TV Transylvania #1

I'm still exhausted, so here are some suggestions for television programmes that they could show over here, if somebody had an ounce of imagination, that might perk me up a bit.

DONKEYS DO THE DARNDEST THINGS

Everybody – everybody here, at least - agrees that there’s nothing funnier than a kitten on a skateboard, a dog chasing its own tail or a hamster trying to escape from a pan of frying chips. (Why they use canned laughter on these programmes I do not know – it’s always drowned out by hysterical real laughter in every household I’ve been in.) But the potential entertainment value of the donkey has not been explored to its full potential. There are many of these lovely animals here but they’re made to perform manual tasks like pulling carts of hay. I’m convinced they have a more artistic temperament and are just dieing to get on the stage, maybe simply to waggle their ears in time to The Birdy Song or to do a Graham Norton impersonation. Or they could be asked questions: stamp a hoof so many times for the number of sides on a pentagon, wonders of the ancient world, horsemen of the apocalypse, etc. It’s TV Gold.

SAME OLD, SAME OLD

Until the presenter got pregnant the most popular programme in Romania was Surpriză, Surpriză!. Yes, the same one we used to have in UK with the lovely Cilla Black. It used to go on for about 7 hours every Saturday evening, and in a country where people get by with so very few dreams it made most of those dreams come true. But more realistic – and more modern, considering the “reality television” phenomenon - would be a programme with absolutely no surprises at all. Bloke wakes up, goes and milks the cows, bids his neighbour good-day, calls him a twat under his breath, goes home for breakfast, grunts at his wife, feeds the chickens, has a dump, goes home for lunch, grunts at his wife again, feeds the pig, talks to the dog, digs the vegetable plot, goes home for dinner, grunts at his wife, shuts himself in the bog for 20 minutes with his memories of Laura Lavric, goes to sleep. Every day.

LOTHARIO WATCH

Back in the Good Old Days there was only one channel, only 4 hours of broadcasting per day, and half of those were dedicated to the doings of Comrade Ceauşescu and his Charming Wife Elena. Some people actually miss those times: they were starving but at least everybody else was too, and they were ruled by a megalomaniac arse but at least he was their megalomaniac arse. I’d like to bring back a bit of that for the sake of nostalgia. The only Romanian man alive with comparable standing to “The Genius of the Carpathians” is Ilie Năstase. Ilie played good tennis but is now mainly known for being 6th on Maxim magazine’s list of lotharios, having slept with 2500 women despite looking like my friend Steve*. I think many people would like to spend 2 hours an evening watching and learning his technique.

* Steve is sadly no longer with us, but he was also astonishingly successful in this arena of human endeavour.

Farewell, Youssoufaki

Phew, I moved house and somehow managed not lose my job, my missus, my marbles, or - most importantly of course - my connection with you, gentle reader; I do hope you're still out there somewhere. We had to give up our lovely RDS broadband though. RDS is an extension of CERN's Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss Alps: modern, high-tech, and pretty darned fast. We could have gone for RomTelecom, which like The Dacia Car, another national institution, actually does kinda work, in its own way, but the power for it is generated in Moldavia by a donkey walking round and round in a circle with a carrot dangling in front of its nose; and even a Moldavian donkey will stop in its tracks occasionally and ask itself the question "why?" So we got UPC - bundled with cable TV channels like Discovery, Chav Shopping++ Gold, Red Hot Rijswijk, etc - which is responsible for peasants knowing more about the Serengeti National Park, bling and Dutch Housewives than they know about the next village, agricultural machinery and actual housework. But it's a bit slow.

Speaking of donkeys, it seems that my best male friend here in Romania is no longer with us. I don't know his name - being a beast of burden he probably never had one - so I'll call him Youssoufaki after the much beloved donkey in Kazantzakis' book The Greek Passion - named, but ironically, please note, after a Turkish Agha's catamite - whom his master believed understood everything he felt and said. My Youssoufaki used to pull carts of hay, bring shepherds down from the hill or simply stand around looking sexy. He was at his best though when rolling around scratching his back in a puddle of dust and waving his legs in the air. Like a proper townie twat I used to run up and stroke his neck and talk to him. But, "he's no longer with us", they told me when I visited his village recently. I thought this a little ambiguous, but to spare my feelings they wouldn't elaborate. So I fear I'll never know whether he's gone to some other, meaner master, to Dreamy Meadows Donkey Sanctuary Retirement Home and Devon Fudge Shop (pictured above), or to the dog food factory. Sorry to be so maudlin. Farewell old son.