The real question is why do I watch it

Maybe when I'm much older I'll regret spending so many nights in front of the TV, rather than being out enjoying my youth. However, watching the television is something I do a lot of, and I've mentioned my feelings about the morons on quiz shows before.

I've been watching Dog Eat Dog with the inimitable Ulrika as its presenter. If you have not seen it, this is a show where the contestants are given a weekend's outdoor pursuits activities, which allow them to find each out each other's weaknesses. After the physical stuff, comes some IQ and other mental tests. The aim of the game is for the team to pass through a number of rounds where a challenge is described to them and they must vote for the person they think most likely to fail it. The challenge is then attempted by the nominated person; if they fail, they are out of the game, if they succeed, then they get to nominate one of their voters to be ousted. This proceeds until two players are left, who then play the final challenge head to head.

In principle, this is a good show; it's a sort of cross between The Weakest Link and Friends Like These. As ever, however, there are some contestants who are beyond belief. In such a negative environment, the show has already seen more than its fair share of sore losers and sore winners. However, worst of all, some of the contestants really don't know their arses from their elbows. When asked which actor linked the films Get Carter, Educating Rita and something else (it doesn't really matter), one of this evening's contestants was so ignorant of Michael Caine that he suggested it might be Jennifer Lopez... right...

The icing on the cake was the braindead bint who was given the maths round. Apparently, she'd scored the highest in the tests before the show, which doesn't say much for the other contestants. The rules are simple; there's a board with 25 maths problems on it, you must answer 8 correctly within 2 minutes. You can pass, and you can answer some incorrectly, so long as you get 8 right. PLUS, you get 20 seconds' worth of viewing the problems before they are hidden behind their respective numbers. So, the trick is to find the 8 easy ones, remember where they are and just answer them. I will now list some of the problems that bimbo couldn't get right:

• 9 squared (she ventured 3!)
• 6 x 7
• 35 divded by 7

These were the easier ones. I could forgive someone for not getting the square root of 225, or not being fussed about adding 4 digit numbers, but the above are all primary school level! Perhaps the contestant was confused by the way that Ulrika referred to all the puzzles as sums or perhaps our education system is a waste of space!

28 April 2001
Ashley Frieze