Jamie Oliver and the Big Fucking Flatscreen Telly Conundrum

Food, or a Big Fucking Flatscreen Telly (BFFT)? That’s the dilemma. Every day, people with little money can be seen wandering the aisles of supermarkets across the nation, a concerned look etched on their face, as they weigh up the pros and cons of the two options.

Celebrity chef and owner of big lips Jamie Oliver has had enough! He just can’t understand why poor people are making the wrong decisions. He’s not judgmental,but…

Food, obviously, is great. But you can’t use it to watch Jamie Oliver’s programmes about how terrible poor people are at eating the right sort of food. Still, maybe you’re too tired from working overtime to supplement your terrible wages to want to watch them anyway. Maybe you just want to collapse on the sofa with a takeaway, which you can buy at any of the plethora of takeaway establishments in any town. In my town, there’s a market once a week (which no-one who works can get to) and a farmer’s market once a month. Poor people don’t all have “local markets” to walk past and get their mange tout.

On the other hand, you can’t eat a TV. It’s alright until the glass breaks, at which point you find yourself with a mouthful of pointy shards and blood, and a floor covered in glass. Worse, you’ll probably waste that glass, because there’s so much of it in your BFFT. If you’d only thought to pop to the local electronics market, you could have purchased a smaller TV, with just enough glass for your evening meal.

Perhaps Jamie knows of a recipe that uses stale remote controls, since poor people probably have them in abundance. I suppose we’ll have to wait for his new series to find out.

Jamie (can I call you Jamie? I’m going to.) is sort of alright I suppose, generally, but he is understandably viewing the world through the filter of a £150,000,000 bank balance. Because that’s what he has, apparently. In the world of the rich, and even in the world of the not poor, the BFFT has become the boldest symbol of the undeserving poor.

Poor people's TVs can only show Jeremy Kyle. True fact.

“They can’t be REALLY poor, have you seen their BFFT? Of course you have, it’s so big you can see it from the MOON.”

“If they’re so poor, why don’t they sell that TV and use the money to buy some tasty* quinoa?”

The BFT is wheeled out in TV programmes about benefits. It’s referred to by celebrity chefs when they’re on their high horse (which they have mounted in order to PUBLICISE A TV SERIES).

Here are some things I just thought about BFFTs:

1.     It is pretty much impossible to buy a TV which is not a BFFT. A SFFT (Small Fucking Flatscreen Telly) only costs a few quid less than its big brother, to encourage you to supersize your TV in the same way that McDonalds encourages you to supersize your meal. It is impossible to buy a non-flatscreen TV in 2013, unless you own a TARDIS.

2.     BFFTs are worth the square root of bugger all once they’re about six minutes old, because the new model has come out. If you sell your BFFT to Cash Converters, they’ll probably offer you about £6.50, or perhaps a week’s supply of mange tout.

3.     I bought a BFFT once. I had a job when I did. I might not have a job next week, who knows?

There’s a hashtag going on Twitter at the moment: #AskJamieOliver. I think I’d like to ask him whether he still thinks he’s not judgmental, because I think he is.

Oh, and: “I’ve got some mouldy bread, do you have a recipe for that?"

*overrated.

Toys

We had some friends over at the weekend, to drink tea and eat cake in celebration of Mrs L's birthday.  The tea was nice, and so was the cake, but the star attraction was the nine month old not-quite-toddler son of one couple.

From the moment he arrived to the moment he left he was the focus of everyone's attention.  Rightly so, because he's a fab little man, smiley and engaging, with a definite cheeky edge.

I learnt something in that hour of toddler time: to a toddler, EVERYTHING is a toy.  Specifically, the things which were not designed to be toys.  Even more specifically, the most expensive things in the room which were not designed to be toys.  To take it one step further, he was fascinated by the TV.  He also quite liked the laptop, but we hid that.  There's nowhere in our house that you could hide a reasonable sized flat screen TV, not if you ever wanted to watch it.

Not a toy.

Little man's mum was alert to this, and had him under close surveillance at all times.  A fact I am grateful for.  She also managed to prevent him from eating my car keys, which was nice too.  For him and me.

A toy.

So how do they know?  It's not unique to this baby, I've see other ones drawn like a magnet to iron when they're placed within sight of some expensive item.  I don't think we did anything to highlight the value of any specific items to him ("hello baby, listen carefully, these are the ten most expensive things in the room, please feel free to destroy them as you see fit") and we certainly didn't make the mistake of refusing him access to the TV.  Innate ability?  Some kind of genetic affinity with the magpie?  I don't know.

The nice thing was that he wasn't actually interested in mauling the screen itself, it was the faux-carbon fibre weave on the stand he liked; running his tiny nails over the texture over and over again, making the sort of scratching noise usually reserved for sound effects in bad horror films.  I suppose that's it really, it wasn't some unfathomable addiction to the pricey he was displaying, but an entirely fathomable desire to do something interesting.  Nothing else in the room made that noise, or had that feeling.  Maybe he'd never heard that noise before in his short life.  He was exploring the world, the world where almost everything is still new to him, and that's a lovely thing to watch in someone else's child, so I'm really looking forward to watching it in my own.