by Steven Francis

Created on: April 15, 2010

                                                                    The Mind Casket

Now before anybody accuses me of being as dry as a callus on an enviromentalists sinewy finger, let me state quite clearly that I do in fact enjoy some television and I have programmes which I would follow religiously had I the inclination to chase up their listings in tv guides. There are some fine productions to be discovered if one can summon the patience to sift through the endless tide of garbage.
It is the TV addicts, the ones who kneel at the chins of soap stars and reality show judges, which I cannot abide. They make me sick to my stomach, which due to a lifetime of unholy binges on nefarious goodies takes some doing as my constitution rivals that of the most hardened Oxes and pathologists.
Some people will spend entire days and nights rooted to the glare of a screen being bombarded by cookery shows and endless advertisements. There are even poor wretches who insist on leaving their idiot box ON in the background as if switching the infernal thing OFF would be like cutting off the oxygen supply in the room.
The rot in their brain must be as damaging as the havoc alcohol causes on livers of habitual drinkers. In fact, scrap the 'must be', it IS as damaging I have no doubt whatsoever on this. In short it is a living room lobotomy affecting everything from manners to the arts. Our grand culture is very nearly in tatters as Shakespeare and Wordsworth are shunned for The X Factor, and communication been reduced to snorts and grunts like baboons at a karaoke bar.
I realise im sounding alarmist (and probably hysterical to a few) but it matters little what I am; if video killed the radio star as the song went, then television killed the spirit. It has turned many of its stupefied audience lazy to the core and robbed them of the pleasures that children of not so long ago got from books or building things outdoors.
How many children (or adults come to that) actually pick up a book these days? How many rip the plug out of the entertainment system and disappear into the pages of a great novel? Very few I would wager and it is a real tragedy because books,

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