I spy... with my little fry
SOMETHING has been bothering me about this week’s TV schedules. Despite searching high and low, I’ve failed to find a single documentary about air fryers. Seriously, not one. We’ve had so many lately – Air Fryers: Are They Worth It?, Air Fryers: Do You Know What You’re Missing?,Air Fryers: I BlameThe Russians – that I’d assumed they’d now be a regular TV fixture. Clearly, I’d assumed wrong. It’s almost as if, when it comes to air fryers, the people who make TV have suddenly run out of things to say about them.
And yet that doesn’t normally stop them wittering on about stuff, does it? Anyway, if it’s any consolation, what we do have tonight is a programme called Smart Meters: Let’s Fill Another Hour Of Airtime By Banging On About Those Instead, Shall We?
OK, it’s not really called that. It’s actually called SMART METERS: SHOULDYOU GET ONE? (C5, 8pm). But it all amounts to the same thing.
That’s not to say it doesn’t raise some interesting points.
Presented by Alexis Conran, Channel 5’s go-to consumer guy, it looks at what these devices are meant to do, and whether they’re doing that, as well as whether they’re doing other things that some of us would rather they didn’t do.
The first part is easy. They’re meant to keep track of our energy use, so the people we buy our power from can bill us more “efficiently”. That, and so we can keep track of our consumption ourselves, on little devices they give us to put in our homes.And, to be fair, plenty of users seem happy on both counts – even Alexis himself.
That said, some have reported ludicrously inaccurate readings.
Last year, for example, artist Grayson Perry was told his monthly electricity bill had risen from £300 to £39,000, which does seem quite a lot.
Others claim these devices add yet more stress to our lives, encouraging us to fixate over them.
And some, inevitably, are worried about the privacy element.
Indeed, as Alexis points out, you’ll find conspiracy theorists on social media who claim these meters are spying on us. But then, let’s face it, you’ll also find people who reckon Hitler was a penguin if you look hard enough.
Ultimately, most of us just care about lowering our energy costs. So it’s good that the show has sought the advice of energy-saving guru Mrs MummyPenny, who offers some really handy tips. These include:
(1) turn down your thermostat; (2) turn down your boiler. Yes, stuff you and I would never have thought of.
Oh, and she also suggests an alternative to using your oven.
“What I recommend,” she says, “is to switch to an air fryer.”