New television series to be launched

I wish to make it plain from the outset of this piece that I personally have not seen a single trailer or even episode of Love Island, the current ‘cause célèbre’ of the reality TV genre – I didn’t even know which channel it was broadcast upon until I googled the answer just now (it was ITV2).

Nevertheless, it has been impossible for me to avoid awareness of the fact that it has been broadcast these past few weeks because the newspapers and early morning television stations have been featuring blow-by-blow accounts of what has allegedly been going on.

[More sensitive and refined Rusters may wish to turn away now to avoid being offended.]

In short, as I understand it (is that what is referred to as an ‘oxymoron’ in these circumstances?), a group of relatively attractive people of both sexes – I’m leaving aside whether that includes any transgender individuals and/or examples of those who wish to define themselves of uncertain or fluid  gender because I don’t know the answer – have been brought together upon an island resort of some nature and basically encouraged to pair off and have sex … to some degree or another in full view of the camera for the delectation of its viewers… in pursuit of a first prize of £50,000.

It’s become a social media sensation in this modern age when ‘Social media rules!’ amongst those under the age of thirty possessed smartphones and vacuous minds who seem to spend more time glued like zombies to their digital devices than living their own lives and doing anything useful or mentally stimulating and rewarding.

Do I feel an outsider, or ‘left out’, in these circumstances? Do I heck?

Frankly, I’m not ‘bovvered’ – to adapt the phrase that gained a degree of currency a few years back when the comedian/writer/actress Catherine Tate created a chav-type character Lauren Cooper who spouted inanities and then finished every sentence with “Am I bovvered?” …

What I would like to report is that National Rust Global Media Corp – the holding company of the media giant that publishes this organ – is announcing today the launch of a new 24-part reality TV series entitled Dementia Island which is scheduled to go into production in early September this year.

In it a group of over-60 year old contestants of both sexes will be brought together in a seafront hotel upon the Isle of Wight for a month. They will be stripped of all photographs, books, video cassette tapes, old-style record players and televisions.

In place of such comforts they will will be issued with examples of the latest Samsung smartphones and laptops of their manufacturing choice etc. on which they will have been set up in advance with all the latest social media vehicles (including Twitter, Facebook, What’s Up – or is that What’s App? – Instagram, Skype and those other ones that I keep seeing young people using today but I don’t know what they’re called) and then also all the relevant profiles, passwords and ‘whatever-else-have-you’ in order to get started.

They will then sit around in the front room of the hotel, dressed in pyjamas or nightdresses (depending upon their gender and/or choice), dressing-gowns and slippers, and provided with cups of tea, Bovril or pints of mild or stout – medium-dry sherries or Babycham for the ladies – and discuss or do whatever they want, all while being broadcast to the nation 24/7.

Audiences at home will be thrilled and fascinated to watch as the contestants are witnessed spending hours at a time complaining about the modern world, failing to answer simple questions about modern Britain posed to them in a video box by an unseen gentleman with a Middlesborough accent (e.g. “Who is the Prime Minister?”, “Which of the Queen’s sons married that dreadful woman with the red hair and now tours the world being photographed on large super-yachts surrounded by young ladies in bikinis whilst answering to the nickname ‘Air Miles Andy’?” and “Who or what is Olly Murs?”) … and, after the commercial break … then all scoring 20 out of 20 during group quizzes on “1960s and 1970s pop groups, sports stars, politicians, TUC union leaders, children’s TV presenters, Warren Mitchell, sit-coms, the soap opera Crossroads and the Carry On films”.

Furthermore, on Saturdays evenings, there will be a special two-hour show broadcast during which extended highlights of the contestants’ failed attempts to get on the internet and/or communicate via social media will aired across the nation and indeed, it seems, around the world – according to a National Rust Global Media Corp spokesperson the series has already been pre-sold to over 70 countries including both India and China and therefore (latest estimates predict) will gain an average global audience of 2.5 billion.

[Pay-per-view subscriptions for Dementia Island and other National Rust Global Media Corp television productions, starting at £199 plus VAT per month, can be obtained by applying online via the head office website and/or by phoning the telephone number that will be arriving in a plain brown envelope through your letterbox within the next three or four days.]