So I'm watching BBC Breakfast News this morning (well yesterday morning now) like I normally do while I get ready for work. You know the one, the bland background noise programme with the stories of people dying in wars crossed with some preening git reporting on how some tossers are swimming in a freezing river, because they're local characters and this is what local character types do. The one with the smug chap and the non-threatening sexually-speaking attractive middle class bit of skirt, that's a description of all the male and female presenters on BBC Breakfast News' roster.
Anyway it was on in the background as per usual and there was some serious story bleeding from the telly's speakers, all the world's Dolphins fall drastically short of national education standards and so find it hard to compete in the difficult job market, something like that. Then they went to the "not so serious so as not to put you in a total downer before you've even started your trudging commute to your shit job" story. It was actually a bit of a downer too as it revealed that sales of Cauliflowers are at an all time low. Checking the BBC website and typing "cauliflower" into the search engine reveals that this is a story they've covered a lot, leading me to believe the news editor's got a side gig as a green grocer and he's desperately trying to boost sales.
The reason for the British public falling out of love with one of the few flowers to be associated with battered ears seems to be that we're thick. You see we've been told to "eat our greens" by doctors and government types, but cauliflowers are mainly white. So the theory goes that the Great British public are refusing to eat cauliflowers because they're the wrong coloured vegetable for a healthy lifestyle. Sales of carrot's must be fucked. I mean look at how brightly coloured they are. There's no way something that orange can be good for you. Bite into a carrot and it's full of trans-fats and cancer which pounce into your mouth and murder you from within. So the theory goes.
Then "it" happened.
It.
IT! Now you're thinking, it must be an important it given all that pissing about with the typeface. It's a monumental moment in telly news. The reporter started doing the usual voxpops with members of the public who have jumped at the chance to talk about anything on TV because they're actually even less talented than those on Britain's Got Talent so this is their one chance at fame. "Nah it tastes mingin' dint it, yeah?" says one young lady, "I put it in everything" says a middle aged hippy type whose best drug taking days are now behind her but you suspect she still tries smoking some cabbage leaves once in a while just to relive those hedonistic days. Then "he" appeared.
He.
H... you get the idea, the he that made the it happen.
He declared cauliflower to be "inept".
Inept. Not the sort of word you're expecting during a piece about cauliflower is it? He had that air about him, the "I'm right intelligent me and I'm going to analyse the cauliflower situation in more depth than the rest of these oiks" one. And yet he ended up calling it inept. He called it inept and then didn't follow up why he thinks it suffers from this crippling level of ineptitude. I'd love to ask him, "what do you find to be inept about cauliflower?". Could it be its ability to do longjump? Or how about the fact that it can't work on an oil rig? You get the impression this guy would level a charge of incompetence towards carrots because he's been eating them for decades and he still keeps bumping into the sideboard when he gets up to take a piss in the middle of the pitch black night.
But why is this idiotic utterance a major moment in telly news I hear you ask, confirming that the voices in my head are back. Why? Because in one word on as an inane a subject as cauliflower's decline this man, this saint, showed that Voxpops are not news. They are filler. I don't watch the news to find out if Jeff from Swindon thinks it's great that we're in a war in Afghanistan because it means telly during the night's a bit more interesting, I watch it to find out what's happening in the world. But instead of doing that news programmes feel the need to show what ill informed members of the public think about things they clearly know nothing about. I'm still waiting for the piece of VT where local youths discuss how to block that leaking oil hole, although their suggestions probably won't be worse than the actual attempts to do so. It's in doing this that instead of finding out about something like the Daily Express getting pummelled for its shameful Dunblane "expose" instead we hear a man call cauliflowers "inept".
Hopefully this shocking incident will force the news to get back to reporting and leave the public to voice their opinions where they're supposed to, on the internet or from the back of a bus whilst pished on cheap wine. But then what do I know? Not only am I doing this on the internet whilst boozed up I also think tables are overrated. Quick Mr. BBC man, mic me up.
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