"A human lifetime begins, fizzles, burns brightly, and quietly smoulders to its conclusion in the blink of an eye." "But it feels longer, especially when you're stuck in a queue, or watching a progress bar, or in an uncomfortable chair staring at a clock while a man reads depressing poems about municipal car parks." "The problem is the crushing loneliness of it all." "If only we had someone else to experience things with, the whole thing might be somehow bearable." "We are, all of us, alone." "We enter this world alone, and we leave it alone." "With the invention of television, loneliness seems to be cured forever." "Even if you stayed indoors 365 days of the year, your home would be filled with friendly voices." "You don't matter, you're not important, you're not a person." "You're not even lovable." "You're not even capable of love." "Most of us struggle through our daily routine in the sure knowledge we are fundamentally alone, occasionally overpowered by the sheer aching pointlessness of it all." "This man has seen an advert for the remake of" "The French Connection starring Justin Bieber, and has given up." "What he needs is someone to love him." "But then, everyone wants someone to love them, even though no-one knows what love is." "What would you say love is?" "Love is a deep connection between two or more people." "Sorry, I have no conception of what that might be." "To make things worse, most of our romantic know-how is courtesy of a flickering fibbing machine which can break any relationship before it begins." "This week, how TV ruined your love-life." "Don't say it didn't, it did." "According to television, the best way to end loneliness is to trick another human being into sharing your life with you, to meet someone and fall in love." "What is love anyway?" "When you're working out if you're in love, it's natural to compare how you feel with what you've been taught about how being in love feels." "Who taught you about how being in love feels?" "Without ever really trying, the TV bombarded you with misguided notions about romance, from the moment you were first naive enough" "94% of young people turn to their TV, While only 33% asked Mum, 17% Dad." "But the plug-in parent is a liar, the fictional world it portrays seeps into your skull, setting a misleading framework." "There are two ways to scupper your relationship before it begins." "One is to carve the phrase "I despise you" on to your forehead." "The other is to enter into it with wildly unrealistic expectations." "Studies show a link between the amount of TV people watch and the likelihood they will believe certain unhelpful relationship myths." "Chief among the myths is the notion of a single soul-mate out there for you, the thought that, out of the millions of people in the world, there's only one that truly belongs with you." "One." "One person." "That's your helping." "One." "For this to be true, there'd have to be a celestial department of destiny whose job it is to pair people off like producers on a reality show." "The key thing about a soul-mate is they're psychic." "They know what you're thinking and can finish your sentences for you, like the irritatingly twee potential buddies in this online dating pitch who find themselves making a sound so sweet it's like listening to the Carpenters." "Not the band, just a pair of random workmen." "d I like old movies d Like Godfather 3... d What's "Godfavver Free"?" "d Like Godfather 3... d Oh, Godfather 3!" "d.. considered the best one It's not considered the best one... d d Will you BLEEP me?" "!" "d" "We've become so accustomed to seeing people pairing off like that, it's almost impossible to see a man and woman together on screen at once without speculating over whether they're going to have sex or not." "That's why presenters often work best as a male-female duo, as in the Daybreak pairing of Bleakley and Chiles." "I bet they're doing it!" "Or the cheery Turnbull and Williams." "Oh, yeah." "I bet they are doing it." "Sexual chemistry also piques interest in shows like the glittering Strictly Come Dancing." "Oh, I hope they're not going to do it." "And turns stylish whodunits like CSI into unsettling "will they, won't they?" scenarios." "Oh, I think they're about to do it." "Do it, do it!" "Come on!" "Do it, do it." "The first step in falling in love is to find someone attractive, which you'd think would be an organic process that occurs with much conscious effort." "The chances are television has warped your notions of physical beauty by parading inordinately attractive people before you morning, noon and night, raising your expectations to unsustainable heights, while making you feel inferior." "It's telling that, when you encounter someone attractive in real life, they often seem faintly unreal, like they've been Photoshopped into your world by the media." "People in the media often have been Photoshopped, or tweaked and coiffeured." "Faces like mine, which resemble a supernatural medical experiment in which the spirits of the dying submariners of the curse have been injected inside a rubbery pork mask are exceptions to the rule." "In adverts particularly, attractive people are presented as tantalising prizes." "They float through the world like angels, drawing admiring glances wherever they go." "Unless you look like that, and statistically you won't, the unmistakable conclusion is that you don't match up." "No wonder so many of us simply don't know what to do when we are confronted by people we fancy in real life." "'Oh, she's really pretty, I should talk to her." "'Go on, say something suave like... '" "Argh!" "The most important part of a man's body is quite obviously his bum." "Men aren't the only ones swayed by physical appearance." "Apparently, the creatures known as women also get aroused by physically attractive males, although this wasn't discovered until 1983!" "It's been shown in the past many men have been aroused by such material, and we wanted to find out if women also responded in this manner." "So we've developed this probe which is designed to be inserted into the vagina." "Thus, science deduced that, when you insert a stiffened rounded tube into a woman's vagina, she sometimes gets aroused!" "Odour also plays an important role in attraction." "No-one will love you if you smell like a tramp, unless it's intentional." "She's wearing Tramp, a fragrance created for her by Lentheric." "Here we see an invitingly sensuous advert for some unfortunately titled stink water." "Free, bold and exciting." "Hungry and homeless." "She's wearing Tramp, and everybody loves her." "Tramp by Lentheric, shouldn't you wear it too?" "Keen to exploit human frailty, advertisers aren't shy about implying all you need to satisfy your biological urge to procreate or end the painful loneliness of your existence, is to invest in a product that drives members of the opposite sex insensible with lust." "Lynx commercials employ less subtle imagery than Soviet propaganda, implying Lynx is catnip for girls." "Splash it round your carcass, and women will flock towards you like plankton, wrestle you for a place in the bedroom, and stop dead in their tracks to show you their pussies." "Bam chick a wow-wow!" "Toothpaste is also depicted as a startlingly effective way to win the affections of a bit of desirable sky cock." "It made her smile dynamite white, dynamite fresh." "It got her noticed." "That night, Cindy and Jim took off together." "Her feet haven't touched the ground since." "Even chewing gum, traditional scourge of bus passengers, can bring couples together on a lonely, dusty road trip." "I suppose chewing gum is a pretty good metaphor for most romance." "After the initial burst of excitement, you find yourself going through the motions really, while your interest drains away." "And then you end up spitting it out into a hankie." "In adverts, couples fall in love quickly as they've only got a life span of 30 seconds." "But in real life it takes longer than that, because actual people tend to be more cautious than their fictional counterparts." "A myth perpetuated by many televised romantic films is the notion of love at first sight, seen here in the mawkish romantic drama," "The Notebook." "A becapped cock falls for a boobed cow in a bumper car." "Just one glimpse of this woman and he instinctively knows she's the one for him." "In real life, when you meet someone you like, you might tentatively try to catch their attention, and fail." "And at that point, you'd probably give up." "But in the lunatic world of romantic cinema, the protagonist immediately asks his quarry out." "Want to dance with me?" "No." "Why not?" "Because I don't want to." "And, when rejected, performs a grand gesture to impress her, in this case, dangling perilously from a Ferris wheel." "Now will you go out with me?" "What?" "No!" "Well, you leave me no choice." "And blackmailing her into a date." "OK, OK, fine, I'll go out with you." "Looks quite romantic, but it's only a hair's breadth from threatening to saw your thumb off with a bread knife if someone doesn't give you a blow job." "The grand gesture, as personified by John Cusack earnestly holding his boombox in the air, or Heath Ledger wooing Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You, demonstrates the depth of the hero's affections and almost to never fails" "to win over the mightily impressed girl, even though most of the time grand gesture behaviour is almost indistinguishable from stalking." "For instance, in maudlin blockbuster Love Actually," "Andrew Lincoln demonstrates his love for Keira Knightley by turning up on her doorstep with an armful of idiot boards." "Actually, that's nothing special to her, that's just how she remembers her lines on set." "It's carol singers!" "It's harder to get away with a grand gesture in an office so it's little wonder people often dither when it comes to actually acting on their desires." "And dithering can drive you mad, taking over your brain to the point where it becomes the biggest story of the day." "And if you've just joined us, our top story tonight..." "Feeling the heat, decision time for infatuated office worker." "Pressure is mounting on south London search engine optimisation specialist," "Oliver Hammond, as he weighs up whether to ask attractive co-worker Siobhan Laine out for a drink." "According to witnesses, interactions between the pair have become increasingly noticeable over the past week." "But Hammond's window of opportunity is thought to be closing fast." "Karen Itis has this." "From the outside," "Pixelated Crow looks like any other web-design company." "It has windows, a door and is constructed from bricks." "But within these walls lurks the potential for sexual intercourse and possibly more, between 31-year-old Oliver Hammond and 27-year-old Siobhan Laine." "Despite his intentions being clear," "Hammond has yet to take decisive action." "The problem is one of interpretation." "Many of Siobhan's responses..." ".. could be nothing more than regulation workplace politeness." "Compounding the issue, little is known of Siobhan Laine's life outside the workplace." "Hammond has reportedly noted that her Facebook relationship status modifier has been left blank, although there are photographs of her in a holiday setting with a man she seems intimate with." "It's not clear whether he's a current boyfriend or simply an ex." "Either way, this mystery man hasn't been tagged." "Experts say Hammond is currently in danger of succumbing to inertia and finding himself with little prospect of access to Laine's sexual organs." "If Hammond makes his intentions clear, then he'll either be classified as a creepy annoyance, or, and this is what he'll be hoping for, his advances will be accepted and he'll find himself entering her pocket of intimacy." "The danger comes if he fails to do anything and she places him in the friend zone." "It's an analysis the public agrees with." "My advice would be "go for it"." "He needs to get a move on, doesn't he?" "Pull his finger out and ask her out." "Whatever he decides, it's clear time is of the essence if he is to have any hope whatsoever of dissipating the cloud of romantic failure currently gathering over his head." "Karen Itis, south London." "Men seeking advice on how to win over a woman will find no shortage of role models on TV." "Trouble is, they're all dicks." "For instance, in this epic multi-coloured space opera," "Captain James T Kirk repeatedly misinterpreted his mission statement, to boldly go where no man has gone before, as a green light to attempt to carve as many notches onto the captain's log as possible." "Kiss me." "It seemed the moment Kirk heard a female voice, he reached for his libido." "Captain Kirk." "Where are you?" "Unsubtle though Kirk's bold seduction technique was, there was no denying, he often left women weak at the knees." "What a role model!" "Meanwhile in movie land, another James, namely James Bond, repeatedly got away with the kind of on-the-job conduct that would earn anyone else an instant tribunal." "No!" "And his chat-up lines weren't just creaky but delivered with all the simmering passion of a gruff sandwich toaster." "They really is nothing much for us to do tonight." "Or is there?" "Nonetheless, he too was depicted as successful." "Having sex with Roger Moore must be had like having an old tree fall on you." "As far as TV is concerned, when it comes to dating, you shouldn't live like 007, more like 00-tit." "I absolutely adore brunettes, but not blondes." "But a lot of blondes aren't really, if you know what I mean." "Thanks." "What's your favourite Keats poem?" "Yes, most dating shows are more depressing than live footage of screaming ducklings being kicked uncomprehending face-first into a mincing machine." "Take the pioneeringly raucous dating show, Blind Date, in which Cilla Black, played here by Ronald McDonald's aunt, played matchmaker to various ghastly prospective BLEEP, generally a trio of appalling human wangs, perched on improbably high stools, like the world's three dimmest parrots," "striving for the attention of a giggly haircut with all the charisma of the Bhopal disaster, in front of a studio audience apparently primed to shriek and squawk like a bus load of nine-year-old choristers, plunging over a cliff," "every time a participant uttered anything approaching a comprehensible vowel." "You and me, we make whoopee!" "It's funny because they're old!" "Often during the initial stages of romance, you're so desperate to bamboozle this magical creature into mistaking you for a three-dimensional human being, that you'll resort to telling ridiculous lies in a bid to pretend that the pair of you have something in common" "apart from your chronic addiction to oxygen." "Have you seen the Ceausescu execution video?" "It's really very funny." "Yeah, I do that too." "And the thing is, you're both doing this so once the fog of war has dissipated, you're left with two people who covertly pretended to be two slightly different people fused together into one confused two-person chain gang." "Not that you'll notice in the early days." "You'll be too busy getting off with each other, which is as close as you'll get to enjoying the heightened passion of couples in the movies who suffer from an insane level of desire and are always rutting outdoors like farmyard animals." "They're often seen making out in the rain, in the snow." "Actually I think hail is the only unromantic weather condition." "Dramas tend to portray sex between lovers as a wild, untamed passionate but ultimately hygienic expression of primal lust, which usually focuses on the woman's fulfilled face." "You don't really see male expressions during love-making unless you study the cinema verite end of the romance market, where you discover that during sex, men pull faces like they're concentrating hard on their craft in a key-cutting shop," "or stumbling in a pair of uncomfortable shoes, operating a hammer drill, or playing keyboards for Depeche Mode." ""Just Can't Get Enough" by Depeche Mode" "For years, to find that kind of frank material, you had to look to home video until Aids came along, at which point people on screen were allowed to graphically discuss sex, even in searing teen dramas." "No..." "No..." "Still, that doesn't mean we couldn't..." "Or even..." "Today, intercourse is everywhere and not just after the watershed." "No, it's even infected the cosy world of daytime TV." "We've got Diana the line now." "Hi, Diana." "Hi." "You've got no kids but you suffer from a blocked vagina." "Apparently, sexual imagery is everywhere, even in the cheery world of children's television and the playful Big Cook Little Cook." "Be careful, Ben!" "Oh, no!" "Don't worry, Ben." "I'll just lick it up." "Mmm." "Hee-hee-hee!" "Anyway, despite this erotic bombardment, before long there will be more sex on your bedroom TV than in your bedroom bed but that's only natural." "Research suggests that the first blossoming of love is accompanied by an increase in levels of a protein known as nerve growth factor or NGF, which is thought to provoke butterflies in the stomach, sweaty palms, euphoria... you know, all that love shit." "But NGF levels subside once a couple has been together for about a year, after which point, if you're lucky that exhilarating rush of lust is transformed into a bond of loving companionship." "Love is like the flu." "People often think they're experiencing it but most of the time, it's just a cold and they only realise it was "just a cold" years later, when they finally catch the flu for real," "by which point they've got engaged to bloody Ian." "TV and the movies don't really provide many accurate examples of coupledom." "Most fictional romance is finished at the point of consummation, as though the hero's penis is a drawing pin that bursts the fictional universe bubble the moment he sticks it in." "When long-term couples are portrayed, they tend to either be seen as sexless winsome twosomes like Terry and June or warring partners who apparently despise one another and whose mutual hatred is played for laughs, such as Jack and Vera Duckworth." "How the hell you could lose a brand-new suit, I do not know." "Don't go on, Vera." "Or they're warring partners whose mutual hatred is played for un-laughs like Den and Angie, from the sob-a-minute woe fest EastEnders." "Will you stop it?" "!" "Will you stop avoiding the issue?" "!" "Of course real life relationships aren't nearly this cosy." "Tolerance, that's true love." "In fact, I'd define true love as the ability to share one fridge with the same person for 17 years without resorting to fists." "It also helps if you toss in the occasional basic crumb of affection." "Would you say you're disillusioned?" "You don't think marriage is all it's cracked up to be." "No." "No?" "Does your husband show his gratitude to you in any way?" "No." "He doesn't?" "No." "No way at all?" "No, not really, no." "Does he ever buy you anything?" "No." "Never bought you any flowers." "No." "Would you like that if he did?" "Yes." "Yes, unless you cultivate a meaningful, quiet, unshowy love for each other once the NGF leaves town, the dull tedium of life will wear your union down." "It's like being cell mates except neither of you has to defecate in a bucket now and then while the other one lies on a bunk, silently facing the wall." "Every day, the same person murping on and on about the same three or four subjects, through their mouth, which not so long ago was a delicate, beautiful thing you enjoyed kissing but now is just a sort of underwhelming content delivery system." "Oh, you had a day at work, did you?" "Oh, yeah." "Oh, no, that does sound miserable." "Oh, tell me about it." "Tell you all about it." "Tell me all about your life in detail for ever." "On and on, burbles their mush cave, talking about stuff that happened to them and things they consider important, sharing their feelings while you just point your face in their direction and hope that your expression doesn't betray your aching isolation and your raging need to just open" "your own mouth and shout," ""Oh, for God's sake, just shut up!" "Shut up!"" "And all the while, the emotional rocket fuel that propelled you into this situation in the first place was expended long ago and now there's no momentum left, so what do you do?" "Well, you sit there, anaesthetising yourselves together, watching more television." "Yes, staring at the same machine that threw pretty folk at you till your own self-worth was shat through a bin bag, the machine that said true love meant grand gestures and rampant sex, that hammered home the false idea of the perfect soul-mate," "which a flawed human partner with their toenails and ear wax simply doesn't seem to be any more." "TV, the machine that wiped its arse on your Valentines." "If your relationship is teetering on the brink of collapse, there's one thing TV can do - it can make the break-up entertaining." "Take one of the cruellest shows ever devised, in which former 90210 villainess Shannen Doherty helped members of the public carry out televised dumpings of unwanted partners." "In one episode, Shannen meets caring new man Jeremy here, who's getting fed up with his girlfriend Lydia as she's too possessive and doesn't trust him." "Shannen convinces Jeremy to convince Lydia to take a job manning phones on a relationship hotline." "Meanwhile, rather than realising what a horrible thing they're doing," "Jeremy and Shannen sit backstage, enjoying the fun and bitching about how Lydia's brought this on herself." "So she does these crazy things and then cries?" "Yeah." "And you back off." "I think she does it because she cares." "You know, that seems to be one of the biggest misconceptions, is that people are jealous because they care." "I actually think jealousy is nothing to do with caring." "Yeah." "Well, that's the moral high ground taken care of." "Anyway, the fun really kicks off once Shannen pops in person." "This looks like Beadle's About, except Shannen differs from Beadle in two ways." "She doesn't have to peel her beard off cos she's had electrolysis, and she's not dead... on the outside." "Then the cow gets down to business, playing Lydia a special message from Jeremy in which he tactfully refers to her in the past tense." "Hey, Lydia, I really enjoyed a lot of the time I spent with you and I think you're really great person." "But..." "I'm going to have to break up with you." "Meanwhile, he watches backstage, crying." "At least it's educational." "I never knew jackals had tear ducts." "This just isn't for me any more." "OK, that's not nice to hear that." "Where is he?" "He's in the bravery room, the special room for really big brave men." "Fictional televised break-ups tend to be unrealistically dignified affairs, involving two people who have realised that, while they're in love, it's not quite perfect and so they must part with as much wounded nobility as possible." "Serena..." "I still..." "I know." "As well as being bloody stupid, it perpetuates the myth of the perfect relationship." "Me too." "You bloody idiots!" "You bloody idiot!" "You bloody idiots!" "I love you." "You stupid bloody idiots!" "Idiots!" "A real-life break-up can be a huge personal tragedy, the worst thing that ever happened to you, your own personal 9/11, overshadowing and any actual news happening that day." "And if you've just joined us, this is the scene in south London, outside of Oliver Hammond's home." "We're expecting his girlfriend, Siobhan Laine, to arrive shortly, and our sources indicate she intends to terminate their 18-month relationship." "On the line now is Rita Sharma, friend and work colleague of Siobhan." "Rita, is this a surprise?" "Not really." "I think we've all seen it coming." "She's been getting suspiciously close to her friend David..." "Sorry, sorry, to interrupt you, Rita." "It looks like Siobhan is now arriving at the house." "Miss Laine, can you tell us how you're feeling?" "Miss Laine, how does Mr Hammond feel about what you're about to do?" "'Well, Miss Laine clearly not giving much away there, 'so we're not really sure at this stage... '" "Have they got that right?" "You're chucking me?" "You can't do this." "Don't do this, please." "Daniel, what's going on inside there right now?" "Well, we can only speculate but the likelihood is she's rather bluntly explaining it's over." "She's had the decency to do this face-to-face so that's something." "For his part, he'll doubtless fall to his knees, ask her to reconsider." "There'll be some kind of humiliating display of anguish, tears, gobs, mucus running from the nose." "A scene of abject desperation, then." "Absolutely." "You have to remember, this man's world is ending so he'll grasp at any remaining atom of hope, like a basic, horrified creature, utterly debasing himself in the process." "Is there any chance his degrading pleas might work?" "None whatsoever." "In fact, it'll probably strengthen her resolve." "If we look at this cycle of ruin, the more despondent he becomes, the less attractive he appears, which in turn makes him more despondent, and so on, until the whole thing spirals out of control" "and he's lost her forever." "It looks like Miss Laine is coming out now so let's go live to the scene." "Can you confirm the relationship is over?" "Is Mr Hammond crying?" "Is it definite?" "'Is he crying right now?" "'" "Still tight-lipped." "The question is what will Oliver do next?" "Absolutely." "And the answer is he'll probably crawl over to the sofa, lie there feeling sorry for himself." "He'll sniff, wipe his nose, run his hand through his hair, do a sad little cough." "Then he'll probably have the odd moment of serenity, before glancing at a photo of him and Siobhan together and starting to blub again." "Now you've got to step back on the treadmill and go through the entire dispiriting process all over again, trying to find someone attractive, taking them on dates, having sex with them, sharing your feelings." "Sickening, isn't it?" "And all because you're so desperate to find "the one", this mythical, impossible one who probably never existed in the first place, which means, unless you're very lucky, you'll wind up feeling like you're just settling." "You know, there aren't enough love songs about just settling." "d I married a girl d Hey, baby d We've been together for while now d Uh-huh" "d And there is something I want to say to you d Yeah d Girl, you're not quite everything that I had hoped you'd be d You're not that good-looking d And I'm not really impressed by your personality" "d You're pretty dull d But I've been searching so long, so it's time I said to you d Because I don't want to be alone d At the risk of not finding better Girl, you'll do" "d At the risk of not finding better Girl, you'll do d You're pretty dull, baby" "d You are so dull d Let her know, man" "d You're not the best but you'll do for now" "d You'll do, you'll do, you'll do d Oh, you'll do" "d Yeah, baby d We're here to say to you, us five, d Girl, you'll do" "d You'll do" "d Ye-e-e-e-eah, you'll do. d" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"