Laying bare the dangers and depravity of televisual types of pornography

Cookery programmes and ‘easy loan’ adverts should be banned for the public good, says Denis Frize

I’m worried about pornography on television. Not that I have any more objection to one set of grown adults watching another set of grown adults gyrating on the screen than I would have to their watching all-in wrestling. It is a world-wide phenomenon. In Los Angeles pornography is a lucrative industry with its own Oscars, the stars drawn from young men and women who prefer it to pumping gas or nine to five in an office.

By doing the crossword of one of the highest-browed of our Sunday newspapers, I found in Ancient Greece there were two types of harlot – the high class and the ordinary brothel worker. The word for the latter is ‘pornoi’. So writing about these girls is pornoi+graphein = pornography. When in Pompeii, I’m sure you have averted your gaze from such depictions.

But I am writing about pornography with its added modern insinuation – broadcast material which depraves/corrupts/leads to downfall. And currently there are two examples which any government ‘for the people’ should ban right away.

The first is any programme in which Mary Berry cooks. I am a type 2 diabetic. Yet I watch as she gaily ladles in 175 grams of butter twice in one recipe while the programmes’ come-on blurbs invite us into a land of milk, honey, eggs, sugar…

This completely undermines the work of the NHS and its devoted diabetes staff, who toil like King Canute