Water, Prozac, management consultants: all completely useless

8 March 2008

So many of the things we are told to do are a total waste of time or money, says Rod Liddle, who has just completed a failed two-year course in water-drinking to make him a better person

According to one serious front-page newspaper report, all those bones found on the site of that former children’s home in Jersey were actually left-over props from an edition of Bergerac. The whole place is taped off, they’ve had the floppy-eared sniffer dogs in and the supposedly grisly, horrible revelations have been leading our news programmes for a week or more. Now it may well be not multiple murders after all, but merely fake stuff left for John Nettles to find many years ago, before he forsook the Channel Islands for the scarcely gentler parish of Midsomer.

This revelation surprised me less than you might imagine. I have long held that almost everything I do in my life has been scripted by some grinning imbecile in the BBC light entertainment department and that unconsciously I am simply acting out a rather lowbrow situation comedy, the sort of early evening programme that once provided work for the likes of Melvyn Hayes or Terry Scott and revolves, for its jokes, around male ineptitude, misogyny or racism. So it makes sense that everything else is fictitious, too.

I suspect it wouldn’t surprise you if you were told tomorrow that Afghanistan was simply a vast, rocky set created for the benefit of Ross Kemp and that actually at the end of each day the Taleban militia members rip off their confining robes, wipe away the dusky greasepaint and enjoy a nice Sancerre in the Green Room. You would just nod wearily and say yeah, that makes sense. Welcome to something like the Truman Show, except less fun and with nothing at all beyond the glass barrier that confines us except for an omnipotent but paradoxically moronic television controller.

You can blame this depression of mine on another story last week, to the effect that Prozac doesn’t exist — it, too, is a sort of fiction. Most people who read the story that these antidepressants were proven to be utterly useless, of no greater consequence than a placebo, will have become so depressed that they probably took double the usual dose. And thus immediately succumbed to an illusory feeling of comparative cheerfulness.

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john problem

March 6th, 2008 10:44am Report this comment

As a member of the Management Consultancy Defence Association, I say to you that it is clear you should have consulted a management consultant about your water intake issue, first.

Delboy

March 6th, 2008 5:33pm Report this comment

I can just imagine the TV show. They would have to invent an older brother character to be played by David Jason who'd call you 'Rodders' all the time.

Tom B

March 6th, 2008 6:13pm Report this comment

I, as well, took to consuming great quantities of water in the belief that it would certainly cause me to live forever. I don't care to be reminded of my stupidity in this regard.

Brian D

March 7th, 2008 12:10pm Report this comment

'Management consultants are absolutely useless'. What took the NAO so long?

mike numan

March 10th, 2008 6:46am Report this comment

"there is very good money to be made from smoke and mirrors." Yes, you'd know. Your journalism has demonstrated this truth for a long time. Why doesn't the spectator simply send a secretary to a pub and copy the outporings of the biggest bore at the bar?

rod liddle

March 11th, 2008 9:52am Report this comment

You a management consultant then, Mike?

Philip Ley

March 12th, 2008 7:27am Report this comment

Hi Rod, You had a bit of bad luck. See the following. What a pity it didn't reach you before your piece on Prozac etc. Commiserations Low-Level Drug Contamination Common in Drinking Water Trace amounts of medications are present in the water of many metropolitan water supplies, according to an investigation conducted by the Associated Press. Although water is often not checked for pharmaceuticals, the AP says drugs have been found in the water of at least 24 of 28 major systems where testing has been performed. Drugs detected include antibiotics, anticonvulsants, analgesics, statins, and sex hormones. The federal government does not set safety limits for drugs in water and does not require testing. However, the AP quotes an Environmental Protection Agency official, Benjamin H. Grumbles, saying, "We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously." Little research has been done on the potential health effects of low-level pharmaceutical contamination, but laboratory work suggests effects on embryonic kidney cells, breast cancer cells, and blood cells, the AP reports. Associated Press story (Free)