“Oi, you… yes, the bloke trying to dress like the Joker and in dire need of a shave. Yes, you… put those pissing pop-tarts down and listen. The Hills is on tonight. Seriously, if you like self-inflicted pain, you have to watch it. Sober.”

The scales fell from my eyes, and I felt envigorated by the revelation before me. Partly it was the confirmation that improbable-God speaks with a subtle Mancunian accent, combined with the fact that during this time, the afore-mentioned pop-tart had cooled down and I had been saved from third-degree tongue burns. Then the realisation dawned on me what lay before me.

And so, I am prepared. I have coffee, and have put the remote on the other side of the room so I can’t succumb to temptation and change the channel.

It begins:

Oh come on… there’s an hour of this??? A double bill? My God, why have you forsaken me?

Right, a nice little summary of the story so far… not that it is a story. These are real people you know. They just don’t have real personalities, jobs, or breasts.

So, excellent production values and it looks like someone’s used an Imax camera to film their mates sitting around talking about their weekends. This stuff is tedious on a bleeding camcorder, so why does a clear picture make a difference?

Heidi has been tasked to do something… organise a party I think. Now we cut to 2 girls discussing one of their friends moving into her own place. And then a bit of music, footage of skylines and landscapes.

[What the fuck is going on??? How is this entertainment?]

Now Audrina is in a bar/restaurant/film set talking to some herbert in a baseball cap. She’s just asked him to move in with her, and then we cut to commercial.

7 minutes. 420 seconds. and now we’re watching adverts. Can someone please explain to me how this is different to sitting in a pub and listening in to other punters’ conversations? At least there you’d hear more than 4 sentences before you are forced to eavesdrop on some other blabbering trollop.There is more character shown by Pablo the drugs mule dog than by any one of these “people”!

AAAANNND we’re back. Audrina’s showing her sister (face of a man, tattoos of 17 men) round her house. She must be a frigging drug dealer or very high-class prostitute to afford this! Oh goodo, more meaningful pauses in conversation before another music/landscape interlude.

Time for a re-structure of my approach for this blog. With such a disjointed programme, there’s nothing to analyse or critique in any meaningful way. I mean I’m watching 2 dolled up bints packing ornaments into boxes… all with full makeup, jewellery, and studio-quality lighting. The level of dialogue is like something out of a badly written porn film, but instead of getting it on they have pauses in conversation and try to remember their own names.

In that whole episode, the only thing that actually happened was Heidi getting fired for being pissed at a party she was professionally organising, and for having her boyfriend there. So how did she react when summarily dismissed from employment… you guessed it, she fell silent walked out and got her bag.

The only option left is to take the people (I can’t describe them as either characters or personalities, without some evidence of either) individually, and try and sum them up to remove the need for you to sit through this turgid goldfish bowl of arse.

Ok so first let’s deal with Audrina. Brunette, seems to be seeing some rugged looking bloke (i.e. he wears a vest and baseball cap in restaurants, and doesn’t shave) for about 5 minutes before asking him to move into her new place with her. No idea about what job she does, so I’m sticking with the dealer/hooker guess from above.

2 girls with dark blonde hair. No idea what their names are. They work in the fashion industry, and seem to be mates with Audrina. Maybe they pimp her out. Probably not. That’s it… can’t work out anything more about them.

Heidi… now unemployed, and not overly emotional about losing her supposed dream job of 3 years. who’d have thought that getting trolleyed and inviting your boyfriend (Spencer… see below) to a party your boss had been paid presumably thousands of dollars to organise could have a negative effect on your job security. Live and learn chuckles!

Last and by every means least, we have Spencer Pratt. That’s right… that really is his name. Seems to be the only regular (by which I mean he’s on screen often, not that he’s normal) man (I think) in the cast. He seems to be under the impression that he has significance or influence. He has the personality of a belch, approximately half the charisma of a Ken doll.

Sorry… that should have been this photo. What a mistake to make.

Words just escape me. I am genuinely struggling to understand how this has lasted so long on TV, particularly without some crazed stalker gutting one of these bimbos and wearing them as a hat, a la Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. It’s as if some unforseen hand is flicking between high-definition CCTV cameras, cutting between random bystanders having coffee and sampling conversations. The only rule is that the channel must change just before any of these dialogues reaches it’s conclusion, or justifies the carbon dioxide spewed out during it.

Will I be tuning in again? I don’t even believe I have ever tuned IN yet!

However, the reason I hate them at the moment is for the hoops i have to jump through to qualify. Every trainee solicitor (for that is what my job title be) has to work in 3 areas of law, and at least 1 of these has to be dull… i mean “non-contentious”. And so, I have been seconded out to Coventry to experience 4 months of conveyancing. This means wearing a suit every day, and spending 8 hours in an office staring at bits of paper. There’s just nothing interesting about the work at all.

What happens when someone is buying a house, is that he or she will work out what property is available, at the price they can afford, and whether they want to live in a small town overrun by heroin smoking teenagers. They will then instruct a solicitor to check out the property legally. This means they check that there’s no outstanding debts or obligations attached to the property, that there isn’t going to be a nuclear reactor built in the field next to you, and that you will actually be able to get from the public highways to your front door.

Thrilling so far, don’t you think.

But that’s more or less it. And to do this pant-stiffeningly exciting job you have to do approximately 700 different forms, each specific for a single task. There is even a form to tell the Government that you don’t have to pay them any Stamp Duty… You can’t simply just tell them if you DO have to pay anything, that would be too simple.

At one point yesterday, I was sat in a presentation and I was so bored, I think a fifth of my brain decided to just die. I had the most horrendous headache, and was forced to just sit there and endure death by powerpoint about HiPs (Home Information Packs… don’t ask, it’s just too depressing to even begin to contemplate). To make matters worse, My right arm then decided it would rather twinge in pain than sit and atrophy. All this, while some surveyor basically said “We don’t know what we are going to have to do in 3 months time when these buggers are compulsory.”

Bring back my glory days of burglars, smack-heads, and suspected kiddie-fiddlers. Actually… just the first 2 please, as I hate having to argue with the police about how computer memory caches work!