It’s all over for Generation X

H Xey, Gen X, here’s a thing ... remember when Hollywood used to make cool, zeitgeist-nailing movies about us, such as Reality Bites, Slacker and Before Sunrise? When Americans were writing generationdefining books, such as Infinite Jest and Generation you could read while listening to Blur skewer polite society and gender norms or Nirvana smash a Fender guitar over the their heads?

We lived each day sure we were going to pump up the volume, wreck the system and achieve divine Godhead by smoking epic quantities of sativa, all while honing our record collections and wearing our pyjamas to work. Halcyon days.

Well, forget it. Jarvis Cocker from Pulp was just on Bargain Hunt. That’s the UK reality television show where jovial middle-aged couples compete to prove they have a modicum of taste by getting the best auction prices for tat they’ve bought at local flea markets – like Trade Me, but on telly. The prize is whatever money they make and bragging rights down the local Cosmopolitan Club for the rest of their natural lives.

The whole show is so pleasant and inoffensive it’s like a slap in the Gen X face. But this episode, in honour of the BBC’s music week, was more like a closed fist.

Cocker wasn’t alone. Bandmate Candida Doyle joined him. They faced off against Mark ‘‘Bez’’ Berry and Rowetta Idah from The Happy Mondays – The Happy Mondays – just in case you thought we were getting out of this with an ounce of dignity left.

Cocker – the pop-icon who has never knowingly been seen in public wearing casual clothes, who wrote Common People, who once drunkenly leapt on to a BBC stage to protest, waggled his a... at Michael Jackson and refused to apologise for it – spent a pleasant afternoon antique-ing for the entertainment of the British viewing public.

He wasn’t very good at it. A Russian painting he bought for £145 (NZ$290) went for about £40.

Bez, the man who achieved the ultimate Gen X dream by turning dancing like a total spanner into a 30-year career, and his bandmate Rowetta, did far better. They sold a scratty old biscuit tin for a