Just Blind

In the fifties, when the state of British music was limp and flaccid, we took rock 'n' roll from America. A decade later, we sent the Beatles back. It says something about the lousy state of television in the eighties that we were prepared to take "Blind Date" off the Yanks. Now it's the nineties, can we send Cilla Black by return post?

It comes as a shock to realise that this execrable piece of television, which ranks with watching men shagging sheep in the voyeurism stakes, is still with us. Most students are out drinking by 2pm on Saturdays and so miss the weekly fun fest. This isn't really on; the rest of the populace take their sedative. If you don't join them, you might start thinking long enough to wonder why anyone has to watch this turgid dross.

Second shock: Cilla Black is still with us. What is she doing here? We thought Cilla ("I knew Frankie Howerd, I knew Brian Epstein; they were both gay, what's the link?") was left behind in minor celeb-land at least twenty years ago. Haven't we escaped the sixties yet? She looks remarkably well-preserved though - still the same hideous old flapper as when the show began.

There are two parts to Blind Date - choosing a partner from three unsuitable candidates, and conducting a post mortem on last week's victims. Both these occur twice, in case you didn't believe your eyes the first time.

It swiftly becomes apparent why the contestants have ended up taking part in this televisual turd. No one in their right mind would want to put up with their extreme personality disorders over even a quick cocktail (or strong brandy), never mind an entire evening. Calling these affairs "blind dates" is an appalling insult; even the blind have guide dogs with more taste. The men are all witless morons, Gary Davies clones who were mixed with acid in the test tubes, too busy worshipping the day-glo orange plastic altars of their own egoes to notice the bored and contemptuous glances the rest of the world is wasting on them. The women are arrogant bitches; anxious to make it clear how zany and wacky their rottweiler personalities are, and smothering anyone who disagrees within the cavernous depths of their ample cleavages.

The particular programme I was unlucky enough to witness (my folks are big fans) featured a guy who was a student at Strathclyde, except he wasn't because he was vice-pinhead of the students union there. You might think it a bit of a liberty, if typical of the species, that this elected officer chose not to think of himself as a student, but consider that Strathcylde students probably made it quite clear to him that it was an "us and you" situation. Although he was rather thrillingly dressed for a Blind Dirt contestant, the effect was much like opening a smartly wrapped Xmas pressie to find it contained a Ronald MacDonald bendy toy. The other two dishes were a rather quiet and reserved strip-o-gram and exercise teacher (you made that up, pal! Admit it!) and a dopey graphic design student from Glasgow who possessed the intellect and appeal of something organic found stuck to the kitchen worktop (ghod help us, no wonder students have the same public profile as Noel Edmonds).

The girl whose task was to choose one of these losers via three transparently awful questions - no sympathy please, she deserved her fate - had the vacuum-fronting smile and appalling dress sense of the absolutely average female contestant. You could see her mentally rehearsing the lines which would later prove (tune in next week, suckers!) why she was more fun to be with than a train crash in the Florida swamps at night. She chose the strip-o-gram, presumably calculating that even if he had the personality of a whoopee cushion (she must be an avid viewer), at least he would be prepared to drop everything and fill any gaps in the conversation or elsewhere. Fittingly, their blind date turned out to consist of a day trip around his home area of the Nene Valley - yes, another super, spontilious outing courtesy of Cilla and chums. By now, even the programme's producers must realise what a waste of money the whole sorry affair is.

Meanwhile, Marco and Sandra were back from their date in Morocco and, perhaps because they hadn't sampled enough of Morocco's most famous export, both were a little edgy and irritable. Sandra thought Marco was hiding his true self behind a well-observed pretence of being an annoying git (right). Marco thought Sandra was daddy's little rich bitch with a sub-Madonna demeanour (right again). For once, real passion was in the air as Marco and Sandra slagged each other off enthusiastically while Cilla fretted as the whole programme looked to be slipping from her loving grasp into the abyss of tabloid scandal. The audience lapped it up. Sandra said Marco (yes, he did have greased, black hair, since you ask) was still obnoxious at five in the morning - you mean you had to sleep with him to make sure?

Talk about the triumph of hope over experience; this programme is a swinging victory for tack over anything of value. So why do we watch it? What is the unhealthy fascination it exerts over us? Perhaps we need reassurance that our own rotten love lives aren't individual; that love isn't just a random affair - even if you put together two completely ill-matched strangers, the result is still a reeking mess full of bitter recriminations and allegations about personal hygiene. Really, this is too sorry. Blind Date does for romance what "Titbits" does for sex. It has nothing to do with the supposed subject at all; it simply portrays a perverted, voyeuristic approach that demeans all involved (apart from Cilla, who's too far gone) and feeds the symptoms rather than curing the disease. Don't give me that 24 carat bullshit about it being "just a bit of fun". By those standards, so is that bastion of political incorrectness, the Miss World contest - and that's no longer given airtime.

Instead of rejoicing in the abject failure and mega-bitchery of another blind date, we ought to be trying to sort out our own misdirected efforts. Watching Sandra slug Marco provides a momentary feeling of elation ("Yes! In the balls!") but it won't get you a date with that girl in Rendel, nor highlight why your girlfriend is starting to drool over rugby players. And finally, if we keep watching it then Cilla Black will just keep on going! And when she retires, someone like Les Dennis will take over and once again we'll be glued to our weekly visual valium injection while our ideal partners are out screwing other people.

Ade
1994


Big Bubbles (no troubles)