Must See TV

Two topics normally dominate discussion at work; reality tv shows and fantasy football. Masterchef, Australia's Got Talent and of course the ubiquitous Idol share space with the imaginary triumphs of non existent football teams with much gloating and groaning as results are compared. Today a new topic of conversation was added; Carl Williams was beaten to death in gaol.

For those of you fortunate enough not to know Carl Williams ran a major drug network in Melbourne and through a series of brutal murders managed to do more than the police ever have to reduce the number of violent criminals in that city. Furthermore he managed to do this while maintaining a seamless facade as a bloated half wit. Eventually the police caught him at least partly because he had murdered most of the other likely suspects. He was given thirty three years in gaol which seemed to surprise him and in a piece of brutal irony was bludgeoned to death with a part from an exercise bike which probably surprised nobody.

Today the talk was all things Carl and whether or not yet another "underworld war" would break out. The television networks are terribly excited at this prospect providing, as it does, gainful employment for their news and current affairs teams and holding out the promise of a fourth season of Underbelly. For the moment reality tv has faded into the background as reality, or some facsimile of it, takes its place.

Reality tv will be back though. There just seems to be no end of shows that I am never going to watch. The latest I have heard is that someone is trying to put together a reality tv show based around one of Tiger Woods' mistresses and one of Jesse James. They plan to call it...oh who cares what its called as long as there's an adults only version. My suggested titles are Worst Celebrity Screw Ups or possibly Don't Blame Us We Just Had Sex With the Guy. I don't know what the two "stars" will bring to the programme as I suspect we already know pretty much everything they're good at.

When one sees something like reality tv there are only two options. One can either hide or take up arms against it. No wait, there's a third option. So here is my idea for a reality tv programme. We grab some of Tiger's and Jesse's left over mistresses (or wait six months and grab their wives) give them various pieces of exercise equipment and televise them bludgeoning violent criminals to death. At the end of each program a viewer poll will be taken to see which mistress the audience wants to leave (or in the case of male viewers, sleep with them). We can do betting and create league tables and run a fantasy sports game on the results. If you know anyone in television (or with a video camera) please pass this along. I plan to call it Pseudo Celebrity Fantasy Beatdown Deathmatch Idol. Catchy, no?