I spurn reality television as I would a rabid dog & will continue to do so until some red rimmed glasses wearing TV exec comes up with a programme format that involves hanging politicans, lawyers and employees of the Health & Safety Executive. As a genre, it is at best pathetic & if people really want to be humiliated, I understand that there are websites where young ladies offer such services in the errrrrr comfort & privacy of bespoke premises. Quite why TVland thinks that I should want to come home from a long day in the office to watch someone having to eat their own poo or whatever ‘challenge’ the contestants have just been set is completely beyond me. The only useful purpose such programmes serve is as an interview process to help us identify those who are so terminally stupid that come The Glorious Day, they will find their names entered under the column “To Be Clubbed To Death”.

So aside from the shabby premis that underpins this entire group of programmes is the issue that each new series has to be even more sensationalised than the last. Maybe I am alone in this but I really don’t give a stuff about what is currently happening in the Big Brother house unless it is the news that the Prophet’s most ardent followers have turned up with one of their special delivery lorries & there is now the sort of redevelopment opportunity not afforded to Londoners since that nice Mr Hitler decided to get into the town planning business.

However the latest & most grubby show Unbreakable has incurred the wrath of the TV censors, not because it is an insult to the very notion that man pocesses higher intelligence but because of this

A reality television show that features contestants being forced to submit to the illegal torture technique of waterboarding is "unacceptable" and could breach watchdog standards, lobbyists have warned.

What a nation of puftahs we have become. When I were a lad, such techniques were pretty common practice in the Junior House dormatory, as was locking anyone who had done their Latin prep into a trunk & throwing it down several flights of stairs. In fact, if they were to make a reality show called Traditional British Boarding School it would undoubtedly be banned, not on the grounds of the crime of elietism, but because it would be considered way too violent for todays cotton wool Britain. & I can tell you all now, being brutalised for ten of my formative years never did me any harm! As for being trapped in a tent full of CS gas until such time as you have hoiked your guts up - if you haven't done that, you havent lived

According to John Whittingdale, the Conservative chairman of the media select committee, the show in question is unacceptable. Apparently…

It seems that scenes of torture are being used as entertainment. What next?

Yes, & your point is exactly? In happier times, it could be said that such practices simply built character.