AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

What's the Wicker Man? Some sort of travelling laundry? Plenty of potential there for removing bodies.

[Mick Harper]

Hatty's been on TV if you want some non-Equity filler. Better make it non-speaking because of her gor-blimey accent. Actually I have appeared 'on the box' myself, aged ten, fleetingly in a kids' programme for Associated Redifusion (some of you will remember) but obviously I'm no longer suitable for juvenile parts. I can direct if you want. I've got one of those director's chairs. It's too low for sitting at the computer so it's in tip-top shape.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley auditioned for "Opportunity Knocks", but it didn't.

[Mick Harper]

This has the ring of truth. We demand to hear the gory details. You can say it happened to a friend of yours.

[Mick Harper]

Airbnb: The True Cost (ITV1)

Another example of a fascinating phenomenon of the Uber and cosmetic plastic surgery type that I have posted up about recently.. The sequence is always the same:

1. Some useful innovation is introduced into society
2. It is a great success and spreads widely and rapidly
3. As is unavoidable in such circumstances there are deleterious and largely unforeseen side effects
4. The media starts highlighting these
5. Mild panic sets in and there are calls for it to be regulated, taxed, banned etc
6. If asked, a member of the general public -- if not a beneficiary of the innovation -- will unhesitatingly denounce it as a thoroughly bad thing.

I'm writing this before tonight's programme but you don't need the title to predict it will be half an hour of horror stories. None of the zillions of beneficiaries will feature.

[Mick Harper]

Sigh. They were completely fair. Bastards.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

No keeping it under the hat. It must be forever seared into one of their psyches. Just the round, the song, the vote, the recriminations, the breakup, the tearful reunion, the drunken fight, the pistol shot, the green mile.

[Mick Harper]

Murder 24/7 (BBC-2)

Two depressing developments to report. The first is the BBC so blatantly nicking other people's formats and then ramping them up to even more tabloidish excesses. I don't mind -- I even enjoy -- these on Channel 5 but the BBC only gets our licence fee if it is a) distinctive and b) reflective of ourselves as a nation of restrained gentlefolk, firm but fair, not like some other countries I could mention.

But then there's this new theme that every suspect has to be picked up by an armoured division of futuristic cops (plus drone, I see, just the job for a block of flats) who don't even bother to knock and shout "armed futuristic police" any more, they just batter their way in without a by-your-leave. Why not the former practice of two bobbies ringing the bell and saying, "Would you mind accompanying us to the police station, Sir?" They might be armed and dangerous goes the argument. Yes, they might in which case the last thing you want is the total mayhem of everyone dashing around screaming at the tops of their voices in the semi-darkness of a dawn raid.

What can an armed and dangerous criminal do when the police arrive at his Southend flat? 'You'll never take me alive, copper" and then get riddled by armed futuristic cops hanging around by the stairwell? It is all utterly preposterous and a clear case of policemen watching too much television plus wanting to be on it. I'm writing to Equity. And Priti Patel ... Just Equity.

[Mick Harper]

Having paid out a small fortune for Starship Troopers, Southend community charge-payers are forced to start paying for Manhunt because instead of arresting the bloke 'when he came home from work at four o'clock' the fuzz are now having to comb the backstreets of Southend (there aren't any other sort in Southend apart from the pier and he wouldn't make that mistake) because he has now been alerted by everyone telling him his block of flats is a warzone on account of him so he'd better get his head down while the heat's on. "He's probably at his mum's, Detective Chief Superintendent." That'll need two armoured divisions if The Only Way Is Essex is anything to go by.

[Mick Harper]

The manhunt is considerably aided in tracking Mr Big from his cellphone which the daft nelly has forgotten to switch off. They finally track him down to a loft. Not wishing to put their head up into the lion's den they give him a bell. He's not in the loft after all (the clue was in the gaffer tape sealing the loft access door from the outside) but it does remind him to switch off his cellphone. "Why didn't you think of that, sergeant?" "Dunno, Sir, I'm from Essex."

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Another swoop by a swarm of Angry Birds. Another clobbering of an inoffensive suburban front door, another mass ingress by the boys from Roots Hall. "Damn, they've all escaped out the back and it's as black as the ace of spades out there." "Why didn't Intel tell us Essex houses have got a back door as well?" "Is it because they're from Essex, sarge?"

[Mick Harper]

"When did you last see Slater?"
"Between six and eight this morning, I was making a bacon sandwich."
I've got a slow cooker myself but I'd never thought to use it for making bacon sandwiches. Who needs Jamie Oliver to teach you the basics?

[Mick Harper]

Last night's episode revealed the murderer (I'm guessing here but non-pixillation is always a bad sign) was at his mum's so a pat on the back for me there. Not for Southend police though who allowed the bloke to tell his mum to get rid of the evidence while they wandered off to get a search warrant without, to my mind, taking the simple precaution of detailing someone (there are fifty on the case we were told) to park outside mum's house in case she came out with a large bag on her way to the municipal recycling incinerator. "That's all right, madam, I won't bother with the luminol if he just grazed his knee. My wife says if biological washing powder won't remove them you're best off getting fresh. Mind how you go."

But now another detail which I'm not sure about because of who is and who is not an unindicted co-conspirator. When someone says "I don't know what it was but it was covered in blood and sticking out of his rucksack" it normally prompts follow-up questions like, "Well, was it rigid or just a bit of reddish rag?" and "Did it have the general characteristic of, you know, a knife or was it more like the Jules Rimet cup?" Objection, your honour, leading the witness.