Well Duh pt. 67

There's been two poll s recently which studied, as Basil Fawlty would say, the bleeding obvious. A couple of months ago, The Guardian discovered that parents didn't know what their teenage offspring get up to. Mums and dads seemed to assume their little angles were sharing cups of Horlicks and playing pinball at the youth club. Instead said angels were, of course, drinking, taking drugs and fornicating with each other. This week a poll of teachers announced that schoolchildren were influenced by what they saw on television. They especially liked repeating catchphrases, the more antisocial the better.

Well, to mimic a thousand American programs, duh. I'm not sure who conducts these surveys or why they don't use a simpler methodology called 'remembering their own childhoods.' Of course teenagers break the law and don't tell their parents. It's half of the essential teenage experience. (The other half being getting depressed and telling absolutely everyone about that). When asked if she knew what I used to get up to my mum replied, no, and she didn't want to either. May this attitude be passed down many generations.

And schools are awash with bad imitations of Catherine Tate and Little Britain today? I recall being swamped with equally dreadful ones of Mr T, Lenny Henry (in his early "Ohhhhh-Kaaayy" years) and Neil from The Young Ones. Children find something they like and mimic it. It's a natural habit and, as this post has oh-so-subtly demonstrated, not confined to the young. Anyway, what do teachers expect children to talk about amongst themselves? Their bloody maths homework?

I do, however, applaud them singling out Catherine Tate's snotty girl character for special criticism. The one with the phrase "Am I bovvered?" as the sole 'joke' in each and every sketch. I know somebody who repeats this often and gratuitously, to the dismay of all around him. That person is my sixty year old father, but that's beside the point. Ban it from our screens. Ban it now.