I SUPPOSE that, with celebrations of the birth of the baby Jesus imminent, I should get my televisual arrangements sorted. I don’t really have anything at the moment.

Televisually, I’ve becomes a lost soul. I haven’t kept up. That said, I mustn’t do myself down, pretending to be some fogey whom life is passing by. If life ever tries passing me by, I boot it up the bahookey and tell it to get back in line.

For starters, I’ve a huge telly that was the latest thing 10 years. I’ve had Netflix twice. I think I’ve got Amazon Prime, though it never connects. I’ve had Sky and BT TV in the past, and certainly wouldn’t touch the former with a bargepole again.

If folk don’t keep an eye on these things, they can easily find themselves paying 80 or 90 quid a month – over 100 if you include the compulsory state licence. All to watch telly and find “there’s nothing on”.

There’s been talk in the public prints this week of Netflix getting taxpayers’ money to create public service programmes, after the BBC became a niche outlet for special interest groups. But do taxpayers get free access to Netflix for these programmes? Or are they taxed again, the second time by the private sector?

I had Netflix twice after signing up to watch Ricky Gervais’ two After Life series. At first, I thought it great: a whole world of televisual possibility. But, eventually, you notice it’s just the same handful of series and films being flagged up. Months later, you take another look, and it still hasn’t changed.

Meanwhile, the state-run BBC has become a woke joke, with even The Vicar of Dibley infected. Speaking of which, never mind the PC homework shoehorned into the forthcoming Xmas specials, star Dawn French revealed she’d smuggled rude jokes into the original, supposedly innocent tales of life in rural Middle England.

But it was ever thus. Folk point to old shows and say they never had smut, but there was plenty if you looked hard enough for it. Take Dad’s Army. When, for example, Private Fraser interrupts a lecture by Captain Mainwaring with a shout of “Rowlocks!”, it’s clear that he is meaning testicles. I don’t need to tell you what these are.

Oh, I do? Well, here’s the Oxford English Dictionary: “two ellipsoid glandular bodies, constituting the sperm-secreting organs in male mammals, and usually enclosed in a scrotum”. Usually?

At any rate, it remains my view that there’s no place for scrotums on our screens. Is the plural scrota incidentally? Any classical scholars specialising in testicles out there?

Crivvens, who side-tracked us into discussing scrotal grammar? What was I talking about? Oh yes, the BBC. Essentially, state control is like monarchical control: fine if you’ve the right people in, hellish otherwise.

The BBC has been actively recruiting the wrong people – activists based on identity rather than talent – for some time. And once recruited, these same people recruit more wrong people. So it’s now dominated by a middle-class, metropolitan elite, far removed from yonder real world.

You say: “Whit aboot cable an’ a’ that, ken?” Whit, I mean what, about them? Cable channels have more adverts than programmes. It’s what happens when you let the market run things. It all goes tawdry.

I can’t even get cable channels anyway. I don’t have an aerial for Freeview and can’t afford to put one up (BT said they’d do it for 30 quid but their contractors confessed they didn’t cover my part of Scotland; er, aren’t they contractually obliged to cover the whole UK?).

There’s a BBC iPlayer on my “smart” blu-ray player but you can’t watch, for example, live footer games on that. I engage it every week to watch the highlights on Sportscene and Match of the Day. Just for that, I pay 13 quid a month.

I’ll be candid with you, readers. I feel left out. At Xmas, the whole country will gather round their screens, laughing heartily at homely comedies explaining how the baby Jesus was the prototype for Mr Burns from The Simpsons, and Herod a much misunderstood progressive ruler. Come to think of it, maybe I’m better off out of it.

You don’t sleigh

SOME ne’er-do-well mentioned the free market – so called because it charges for everything – and it’s fair to say the market both makes and mars Christmas.

On the one hand, look at all the presents you can buy yourself. On the other hand, oh, the tawdriness. One Covid-governed “drive-thru Christmas” in Manchester charged £25 to encounter two bewildered reindeer (extra £95 if you wanted to feed them) and a skinny Santa who didn’t even have a white beard.

Maybe yon Faithir Christmas will join the new Union of Santas which has applied for federation with the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas in yonder United States.

One British member said being a Santa opened up “a lot of worries”, particularly in these viral times, while a US representative said it wasn’t easy keeping the magic alive.

Ain’t that the truth? We wish the new union season’s greetings, and trust its constitution will include a socialist commitment to Claus IV.

Ikea gets rid of dead wood

IKEA’S scrapping of its catalogue is a serious blow to visual literature, if there is such a thing. At any rate, we’ll miss the wonderful product names such as Fartie, Gonnorea and Knobb.

The publication is being discontinued because everyone peruses the goods on their computers now, making me wonder if I should finally think about getting one of these gadgets myself.

I was excited for my first visit to Ikea, but quickly discovered that, typical of the free market, it was tawdry. I’d roll up looking for a wardrobe and leave with a tin of herring.

Ikea used to sell more colourful wooden objects, in the Scandinavian tradition. Now it’s all the same cheap-looking, unpainted pine.

On the few occasions I bought something non-piscine, I’d have to paint the wooden items myself – disgraceful – because I like my home to look cheerful, in line with my personality, ken?

It’s an age since I visited Ikea. Latterly, I’ve thought about making my own self-assembly furniture, with brand names such as Bummar, Goenadd and Puke. And they’ll come with better instructions than a couple of cartoons of some ba’-heided bloke looking glaickit.

Blank space

THE former head of Israel’s space security programme has claimed aliens are in secret contact with America and his own country, and have built an underground base together in yonder Mars. I see.

Haim Eshed, 87, said the aliens don’t want to announce themselves until humanity is more evolved. Oh well, good luck with that.

President Trump nearly blurted the whole thing oot, but the aliens removed his brain with their tentacles, which development went unnoticed in his subsequent appearances.

Part of our evolution is that we’re supposed to understand “what space and spaceships are”. Good point. What are they? I can hardly tell you how my toaster works, never mind a spaceship.

Disappointingly, the aliens themselves haven’t a scoobie about the purpose of life or the fabric of the universe. They want to enlist our help investigating this.

Well, what’s the point of that if they’ve already drawn a blank? Aliens? They’re over-rated if you ask me.

Rather like Jehovah’s Witnesses or salesmen at the door, we should tell them: “No thank you. Not today thanks. We’ve had enough evolution here. And your tentacles are dripping on my doormat.”

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.