Need to empty your mind? Just watch Homes Under The Hammer
LET’S start this column with a mindfulness exercise. Concentrate on your breathing, in and out, so you are completely calm and focused, with nothing to distract . . . hello, is that next door’s cat? Blasted thing . . . sorry, where were we?
Meditation has never worked well for me. It’s all very good saying ‘empty your mind’ but if I wanted to experience a complete state of mental blankness I would watch Homes Under The Hammer.
Dr Chris van Tulleken reckons mindfulness could be one answer to Britain’s increasing reliance on prescription medicine, and on The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs (BBC1) he was encouraging children on medication for ADHD to learn how to still their overactive brains.
With diagnoses of attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity soaring, there’s no doubt that an alternative to medication is urgently needed. Between the Millennium and 2015, prescriptions of the main ADHD drug, Ritalin, rose 800 per cent in the UK.
And as Dr Chris pointed out, this is not a drug without side-effects. It can cause mood and personality changes, uneven heartbeat, loss of appetite and insomnia, and even stunt growth. That’s a serious catalogue of risks, yet 60,000 children in Britain are now given Ritalin.
Dr Chris recently became a father, and the experience has heightened
DETECTORISTS OF THE NIGHT:
Treasure hunters with ground radar devices were convinced, in Secrets Of The Third Reich: The Nazi Gold Train (Yesterday channel), that they had located a priceless cache of loot. It was just an empty tunnel. Oh well . . . his concerns about children’s drugs. But having a baby is not the same as knowing how to handle a restless eight-year-old with a mind like a rubber ball.
Here’s a tip, doc: when dealing with a hyperactive child, don’t ask six questions in a row that start with the word ‘ why?’ — it’s guaranteed to provoke a tantrum. In fact, unless your job is carrying out inquisitions in a windowless room where the only furniture is one bare lightbulb, don’t ask anyone six ‘why?’ questions in a row.
The most polemical segment of the show centred on the sticky pink paracetamol solution, Calpol, which Dr Chris melodramatically labelled ‘the heroin of childhood’. Apparently we buy more than five tons of the stuff every day. Because programmes like this can’t trust us to envisage what five tons means, Dr Chris filled 2,610 litre bottles with water and pink dye.
That would make a marvellous test on Taskmaster (Dave channel), the gameshow that devises endless ways for comedians to humiliate themselves with daft physical challenges.
Taskmaster, which started as a comedy routine at the Edinburgh Fringe, has become the most popular show in Dave’s admittedly short and unspectacular history — such a success that another three series have been commissioned. That’s good news for anyone who can’t get enough of stand-ups and comic actors creating art with whipped cream or hurling dolls into trees.
It works because the five contestants, who this time include one-liner king Tim Vine and sitcom stalwart Lisa Tarbuck, happily submit to the show’s sadistic style. Watching them make fools of themselves is quite entertaining: seeing presenter Greg Davies mock and sneer at their efforts can be shamefully funny.
Creator of the concept, and butt of Greg’s harshest jibes, is Alex Horne, who also oversees all the tasks. He understands the importance of a rigid format, and each episode follows a precise rhythm. It’s possible to gauge almost to the second when he will make a self-conscious quip, or a jangling piano will introduce a clip to introduce the next task.
Eventually the format will become stale, changes will be introduced, and the whole thing will fall apart. For now, we can wallow in telly that manages to be inane, spiteful and hilarious at the same time.