Cash in the Attic

Every so often I can't be bothered to make the 8 mile trip to Exeter, so I work at home. Although I work damn hard at home, ahem, I do have the odd break. Dipping into and out of daytime television has reaquainted me with some decidedly dodgy shows. Like Noel Edmonds's "Deal or No Deal" which is so ridiculously simple that it is hard to explain to people who have never seen it because they can't believe that a 45 minute show could be made around the concept. In fact, a lot of people who have seen it have the same problem.

Then there are the multitude of talk shows: Trisha, Matthew Wright, Montel, Rikki Lake, some Ann Robinson lookalike, Springer, etc., etc. I thought most of these people were back working in call centres or whatever they did before they started parading the emotionally and mentally challenged to make other people stuck at home on a wednesday morning feel better about their own lives. But no, they're still there like it was 1999.

Perhaps suprisingly, these programmes don't disturb me as much as the innocuous looking "Cash in the Attic". I might be going out on a limb here, but I think that this programme demonstrates part of what is wrong with the world today.

The premise of the show is that a couple, with the help of an expert, remove from their home any item of antiquity that may have any value and sell it at auction. The money made is then used to fund some ridiculously transient activity.

Episodes I have seen have involved:

• a woman selling a table that had been in her family for four generations so she could celebrate her 35th Wedding Anniversary in Cyprus;
• a bloke indiscriminantly selling paintings from his father's painstakingly and thoughfully gathered private collection to buy a freaking Wedding cake for his daughter;
• and a couple selling their grandfather's war medals and ceremonial sword from the Boer war so that they could hold a speed-dating evening. Yee Gods.

I would like a Cash in the Attic Revisted where we see these people return from their holiday, their tans faded. After a week at home, they realise that they have removed not only the only items of interest and character from their homes, but also stuff that that they actually liked and represented something to them more than a few extra pounds from an expensive cake can. And then I would like them tell their kids how much the items that they would have been left will be worth in 30 years time when they pop their clogs.

I accept I'm a bit of a sentamentalist, but here's a warning to future generations of Parsons. If any of you even think of selling any of my 52 collected bookmarks from the landmarks of Devon so that you can go to the Hoverball Solar Cup finals, I'm gonna haunt you good.
Category:Television