Friend or Fogle

I should hate Ben Fogle and everything he stands for, but I can’t. His face looks like a child’s drawing on a fish finger. Now don’t get me wrong, come the revolution he will have to be put up against the wall and shot like every other upper class twit in the country, but this event will bring me no pleasure. You see Fogle seems to bring with him an equal amount of joy to balance his irritation factor. He seems so unremittingly jovial, so Bertie Wooster does Action Man, I just can’t help kind of liking him. You get the idea he could come home from work and walk in on his other half in flagrante with his lifelong best friend and still have a smile on his face muttering “ho hum ill leave you to it for bit then.” He just seems a nice incredibly posh chap who has fallen into his role as the grannies lust focus on daytime TV.

I have a theory that Fogle was actually developed by top-secret government scientists just in case the whole of the royal family and aristocracy were ever wiped out in some freak disaster. With the development of Fogle at least the country would have the epitome of an upper class English chap to fall back on and show the world it was business as usual with a stiff upper lip. Fogle escaped the evil government science bunker where he was created and went on the run like the monkey boy in the tv series Chimera, ending up on a remote Scottish island only to find a full BBC crew there making the early reality TV experiment Castaway.

Castaway was made back in the days when the BBC were still faintly embarrassed at doing anything too commercial, instead of the way they now desperately try to be everyone’s best friend like a lonely child handing out chocolate bars at school to be loved. Castaway was a social experiment instead of a game show to showcase z-list celebrities embarrassing themselves to claw back a little bit more tabloid fame. The social experiment in question was to see if a diverse range of people could live together on a remote Scottish island for a year without killing each other. In the ‘cast’ Fogle shone through by not acting a wanker, being a nice bloke and for femail and homosexual viewers the only thing approaching eye candy on the windswept isle. Like every other TV format since the dawn of time the series made a comeback this year. Failing to rope in a host of BBC friendly celebrity castaways it also made the mistake of using Danny Wallace, a presenter who should only be allowed to make programmes about conspiracies for Sky TV, the series flopped,if only it had had the Fogle factor. After Castaway version 1 Fogle started presenting for various BBC daytime series and slowly but surely made his way into housewives fantasy knickers.

He’s become the go to guy for anything safe and outdoorsy and probably with a low enough budget not to stretch to prime time talent. Often he’s found presenting the kind of TV that’s pumped into retirement homes up and down the country so care nurses don’t have to dish out sedatives. On Ben’s website he gives out some useful advice for anyone stupid enough to want a career in TV. ‘I fell into it serendipitously. My best suggestion is to approach a production company looking for runners and work your way up from there.” So basically if you cant make it the reality route or are dead posh and can be fast tracked at your Uncle Monty’s production company you better learn how to boil a kettle. How true Fogle, how true.