Sugar diamonds

The cheap imitation of Top of the Pops meets Fame has suddenly become cheaper.

I was idly zapping across the channels before getting to the end of the brick-sized novel Otherworld I promised to lend a friend, when all of a sudden I recalled a phrase both Pamela Hansen and I had both coincidentally used in our respective columns last week, as used in the Silk Cut advertisements.

Pop Out would have been a better phrase to describe the costume that Priscilla was (not?) wearing in Pop In. This programme is supposed to be a vehicle for singers who will eventually make the backing vocals team for the Maltese song in the Eurovision Song Contest, so I can safely assume that this young lady made it on account of her voice, and not on account of her dress sense, the logic behind which appeared to be (i) it's silly to have your navel pierced if you're not going to tell the world and his uncle about it, (ii) why make unnecessary expenses on foundation garments and (iii) if Holly Valance can do it, why can't I?

Much has been said about the draughty venue in which the Song for Europe festival was held, which seemed not to affect some of the female singers in their glad rags - or lack of them, on the night. There appears to be the mistaken idea that sex appeal necessitates looking tawdry; and this attitude has spilled over to the tail end of the festival, which this programme may be said to be, with inspiration kindly provided by MTV.

The cherry on the cake, however, was Mary Rose Mallia, one of the judges, of all people, telling one of the contestants that she had been eliminated because her voice was "nasal". Alas Tom Jones. Alack Barbra Streisand. From this end, it sounded a bit like Morgan Freeman telling an aspiring actor that he won't make it in Hollywood because although he's got oodles of talent, he's dark, and has bags underneath his eyes. Or maybe Jackie Chan telling Steven Segal that he's too Oriental-looking to succeed.

I was given the Twenty Commandments for Teachers [dated c. 1800] lately; one of them states that teachers must keep their necks and ears covered at all times, because of the shifting erogenous zone theory; but that is neither here nor there.

The sordid business of flaunting female women's bodies as questionable bait in the ratings is not a Maltese prerogative.

This week Le Iene gave a stand-in gaffer girl the equivalent of a padded Wonderbra and ipso facto made her a colleague of a team member interviewing politicians about decency and fidelity within a relationship. From there, it was only a short way to providing viewers with stills lifted from the interviews, overlaid with dotted lines showing the angle between the interviewee's eyes and the girl's cleavage.

People who follow Il Grande Fratello tell us how mooning and undress have become the order(s) of the day for the contestants, to make sure that they are not the ones eliminated before they have exhausted all the hook or crook possibilities.

Fortunately, the very idea does not seem to have entered into the minds of the Mhux Il Grande Fratello meets Xarabank equals Ivalemanafx gang.

The camerapersons, however, appear intent on making us seasick, which is why I gave up on the series and only watched bits and pieces of it. Were they the ones who shot The Blair Witch Project?

However, I watched enough to wonder why the Broadcasting Authority wanted to censor the programme before it went on air. If the collective BA did not want on its conscience a copy of the antics on the foreign version of a bare-all show, where it's a no-holds-barred mercenary one-upmanship, they could have said so outright.

Ironically, the proposed tampering only served to garner publicity for the project.

As it is, the only part that could have appeared better on the cutting room floor showed a vest with sweat-soaked armpits, whose owner did not remove it before he put on his shirt.

Come on, BA - there are many, many programmes that go out live, whose presenters do not use the delay system - and if they do, they still allow people go too far with their comments before turning on the sanctimoniousness and telling us that they will not tolerate such attitudes. If you really have to exercise censorship, get a consultant to visit Wardrobe to check whether there are any clothes that would break obscenity laws if they were written down, rather than pick on Where's Everybody's every innovation (of sorts).

Of late, I have heard said BA being described as a dinosaur; funnily enough, the word is used according to the political stance of the person using it.

There is that dinosaur that cuts a swath in the undergrowth whenever it swishes its tail to ward off pesky flies. Ironically, the same dinosaur is past its best-by date, antediluvian, to put it mildly.

But that having been said, there is also Dinosaur as in the family name of the unit that looks like motley said beasts, but wears clothing, and acts like reptilian Roseanne Barr or Bart Simpson kindred.

Could that be the explanation behind what is happening in the local media lately?

Look at it this way. I walk into a grocer's shop in Sliema and I meet Anna Mallia's double. She laughs, and says that everyone says the same thing - indeed both of them had a good natter about this the other day. Then I walk out of the shop and see a woman dangling five cute rabbit soft toys from the ears - and catching my eye she winks, and says in a conspiratorial tone that there's currently a run on this type of plaything "For the mass meetings, you know!"

Just for the record, Earl and Fran are the loving parents of Robbie and Charlene (names that effectively date the series), and Baby Sinclair, who is plug ugly but cute, and has the endearing habit of chucking his plate off his highchair to indicate issa daqshekk. The obdurate Boss is Mr Richfield, and the whole series is replete with visual gags akin to those of the Flintstones and those in Ally McBeal's imagination. And, according to serious scientific research, that is why the BA is likened to a dinosaur.

As they told us would be the case with Ivalemanafx, each person can pick out a Dinosaur and identify himself with it.