Sunday 18 January 2009

Dr Nostrum’s Fuck You Paul McKenna Second Portion Blues

I have been tuning in to I CAN MAKE YOU THIN with Paul McKenna. Is it just me or does watching this programme make you hungry?

Somewhere in the last five years Paul McKenna has become a TV Carpet Salesman, and fulfills the American generic by talking loudly and over-excitedly, over-emoting whenever possible. It looks like pastiche, but I believe he has brainwashed himself into believing this is how you present American TV. What he's doing, of course, was invented by my great grand-daddy, who used to sell the family potion off the back of wagons.

There are several staggering contradictions in this program's hour that just will not go away, along with the pervading sense of cheapness that riddles the broadcast, plastered in to the UK schedule lock, stock and barrel off the American airwaves.

The most annoying of these is the near constant reminder from Paul that this is not one of those shows where we (the TV audience) watch other people get thin, immediately followed by introducing us to other people who have lost weight or who we are going to be following losing weight across the series. He does this so many times I can only conclude that he will soon be running for Prime Minister. But anyway, everyone we meet who has lost weight "LOOKS GREAT!!"

The second is down to automaton scheduled advertising where we get Diets sold to us in the ad breaks straight after Paul tells us Diets don't work. I mean you have to be tuning in to Paul McKenna on purpose, right, or at least stick with it on purpose, so whatever demographic it is that the automatons think would purchase one of these Diet products, I'd like to meet them and sell them George Bush's soul - you can keep it in your pocket and use it like worry beads.

There is a grain of usefulness in the show misapplied if it does what it says on the tin. It is a 'not a distraction technique' to help you stabilise the emotions that make you eat when you don't want to, in audience tests it reduces the craving to eat when in an highly emotional state from a 10 to 0. I tried doing it with him, but found it very distracting and couldn't follow what he was showing me. BUT, if this works, what are they doing using it on over-eaters? This should be used on murderers, rapist, paedophiles and genocidists. If only Stalin had sat in the Kremlin and tapped himself calm...

The last contradiction is the clincher, and, properly, it comes first because it's the legal disclaimer that's read out in American blandese ahead of the show and shown for a few seconds at the end. It includes the truths that "results will vary" and that "the program is for entertainment only".

Read that again, because it defines Paul McKenna; entertainment from misery.

So there we have it, another programme that tells people who have forgotten how to behave, how to behave - you know - like religion.

As it was he's making me miserable because being one of those 'naturally thin' people he keeps mentioning (that is, when I don't over-eat for ages or exercise for weeks) I never worry about food, so there I was tucking into my FUCK YOU Paul McKenna second portion when I started chewing my food 20 times and thinking about whether I was full. I couldn't clean my plate and this immediately brought on strong feelings of annoyance and guilt at having watched the Paul McKenna show and subsequently wasting my hard earned on food I was about to throw in the bin.

This life is for entertainment purposes only.

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