrap it in a genre.
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