Fall accidentally in love

LIKE a lot of people, the older I get, the more I start to worry I’m forgetting things. Just the other night, for example, I accidentally tuned in to LOVE ISLAND (ITV2, 9pm), having temporarily forgotten that this is the most witless, vacuous, narcissistic, cynically exploitative garbage I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness, centred on a concept so depressingly grim, so utterly, soul-destroyingly devoid of even a modicum of merit that I not only despair for the future of the human race but also go on to express that view in a sentence as ridiculously overblown as this one, which, to save you the trouble of having to count, I can reveal contains precisely 100 words.

Easily done, right? Forgetting stuff, I mean.

So, in answer to the question posed tonight by a series starting on Channel 4, CAN I IMPROVE MY MEMORY? (8pm), all I can say is I blinking well hope so, if only so I remember to steer clear of that rubbish in future.

Presented by Sandi Toksvig, who used to be the co-host of, oh, you know, the nice thing in the tent with the cakes, this one is a month-long challenge in which five well-known people learn how to boost their brainpower.

In each episode the participants will be coached for seven days in a subject they currently know nothing about, mentored by professional memory experts.

At the end of each programme, Sandi will quiz them to see how much has sunk in.

The subjects in this first episode are 90s American hip-hop, the human skeleton, dinosaurs, the solar system and British birds.

And the people being challenged to swot up on these topics from scratch? Sorry, I should probably have mentioned them earlier.

It’s ex-Strictly judge Len Goodman, actress Nina Wadia, former boxer Chris Eubank,TV presenter Anna Richardson and one-time beautician Amber Gill, who in 2019 apparently won a reality TV show called Love Island.

I must admit this Love Island isn’t a television programme I’m familiar with. Maybe I’ll take a look at it sometime. I’m sure it’s awfully good.

Immediately afterwards, if you’ve forgotten where the heck you put the remote control, Channel 4 will take you straight on to this week’s episode of ESCAPE TO THE CHATEAU: MAKE DO AND MEND (9pm). So that’s OK.

In tonight’s show Angel Strawbridge is building “a sparkling, multi-coloured, mermaid-themed shed, complete with gold-edged, scalloped roof.”

This,Angel boasts, will be “a shed with a difference!”. Bless her for her enthusiasm and inventiveness.

Although, between you and me, I’m pretty sure they sell that kind in Homebase.