Just Say No

One of the very best things about leaving the UK for Thailand was that it enabled me to wean myself off certain addictive television. I was completely hooked on Coronation Street, Eastenders, Holby and Casualty.

Now, I AM aware of the off button – and I DO know how to use it, but … I … well I didn’t. I was relatively happy being hooked on them. I wasn’t doing anyone else any harm, was I?

But the whole celebrity thing: Yuk. And, a bit like picking a scab, sometimes I just couldn’t resist it. I only had to be weak for a couple of episodes before I was hyperventilating for the next one. Or, goddamn it, going online to watch the live stream. Yes, readers, I hang my head in shame but how I loved Fame Academy …

By the time we moved I’d really had my fill of all the media celebrity fascination and although I’m au fait with the off button, I just couldn’t … quite … actually do it. The only way I could cope was to not get inveigled into the programme in the first place.

I was delighted then to exile myself here because suddenly I was in a foreign land where I didn’t see or hear any of the celebrity thing. Well, of course I do see it and I do hear it, but because it’s not ‘Where is the loo?’ or ‘chicken fried rice, please’ I can’t understand it.

So yesterday I was in the hairdressers. (Yes, again. Having my hair cut again because it wasn’t short enough last time, and yes, now I’ve got the haircut of a dorky eight year old boy but even I’m getting weary at all my tales of my barnet so that’s enough of that). So I’m in the hairdressers and Johnny with the scissors tells me that the woman having her hair washed (out of earshot) is a celebrity. A soap star.

Well when she appears from the washing, it’s a terrible anticlimax because she just looks like a Thai lady. It’s not like I’m sitting next to Vera Duckworth or Pauline whatsername that Jane Wenham Jones’ book told me had been killed off. But there is some Diva like behaviour because the massage parlour next door sends in a masseur and while the Soap Star is having her hair cut, she also gets her feet and lower legs massaged.

Damn it. I wish I’d thought of that.