11:38am Wednesday 5th November 2008
By Emma Clayton
"Sorry Mr Banker, but no deal." Those words meant nothing to me until about this time last week when I started to develop a fascination with Deal or No Deal. By the time I realised there was no actual skill involved - it's just people opening boxes and getting all emotional about it - I was hooked.
Maybe it was being caught up in the heady excitement of being at home during the day. Working fulltime, leaving home in the dark and returning in the dark, I’ve found I cherish the simples pleasures of just pottering around the house. Some weeks I hardly spend any time at home - not because I have the social life of Paris Hilton but because much of my working life spills over into the evenings and when you get home at 11pm on a school night, it’s kind of bedtime.
Saturdays are generally taken up with my glamorous other job as a home carer and I hate Sundays so much they’re not even worth mentioning. Am I the only person who gets that Sunday night feeling at breakfast time on Sunday morning?
So, as I found when I took a few days off recently, spending a leisurely morning flicking a duster around with half an eye on the telly is indulgent bliss.
I’ve always had a thing for daytime TV, in a guilty pleasure kind of way. When I was at school it didn’t exist; if I was at home poorly (which was hardly ever, as I had the kind of no-nonsense mother who would’ve packed me off to school even if I was wrapped head to toe in bandages, telling me: "You’ll feel better when you get there") the weekday TV schedule was How We Used To Live followed by Rainbow or Pipkins at lunchtime then Crown Court in the afternoons.
No GMTV or Fern and Phil, no Loose Women or Countdown. I remember a creepy mid-afternoon Armchair Thriller, then there was Falcon Crest, an awful American family saga which I blame for my longstanding love of soap operas. That and set-wobbling Australian soap Sons and Daughters. I can still sing the theme tune.
But proper daytime telly didn’t appear until I became a student, ironically the only time in my life that I never really watched TV (apart from Neighbours, which got me through my finals revision).
I discovered daytime TV during a brief period of post-graduate unemployment then, landing a job on a weekly paper, I had every other Friday off so I’d snatch leisurely mornings with Richard and Judy, nodding sagely over my morning coffee as they discussed Princess Di’s latest hemline or a groundbreaking new way to cook aubergines.
Because my days off are rare I try to spend them doing something productive or getting out and about, but occasionally it’s nice to just potter around doing sporadic housework with the telly buzzing in the background. I draw the line at Jeremy Kyle but I’m ashamed to say that I watched Deal or No Deal on three consecutive days last week and have become a bit obsessed. One contestant gave up her job to go on the show and won just 50p! Priceless! Now I’m back at work I’ve had to stop myself from Sky-plussing it.
Years ago, a friend of mine stayed in digs with an eccentric landlady who taped daytime TV and watched it in the evenings. We chortled at her in both sympathy and contempt.
Now, as I find myself wondering what’s happening in Doctors or what the Loose Women are discussing today, I fear it’s only a matter of time before I turn into that batty old lady, curled up on the sofa watching Noel Edmonds into the small hours. If only they’d bring back Falcon Crest…
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