Robert McNeil: This television show is enough to make you sick…where's Blair when you need him?

TT'S easy to take an aloof and censorious view of Big Brother, the stupid television programme watched by 99.87 per cent of the population. Crass, shallow, voyeuristic and – arguably – evil, it had the masses rooted to their massive screens, agog to see whose breasts would come out next or who'd be greetin' because the other neds and p-list celebrities were picking on them.

I watched the programme only once, in the line of duty, and found it detestable. However, soon, the nation may look back fondly to such innocent fun. For Hurl could be on its way to Britainshire. Hurl, as most of you outwith Edinburgh's Trinity area will know, is American slang for vomiting. If you live in Trinity and don't know what vomiting is, it's a sudden eruption of barely masticated foodstuffs, brought on by over-indulgence or disgust at something, such as watching Glasgow Rangers.

This hurling is the basis for an American cable television programme, which has enraged parents, doctors and other hooligans. Naturally, therefore, rumours abound that ITV is about to commission it here. The premise of the programme is surprisingly simple. Contestants eat a mountain of classic American haute cuisine, such as hot dogs, and then face tummy-tumbling challenges, including fairground rides or diving into swimming pools. Then they tuck into a "surprise" (yawn) feast, such as fried insects in custard.

The last person without vomit down his or her front wins £500 in English money plus a statuette – of a stomach. Now, many of you are up in arms, as they say, even though I see you have remained seated and that your arms are still clutching this newspaper, probably in the hope that it'll give you moral support and sustain you through this grim news.

I will not disappoint you, unless you are reading this on the internet and are baffled by the multi-syllabic words. For, yea, let me point out that, in a surprise development, the programme has proved popular with young people, especially males, many of whom regard vomiting or hurling as a contact sport.

The programme-makers, too, have presented themselves as upstanding pillocks of the community. They point out: "A doctor is always on standby." A psychiatrist might be handier.

Many of you will remember Tony Blair, a prime minister who stuck to his guns, even when these were pointed at his own heid. He was the most successful leader of modern times because he wasn't afraid to do the unpopular thing. Indeed, he used to say to the nation: "You're going to hate me for this, but I'm going to lead us into a wee war. Then I'm going to go round to see Maggie Thatcher for a cup of tea. Toodle-pipkins!"

Many people now miss Mr Blair and wish he could return, like King Arthur, to save us from Broon and his hapless stewardship of England and the Other Bits.

The same principle that Mr Blair applied to his premiership should be deployed in television. To wit, remove all the popular programmes because, with the obvious exception of Dr Who, these are watched by dimwits who don't know any better.

Scattered in attics at the BBC are hundreds of improving and entertaining Open University programmes from the 1970s, that halcyon decade.

These could be shown instead of soap operas and reality shows. Any subsequent rioting could be put down by heavily armed troops, ensuring the television news was also entertaining and amusing.

Everyone would be a winner and television, which I'm told is available in colour now, would not be stained by lumpy discharges from mentally diseased young persons hoping to be fatuous for 15 minutes.

Killers on the loose

PEOPLE with and without beards are in raptures again about killer whales, the al-Qaeda of the sea. Previously, it was thought the last of these ghastly monsters had been killed off by more enlightened generations. But, no, they're staining the water red again as they massacre other creatures to the delight of vaguely macho lovers of nature's gore.

My message to the murderous Orcas: come to Blackford Pond at your peril. I wouldn't vomit on a killer whale if it was on fire, though that eventuality is unlikely. Next time you see one, do as I always do and punch it very hard in the face. They don't like it.

Home on the range? No thanks, overseas for me!

IF IT had a hat, this column would remove said millinery as a sign of respect to those millions of Britons who have never left the United Kingdom – nay, not even once.

Has their curiosity been piqued by the Algarve or Alicante? It has not. Have they wished to eat foreign food at its point of origin and not as a home-delivered takeaway? They have not. Have they felt ashamed as their fellows boast of hopping over crocodiles on the Limpopo or of some vainglorious expedition led by objectionable people in shorts?

No, they have felt nothing but contentment, holidaying in familiar climes, far perhaps from the madding crowd, but not far from a Sainsbury's or Morrisons, and with the close availability of a trustworthy television set showing good old British programmes.

You think such people freaks? Well, a new poll shows there must be freaks in every street, particularly in the East Midlands. For, there, as many as 23 per cent of citizens have never holidayed abroad. Curiously, West Midlanders are the most frequent foreign travellers. This is disappointing news – JRR Tolkien, the Moses of our times, hailed West Midlanders as the models for his hobbits. Clearly, they've been going There and Back Again, but not in the manner he envisaged.

Hobbits only travel under duress, and then purely to defeat evil, and not willingly for the purposes of putting paella willy-nilly down their trouser-fronts in Torremolinos.

The same poll showed Scots were the most frequent foreign holidayers, with only 13 per cent never having set food in Abroadshire.

It's a shaming statistic, which confirms what most observers think of the Scots: they are a footloose and deplorable people who could never prosper under their own leadership, but would only run amok vomiting and refusing to work.