battle of britain or pearl harbor?

I’ve written before about the quality of Italian tv – it’s basically an excuse to oggle attractive women. Which is just fine,  for a while but, believe me, it gets wearisome pretty quickly because there’s no depth to the people nor the programmes. The women who present the major sports shows for example look and dress quite sensationally but their contribution doesn’t compare to, say, a Claire Balding, who in a million years would never be considered a forces pin-up but has succeeded because of her journalistic/presenter  skills – she at least knows her subject matter. Even so I don’t think Claire’s a patch on some of the great male sports presenters in the UK; old school – Brian Moore, Harry Carpenter and Richie Benaud as well as ‘new’ boys Martin Tyler, Jeff Stelling and Martin Brundle for example. She’s good but nowhere near top gun. In Italy the female presenter’s primary task it seems is not to offer insight but a sight of her plunging neckline and/or oh so short hemline as she moves off and on the studio high stool (it’s a challenge repeated dozens of times, often not perfectly demurely) whilst shouting inanities increasingly loudly over the many  voices of the assembled throng of old and seedy-looking former players and has-been male commentators.

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a week in the life of pasta paulie

Well it’s been one of those weeks. I was only writing a few days ago about how pleased we were with the extensive repairs to the extension and how good the house was now looking. Then earlier this week I noticed that a crack, albeit slight, had reappeared on both sides of the extension. Groan. It may be just settlement but we’ll see. Knowing our luck we’ll wake up one morning with the dining room in the pool.

another italian tv horror

I’m not sure what the top Saturday night programmes are in the UK and USA at present – almost certainly they’ll involve Simon Cowell and, at the BBC, something altogether camper. But they’ll all have the search for the next BIG talent at their core. In Italy it’s not dissimilar – they’ve got their version of X factor and all that but the main early evening blockbuster on Rai Uno (the equivalent of BBC1) is a bizarre thing called ‘Ti Lascio Una Canzone?’ which seems to translate as ‘Did I Leave A Song?’ which you’ve got to admit is an odd kinda title.

italian tv

I wrote a bit about the wonder that is Italian TV when we were last her. I’m delighted to say that in the intervening year it hasn’t improved uno jotto. They’ve now discovered X Factor. The good news is that Simon big pants Cowell doesn’t feature on it. He’s probably earning a grande wedge all the same but it is a relief to be spared his criticisms of the no-hope half-wits, who instead get to present the programme over here. There’s the mumsy Sharon equivalent who looks like one of the check-out ladies at Tesco’s and the camp guy with very strange hair and the vocal trainer who look like he shouldn’t be allowed near children’s playgrounds. Check out a couple of them :