The Natural World

After finishing my big Easter Sunday meal, I say down and turned on the TV. I waited a few moments as the tube came to life and found myself watching BBC2. Simon King was already some way into a wildlife programme about cheetahs. The man has a gift, both for TV and for handling big cats. Or, at least, that's what I thought just before one of those magnificent beasts walked up to a tree and began to eject some juice from a gland beneath its tail.

Now, I've seen some things on the stripping circuit that could turn you grey overnight, I've seen the underworld of exotic dancing: the midget strippers, the obese strippers, and even the strippers of a pensionable age. Yet of all the terrible things I've seen, I've never seen them just after my tea on an Easter Sunday. It strikes me as a perverse bit of programming by the BBC. Why do they choose Sunday teatime for wildlife programmes? Are there people across the land who, feeling full after a big meal, want to watch an cheetah chewing an antelope’s carcass? ‘Tell you what love, that sponge pudding was a real treat but what I’d love now is to see some anal juices being fired from a leopard’s arse.’

I don’t think so.

So, God bless The Simpsons. At least I can watch this, safe in knowledge that there’s no chance of my seeing juices squirting from…

Oh, I spoke too soon. That crazy Grandpa Simpson!