When is it not appropriate to sit in your pants watching daytime tv?

(NB. A student colleague of mine has been threatened with legal action over a comment he made in his blog. Following this, I should point out that Jeremy Kyle doesn't actually eat babies apart from baby carrots and perhaps baby sweetcorn, although I'm not sure if anyone eats baby sweetcorn anymore.)


Students love sitting in their pants watching Trisha. I think.

I've never actually indulged in this particular rite of passage because the courses I've chosen at university have mostly involved me being in lectures as Jeremy Kyle eats babies live on TV.

Kyle: murderous hatred not pictured

If I'm not at home, how do I know about the venomous bile that spews from Kyle's foaming mouth each morning, you ask?

Well believe it or not, when I was doing my anaesthetics rotation, the coffee room next to the operating theatres was always religiously tuned into his show.

Anyway, when is it not appropriate to sit in your pants (as in underwear. In England, we call our underwear "pants") watching daytime TV?

If you are watching the show in question, live from the studio - then it is a bad idea to watch in your pants.

On Friday, I went with some of my colleagues from the journalism course at Westminster University to be in the audience for The Wright Stuff.

Slightly shamefully, it's not the first time I've been in the audience for such a show.

In my gap year, a friend of mine worked on Kilroy, hosted by the inimitable Robert Kilroy-Silk, and I appeared on that.

I spoke about prostitutes on that show.

Precisely what I said about prostitutes, I can't remember.

A while later, the same friend worked on Live with Christian O'Connell.

Me and a couple of mates went on the show on St. Patrick's day and had to hold a tray of Guinness while performing an Irish jig.

The idea was to keep as much of the booze in the glasses as possible.

And then there was my snowboarding mayhem on You've Been Framed!

£250 in the pocket thank you very much.

My most recent appearance on TV involved me discussing the virtues of inviting my ex to my wedding.

For anyone who knows me, don't worry, it was all hypothetical.

After the show, Matthew Wright who presents the show had a quick chat with us about journalism.

He started out in newspaper journalism, spending time at The Sun, among other things.

It was a fun morning and if you want to go on the show, there's a facebook group with the details here.

Doing a journalism fing.

Everybody knows that students are idiots and don’t have a clue about anything.

Students - idiots.


This is a fact and I’m not going to dispute it, particularly as I am one and there are loads of words underneath *here* to back this fact up.

Having been a student of medicine and now journalism, I’ve noticed that the two groups share a belief that they’re going to “make a difference”.

Doctors are going to relieve suffering and journalists are going to expose corrupt politicians and stuff.

I’m going to try desperately hard not to “make a difference”, especially in medicine because I’m worried that I’m more likely to contribute to some kind of major catastrophe than find the cure for cancer – I’m that kind of difference maker.

The plan is to play it safe, nice and safe.

Which has just reminded me of a poll I saw a while back about the most trusted professions in the UK.

Doctors are the most trusted professionals and journalists the least.

This is perfect as my two backgrounds should counterbalance one another in the trust stakes and leave me half way up the league – nice and safe.

Anyway, before that brief tangent, what I was going to say was that students have an admirable notion within them that they are going to do something positive.

That’s before the medics mutate into Harold Shipman and the journos become manipulative bastards with an agenda.

Maybe that’s a little extreme but if you’re going to make a point, you may as well make it sensational. I think.

This morning, I put on my rose-tinted spectacles that had a 20% student discount and went off to do what I consider my first bit of real journalism.

Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I asked Gordon Brown fourteen times what his favourite colour is or anything hard hitting like that, I just mean that I went out and spoke to some people before writing about it.

My reaction to this is what makes me a naïve moron.

I just couldn’t help feeling really good about the world afterwards and I’m sure that’s not what cynical journalists are supposed to think.

On my course, we had to write a piece that was based loosely around Christmas shopping.

I decided to do mine on what London’s foreign population buy for their Christmas dinners and so I went round to some of the cafés and restaurants near me to ask the people who work there.

My first stop was to an Italian café called Vesuvio where the chef warmly told me all about a traditional Christmas in Italy despite the fact that it was lunchtime and he was busy.

They also brought me a coffee which I was told was on the house when I went to pay for it – talk about perks of the job!

Later on I went to the amusingly named “Gung-Ho” Chinese restaurant

Eric chatted to me there and what a nice man Eric was.

I just wanted to share with you a devastatingly good air travel tip he gave me.

Oasis are a low budget airline that fly from London to Hong Kong for as little as £99 if you book it early enough.

I reckon if I take fewer showers and maybe flush the loo less, I could reduce my carbon footprint enough to jet off to Asia three times a year, guilt free.

Woop di doo.