Readers often say to Blighty, ‘Hey Blighty, with all these television channels nowadays, it’s getting hard to know what to watch. Could you put one of your world famous guides together to fill us in?’ So, not being one to ignore feedback from his faithful readership (hi mum), here is Blighty’s guide to the weekend television.*

Friday

BBC1 7pm - Celebrities in Need. Unhinged celebrities ponce about in their spouse’s underwear embarrassing themselves for charity, mate.

Terry Wogan dresses up for charity.

Channel 4 7.30pm - Friends. The one where a bunch of smug American teeth sit around chattering.

BBC2 8pm - Reality TV School. Groups of wannabe TV producers are taught about the endless possibilities of making reality TV shows. Culminating in a show called Reality TV School, where groups of wannabe TV producers are taught about the endless possibilities of making reality TV shows…

ITV 8pm - Tonight with McDonalds. This week the investigative show sponsored by McDonalds looks into the ludicrous claim that fast food is bad for you, as if.

BBC2 11pm - Newsnight Revue. A group of London journos get together to put on a show, choreographed by Scottish song and dance woman Kirsty Walks.

Saturday

ITV 7.00pm - The Max Factor - A group of wannabe stars, with a series of unfortunate deformities, are given make-overs before the TV audience gets to vote on who is the least hideous.

Channel 4 7.05pm - Living With Aliens. The latest in the series showing viewers what you can do with photoshop and a piece of 3d software. Wow, they look weird maaan.

BBC1 9.10pm - Strictly Inane Television. More celebrities making fools of themselves, this time not for charity.

ITV 9.40 - Parkinson’s Disease. A senile star of the 1970s interviews the dead Frank Sinatra and asks him really boring questions that a 6 year old kid who has never heard of Frank Sinatra could think up, which he has asked before anyway.

Sunday

BBC2 8pm - Top Queer. Closet transsexual Jeremy Clarkson witters on endlessly about how politically incorrect he is, in between crashing cars and laughing like a child playing with his Fisher Price toys.

ITV 8pm - Faint Heartbeat. The latest episode in the experimental series in which nothing happens to a backdrop of pretty hills. Pushing back the boundaries of entertainment, as always.

ITV 9pm - If They’re Celebrities Get Me Out Of Here. Ten people who were on TV once get together to discuss the philosophy of Kant, and its relevance today.

BBC1 10.15pm - Panodrama. This week the current affairs show investigates the claim that Cherie Blair gives Tony Sugar Puffs for Breakfast, and asks the question, ‘Is this man fit for office?’

BBC1 10.55pm - Rome, Yes it is, No it isn’t. The latest installment of the pantomime loosely based on ancient Rome. ‘Oooh, do I look big in this toga, missus?’

* Blighty must apologise to his American readers for the, even more than usual, parochial nature of this post.

Britain has a drink problem, we all know that. We’re the drunks of Europe… hic. We are a lushy island sinking in an ocean of pure alcohol, looking across at France and asking them, ‘What are you looking at, did you knock over our pint?!’ Or are we? There are actually nine European countries who drink more than we do. The urge to urinate the resulting waste down continental streets, like dogs marking territory, doesn’t seem to occur however.

Europe, on the beer again

Our drink problem, then, isn’t in the amount we consume, but the way we do it. The French actually taste the drink before gulping it down the old neck, it seems. They drink with meals only. It’s just that they drink with every meal: breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, washing down a gob-stopper. In the UK, however, a night on the beer is preceded by a bout of fasting, ensuring that the alcohol has the desired effect. The point is to get drunk after all. We don’t want food getting in the way, soaking it all up!

Dr Aisha Holloway, chairman of the Nursing Council on Alcohol, claims that the problem is the pattern of consumption. She says that, “If the French are consuming at a more even consumption level, maybe two or three units every day, then that is better for you than going out and drinking 28 to 30 units at the weekend.”

This sounds reasonable enough. The more perceptive of you might have noticed a problem with this comment, however. Dr Holloway has the Brits knocking back 30 units in a weekend and the French 14 to 21 units a week! Dr Aisha, the French drink more than us, haven’t you heard?! The French must be drinking around 5 units a day at least, and that’s dependent on us boozy Brits not drinking at all during the week. Never trust doctors on the subject of alcohol, they always exaggerate for effect.

The biggest boozers in Europe are the liver soaked burghers of Luxembourg. They have beer coming out of the taps, apparently. They bathe in the stuff. Gargle with it. Wash their cars in it! Is this all true, or has Blighty been on the Merlot again? Hic…

Glasgow kills, it’s official. Living there can slice ten years off your life. Well, if your alternative residence is a Georgian townhouse in Chelsea that is. Glaswegians can expect to be rudely shoved off this mortal coil before they reach 70, whereas Chelseagians can expect to enjoy an 80th birthday party with canapes and champers. Blighty wonders if the local delicacy of deep-fried mars bars accounts for this. In Chelsea mars bars are merely brushed with the finest Extra-virgin Olive Oil, imported directly from Spain, and lightly sauteed.

Gorbal’s residents dream of a longer life.

Of course, what this survey tells us, if we need telling, is that people in Chelsea are posh and therefore eat better, drink better and don’t do harmful things like work 80 hour weeks to afford the mortgage on the rundown bedsit in the Gorbals. Residents of Chelsea rarely work at all, in fact, as daddy sees them right. They have an easy life and get more of it. People from poor areas in Glasgow have a shorter life and it probably drags a bit anyway.

Scotland, generally, is not conducive to a long life. Although, the north of England, especially the north west, isn’t a lot better. If you can’t afford property in Chelsea, and .000008 percent of us can, then other options are places nobody has heard of like Epson, Hart and Rutland, where house prices are merely astronomical.

Blighty works from home… occasionally. That is, occasionally works, there’s no traipsing off to the office on cold dark mornings for Blighty. Oh no, those days are over so bugger off Transpennine Express! The computer is booted up at around 9.30 and, after Blighty Jnr has had her first change of the day and been fed her breakfast while watching the Tweenies dance around like they’re on acid, she is handed over to Ms Blighty for a stint of Life Guarding and Blighty can get down to some browsing.. oh, and work of course.

The heat is on on Woman’s Hour

The radio is switched on. Radio 4 if it’s before 10am and, if it’s afterwards, 5live gets a brief listen until the third or fourth caller’s rant about political correctness gone maaad, or Tony Blair having eaten the wrong thing for breakfast or something equally despicable, when it is switched off in favour of something from Radio 4’s real player archive. Today, however, Blighty made the mistake of wandering into post-10am Radio Four Land, which means Woman’s Hour!

This is an odd place for a man to find himself, not least today as the two Conservative candidates, David Davies and David Cameron, were guests. It went something like, ‘Oooh, we have two men in the studio, giggle giggle. Which one is the more good looking, giggle giggle… So, which do you prefer David and, ha, David, Strictly Come Dancing or X-factor? Boxers or Briefs? On top or beneath? We don’t get men in here often, do you both have genitalia. Which is the bigger, can I see?’

It was as though two boys from the nearby public school had wandered into a middle-class girls school after lights out, giggle giggle. Blighty crept back to the real player archive a little dazed, determined to keep away from the Radio 4 10am slot forever.

Europe’s Venus Express is departing this week, so if you fancy a short break to our nearest planetary neighbour, buy your ticket quick. It won’t actually reach the planet until next year, however, so some time off work would be required. It is ‘express’ in the same way as the rush hour train in the morning. Blighty wonders if passengers have to stand up and sniff each other’s armpits throughout the journey too.

Venus is very dry.

The reason for this little expedition is to try to work out how a planet so similar to earth has evolved so differently. Whereas we have a lush green, and rather wet, place, Venus is as dry as a bone, and about as colourful. And it doesn’t even have cable television!

This wasn’t always the case, however (the dry bit, not the cable television, as far as we are aware it never had that). At one time, in its youth, Venus was probably a bit of a looker, with a similar amount of seas to our place. It had some decent coastal resorts in those days, no doubt. Unfortunately that has all boiled away now, due to a rather extreme bout of the greenhouse gases, killing off the Bed and Breakfast trade entirely.

The news isn’t all bad for those thirsty Venusians, however. The latest long-term weather forecast predicts some wet weather is on the way, which could mean Venus looking something like earth in the future. Unfortunately, earth is expected to have become uninhabitable by then, so perhaps the Venus Express of the future will indeed carry passengers… with one-way tickets.

As we all know, there are two kinds of drugs. There are those sold in Little Interlect newsagents along with the Daily Mail to Mrs Frobisher, reducing her life expectancy by ten years and adversely affecting the health of anyone within breathing distance, while they discuss the other kind, which are taken by young reprobates in private. The latter are illegal, while the former are not only legal, but their usage is a libertarian issue, especially in public places. Even if they do make you, a non-smoker, ill too.

A smoker in Little Interlect reflects on youth today

We all also know that even mild drugs (italics denotes the illegal kind) like marijuana are gateway drugs. This means that people who take stronger drugs like cocaine or heroin have smoked dope previously. However, nobody ever seems to ask the drug users whether they have drunk alcohol previously, or smoked tobacco, or had a cup of tea for that matter. Or coffee, if you’re American.

But we also all know that people who sell marijuana push the hard stuff too. There is a good reason for this. It’s because they are illegal and can’t be bought elsewhere. If Mrs Frobisher could no longer buy her ciggies over the counter she would be buying them on a street corner with the rest of the druggies.

The tories are disconcerted with their recent run of crushing election defeats. They consider themselves the natural party of government, being posh and thinking they own the place. Recent leadership elections have not helped matters, having been won by a Hammer Horror extra and two bald chaps whose names have escaped Blighty. As a result the party have come up with a novel idea to prevent another leadership election faux pas. This time they’re putting a blank canvas forward to the membership.

Today a Conservative party bigwig explained the logic behind this curious turn of events. He said that it had come to their attention that many voters didn’t like the tories very much. Blighty was with him so far. ‘When we speak we don’t seem to connect with a large part of the electorate. They don’t like the way we look, seeing us as stuffy and gray. They even think we have funny voices. The answer is obvious. We need a leader who doesn’t have views, doesn’t have a face and can’t speak. What we need is a blank canvas!’

However, if the parliamentary tory party think that this move will put a stop to those negative voter responses they might be mistaken. There are already murmurings that the blank canvas put forward is not the kind available to the ordinary artist working in his garret living off of dry bread and turpentine. To put it bluntly it is a posh canvas only available to people living in Chelsea.

A Labour party official said today that ‘the tory party can’t even put forward a blank canvas for leader without irritating voters. Bloody typical. Not for them one of the canvases you can buy from discount bookshops that cost a few quid? The tory party only stand for well to do canvasses, that much is clear.’

A Lib Dem spokesman said that they don’t care about the canvas’s background, but thought it reflected badly on the tory party that only a white canvas was considered for the job.

We’ve all been surprised, at some point, on being told by a bald headed man with a face like a map of central London that he’s doing his GCSEs this year and is actually female ‘you cheeky beggar!’, or by a soft skinned man with abundant locks of hair that he’s popping to the Post Office to draw his pension, once he remembers where he left his overcoat. It’s not always easy to guess a person’s age. Well, the same is true with planets. You can’t judge their age by the amount of craters they have, according to scientists.

Mars is younger than it looks.

Mars, for instance, could turn out to be a lot younger than was originally thought, it’s just not aged very well. Too many late nights peering into the night sky wondering what all that colour on earth is about.

Initially scientists believed that craters were the planetary equivalent of wrinkles. Because the assumption was that they were caused by meteorite collisions it followed that the age of the planet could estimated by the amount of them. But now they think that many of them are actually the result of secondary impacts, which is rather like waking up after a particularly heavy night on the beer to find a whole load of wrinkles appearing at once.

The upshot is that scientists now don’t know how old Mars is. And, as it would be rude to ask, they’re going to have to come up with another way of estimating. Blighty suggests checking for the growth of hair in unusual crevices.

Everybody is talking about it, but is what they’re saying true? Can you believe the media? It is well known, for instance, that no comment in the Daily Mail has ever been factual. Their weather forecasts even predict plagues of locusts on clear sunny days, especially during a Labour Government. So, Blighty has decided to break through this mire of misinformation and put you all straight.

If the flu pandemic does strike it’s no good popping to the chemist for a packet of antipandems because they won’t work. The virus will have mutated by this point into a human form that didn’t exist until it arrived. The only thing to do is hibernate.

It might be an idea to dust off those old nuclear fall-out pamphlets and follow their advice for shacking up for the long term. Ignore the bit about hiding underneath a table, however. If some blighter, fresh from a romantic tryst with feathered creature in Asia, sneezes in your vicinity, no kitchen furniture is going to help. Blighty top tip, don’t allow other people in your kitchen.

You can follow the advice about stocking up on baked beans though, as this is traditional in times of crisis. It might be a good idea to buy in plenty of flour too, so you can bake your own bread and thus have a constant supply of toast. Beans are no good without toast after all. It could make the difference between a bad flu pandemic and one in which everyone sits around the piano singing songs about the good old British spirit. You don’t have a piano? Buy one immediately! There will be no TV as most stars will stay at home and those who don’t will die on the air. On some ITV programmes it could be difficult to tell the difference.

It might be a good idea to move to a remote village in northern Scotland. If the virus does make its way up there it’s unlikely to have the legs to do any damage. Of course, if everyone follows this advice it could be counter-productive as they will all want to move there, bringing their germs with them. This would be bad news as regards the virus but will do wonders for the Scottish economy.

Of course, there will be no schools open during this time, so you can lock your children in their bedroom with the Sony PSP. If, however, your boss does not respond positively to your request for taking unlimited leave tell him to do something rude with a Thai chicken and leave immediately. The dictatorial bugger will probably die anyway so who cares?

This brings us to the economy. As no one will be working, and the streets will be empty, there could well be a slowdown. Blighty suggests taking out any money tied up in shares and hiding it under the bed. You’re not going to be going out any time soon so it is unlikely you’ll be robbed. And any decent burglar will be taking time off too, to spend with his family.

You will know it is safe once everyone else in your neighbourhood is dead. Dead men don’t sneeze. It will then be up to you to revive the human race by breeding like rabbits. However, warn any offspring not to go into chicken farming.

She is 80 this week. The woman who put a generation on the dole. It was a necessary evil apparently, which wouldn’t be so bad, if she hadn’t proceeded to blame the unemployed for their plight. It’s a startling fact that no one leaving school in the 80s got a job. In fact, they didn’t find employment until Tony Blair came to power in 1997. They don’t tell you that in the Daily Mail.

Putting half the working class of Britain on the dole had the perverse effect of making her more popular with the other half. Especially as she gave council tenants the right to buy their own homes. Anyone with a job became a tory. Then they cursed the unemployed, calling them scroungers. There’s nothing like giving one person another to look down upon to create a feeling of superiority. Very divisive, Mrs T, that was her great strength. Next time some lefty tells you that the Labour Party deserted the working class, point out that the working class deserted Labour first.

Yes, all socialists in Britain are middle-class. Blighty had firsthand experience of this in the 80s when, spurred on by hatred for this week’s birthday girl, he became a Labour Party activist. All the activists who weren’t school teachers or office workers were disabled in some way that you couldn’t quite pin down. None of them were semi-skilled engineers or bus drivers. And they got a rude awakening going around estates and facing rants about not wanting ‘a family of ten pakis living next door to me thank you very much’.

The current Labour Party get a lot of stick from celebrity socialists like Rory Bremner and Will Self. But how would they know anything about the working-class? Will Self, public schoolboy, educated in the classics, became a heroin addict and dropped out, before becoming an enfant terrible on the Observer and writing wordy books that no working-class person would ever read. His audience is strictly bourgeois. He wouldn’t stand two minutes in a working mens club. Blighty has news for him: working-class aren’t socialist, they vote for Maggie Thatcher or the BNP.

Thankfully Labour learnt from their experience during the Thatcher years. It dawned upon the pragmatists among them that socialism would never get them elected. They also realised that some of the policies of Thatcherism might have been necessary. It’s a shame she didn’t show more compassion for all those victims she created, however, instead of demonising them. She owes a debt of gratitude to the five million unemployed. Where would she be without them?