The last time I watched the oggle box....

 

My fake ID arrived in late 2002. Thereafter I became 2 ½  years older and, for a short time known at some doors in SE London as ‘Matt Blackwood’ – but more on that later. The Friday night before it arrived however, I would have watched my last evening of telly for a very long time.

 

Robot Wars followed the Simpsons back then at about 8 o’clock. Red Dwarf next, then Never Mind the Buzzcocks and finally Have I got News for you. If I could feign interest through this last one then I would sometimes be rewarded with 30 minutes of unadulterated ‘Eurotrash’ titillation once the parents had gone to bed. GTA Vice City had just come out on the PS2 and if the night’s entertainment could still not satisfy a 16year old’s hot blood lust, a killing spree in Downtown Miami followed by some pixilated simulated backstreet sex in a comically bouncing Buick would round events off nicely. Yes, that was probably how it went down the last night that I stayed in and watched television.

However for more than a decade now I have, until recently at least, led a clean living, non-television owning, bike riding, X-Factor scorning, right on hippy lifestyle with broad brush assumptions about the kind of people that spend their lives glued to the idiot box. Before the downward spiral began, a  forthright friend of mine remarked how he can tell he'll get on with someone if “they don’t own a telly” - and I probably laughed. It is a mystery therefore how I went from an irregular and recreational user of Net Flicks, to a Breaking Bad junky; looking for a hit at any given hour of the day or night.

I have been clean for about 48 hours now – but not through any self-control – I just got to the bottom of the season 5 barrel.. So why did I end a ten year televsion fast for Breaking Bad? I think its because it's got that voyeur element of computer games and late night soft porn. Walter White is that Everyman character who cuts loose in a way that we would do  if we were less morally scrupluous....or spent less time watching TV.