RSS

Contact us

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Happy talk

Imagine (BBC1); Ten O'Clock News (BBC1); That Mitchell and Webb Look (BBC2) 

Against this was set the testimony of Cognitive Behavioural Therapists who believe that emotion follows thought and that consequently it is possible to think your way into happiness. One told a touching story about the patient who had first helped him reach this view. She was an elderly woman, severely depressed because she had achieved nothing of value in her life. Surely she had done something worthwhile, he suggested. Nothing, she said. So he asked her to go away and make a list.

Next week she came back utterly transformed. In the interim, it had suddenly occurred to her that actually it was no mean feat to have smuggled her family from Nazi Germany to America, and then supported them by scrubbing floors.

Yentob was most particularly impressed by the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who believes the secret of contentment is to live in the moment and do everything mindfully be it going for a walk or washing the dishes. ‘Yeah, right,’ went the Fawn and I. ‘Try having kids and a job.’

You couldn’t fail to be overawed, though, by Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, whose book Man’s Search For Meaning found that even amid the worst experience imaginable there is still a place for hope. Frankl made it his task in the death camp to persuade his fellow inmates why they shouldn’t commit suicide. If you rationalise that one, you can rationalise anything.

BBC Ten O’Clock News: can we take anything it says seriously any more? I’m beginning to think not. Sure, one has grown wearily used to its blatant geopolitical bias — Hamas and Hezbollah over Israel; Europe over Britain; pretty much everyone over America — but what really takes the biscuit is its sensationalist reporting of the big global-warming scare.

Last week, it covered a fairly bland Department of Health risk-assessment report on the effects of warmer weather. While playing up the death and disaster aspects for all it was worth, the BBC’s report managed completely to ignore the key fact about human mortality in periods of rising temperature: the extra number of people who’ll die because of the heat is far outstripped by the extra number who don’t because of the milder winters.

Finally, a word about That Mitchell and Webb Look (BBC2, Thursday): it’s comedy genius. I particularly liked the Carry On spoof about the doctor thrown out of a bawdy 1970s hospital for failing to grasp the difference between cheeky innuendo and outright filth. Inevitably, his superior suggested that he leave the hospital discreetly, via the back passage.

More articles from: James Delingpole | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved