Pressed Pink

Keeping more regular hours and no longer having the demands of a live-in boyfriend to contend with were both instrumental in bringing me into more intimate contact with the television.

My parents didn’t even purchase a telly until I was four or five years old (all unmissable goggling – Charles and Di’s ill-advised trot up the aisle, the magnificent documentary Flight of the Condor et al was undertaken next door at the kindly invitation of our elderly neighbours). When it eventually arrived, our brand new television was switched on only rarely, primarily for a David Attenborough or similar, and spent much of the rest of the time covered by a cloth, designed for that very purpose: thus shielding its mystical quadrate of the endless possibilities from my childish eyes, and fostering in me an almost worshipful relationship with that particular media.

I could happily stare at the screen for hours, entranced by even the most mind-numbing bollocks. Lucky really, bearing in mind that mind-numbing bollocks seemed to be the staple of Spanish television.

The biggest obsession was with celebrity – footballers, bull fighters, actors, singers, royals… the list was long and getting on the list surprisingly easy even if you were devoid of any discernible talent. At one stage there was a girl doing the rounds of the chat shows simply by dint of having slept with a man who had slept with a woman who had slept with a man who had slept with the rather disturbed ex-girlfriend of a rather ugly bull fighter (Jesulín de Ubrique, in case you are wondering).

It must have rated as the most lucrative shag in the history of sordid sexual encounters.

Television shows that chatted about, reported on and speculated over the dubious activities of the dubiously famous were aired almost round the clock, with every channel offering a morning, afternoon and evening top-up on who had been spotted fiddling with whom in the scandal-soaked lives of the other half.

And if, for whatever reason, you were unable to catch either the morning, the afternoon or the evening televised updates, then there was always the plethora of weekly magazines to choose from which were sure to furnish you with most of the essential highlights.

Of course a large proportion of the western world has now descended into the same moronic and morally questionable morass, but at the time, the Spanish ‘Prensa Rosa’ (Pink Press) must surely have been at the very cutting edge of that particular field.

Those Spaniards who weren’t glued to their television sets could sometimes be heard grumbling that the excess of mind-numbing bollocks on the box was a government conspiracy akin to General Franco’s attempt to keep the masses drugged on a constant diet of football.

Deliberate or not, it was certainly effective.

There were, of course, other offerings squeezed in between news of Ana Obregón (plastic cheekbones, plastic lips, plastic tits balanced on anorexic chicken legs, made constant references to having qualified as a “biologist” but instead became an “actress” and posed every summer on the beach in a micro-mini bikini) and her latest toyboy, or Alessandro Lequio (greasy Italian “count” presumably not interesting enough for Italian gossip channels, instead did the rounds of the Spanish ones, impregnating the odd Spanish celebrity as he went) and his latest illegitimate offspring.

The well-loved Latin American telenovelas: gorgeous Angie Cepeda giving her all as the romantic victim in Luz María and Pobre Diabla; and the original and far superior Colombian production of Betty La Fea – funny, clever, poignant television gold.

Another of my favourites (now long defunct) was ‘La Parodia Nacional’, a totally irreverent look at celebrity twaddle involving contestants in relevant but elaborate costumes, writing and performing humorous songs and dance routines based around the latest scandal.

For an additional dose of humour – humour that admittedly didn’t run along the lines of wordplay and irony as preferred in the UK, but still with the potential to amuse – there were comedy duos such as Cruz y Raya (my personal favourites) and the sevillano brothers Los Morancos, as well as a motley collection of oddities who were given an airing by the indomitable Jesús Quintero on the Andalucian channel, Canal Sur – some may remember the dentally-challenged El Risitas and his cuñao.

I will abstain from mentioning the other most frequent television fodder which, as in most countries cursed with that particular sport was constant, tedious and was even known to take precedence over the news.

For a little light entertainment over the weekend – perhaps to keep folk awake long enough to enjoy the porn that on Saturday nights materialised on the local channels at the stroke (no pun in intended) of midnight – were variations on a theme of a chat/variety show hybrid.

Esta Noche Cruzamos el Mississippi was my first experience of the genre, as well as being my first experience of the big boobed, big lipped transsexual, La Veneno; famed for her habit of allowing her artificial assets to escape their moorings at the slightest provocation.

Nosy, noisy, frequently noxious and always unhealthily obsessed with looks, Spanish television was certainly a revelation, but sadly not one, I came to the conclusion, that revealed anything particularly positive about the country it was attempting to entertain