LOVING THE ALIEN?

I can't be the only one that hates those furry alien puppets on the Argos adverts. Every time they're on I want to wring their scrawny necks! As far as I can remember they've been on the go for two or three years now and they still have the capacity to make me sick.

So why has a family of puppets got me riled? It's those annoying, twee, middle-class voices that get me. It's obvious that they're based on that programme 'Outnumbered,' a programme I've managed to avoid since it has started. I've seen one or two excerpts and trailers and that's enough to convince me that I'm right to avoid it. It's hard to dodge the Argos adverts, though. You can't turn over if you're in the middle of watching a programme!

Fans of 'Outnumbered' always go on about the girl in the programme; she's so confident and funny and such a character. Brats like that in middle-class families are seen as wonderful children and everyone laughs along at how clever and precocious they are. Such a child from a working-class family, however, is viewed as nothing more than a cheeky little sod! 

Such is our class-ridden society. I used to live in Edinburgh and when there was a rugby match at Murrayfield it was often best to avoid city-centre pubs. Drunken louts with posh voices would throw pint glasses around, grab women's breasts, trip people up, shout out obscenities and racial abuse and often fight with one another. Never did I see them thrown out, the police called or such behaviour reported in the press. If these were football fans it would be a completely different story. Football fans that behave in this manner are classed as hooligans, while with the rugby fans it's just high spirits.

You might think it's a huge leap from an Argos advert to class politics, but it's all part-and-parcel of the same thing. Get those middle-class aliens off my TV now!