Blasted Virgin Media

I bought a book about Jack the Ripper at the weekend, which makes entertaining reading. It's not really my kind of thing, normally, but I'd been re-reading Alan Moore's "From Hell" and wanted to know some more of the facts behind it. And this book, which is called "Jack the Ripper: The Facts", seemed like it would probably fit the bill. So now that I'm in a ripperological mood, I noticed tonight in the Radio Times that there's a programme on called "Vic Reeves investigates Jack the Ripper". Well, great, I thought. Vic Reeves is funny and Jack the Ripper is on my mind, I'll watch that. But then I noticed it's on Sky, and Virgin Media stopped carrying Sky several months ago. This is the first time it's really annoyed me. Although the Radio Times review calls it 'workmanlike', and Vic is never much good when he's not doing his own surreal material, so it probably wouldn't have been worth watching anyway.

I suppose I could watch "The Thick Of It" on BBC4 instead. The Radio Times says it's the funniest thing since Fawlty Towers, which is the kind of praise that's only going to leave you disappointed however good it is. And it's Alison Graham who's saying that, and I never like what she likes. But then again, if I'm going to judge everything on TV like this without seeing it, I'll never turn it on again. Actually, that would probably be a good thing. Opium of the masses, and all that. I could become one of those people who listen to the radio and have an ancient black and white portable TV for watching occasional nature documentaries.