Chris Worfolk's Blog

Recently, BBC Three began showing World Series of Dating. It’s a trash TV as it sounds – there are four booths each with a different girl in it, and male constants come on and attempt to date them for as long as possible – if the girl gets bored she will hit the buzzer in the middle of the table and that constant will be out.

Despite it’s lack of any intellectual value however, I’ve found myself strangely addicted. Perhaps because it got me through a long night of illness when there was nothing else on at 5am in the morning and I now associate warm memories with it, but it’s actually intriguing for some reason.

However, I think I’ve figured out the reason why. There is a fine line between “doesn’t take itself too seriously” trash TV and incredibly clever parody, and I now suspect that the show lies slightly past said line.

I could have accepted the fact that one of the girls on the show is called Bambi – it’s a silly name but the reality of our modern society is that it is entirely plausible that someone would call their child that. And if someone did, they would almost certainly wear too much fake tan and end up being on a show like World Series of Dating, so that doesn’t strike me as contrived.

However, given the constant references to this being the British version of the show, something didn’t really fit there. It didn’t seem like a show that would be popular with the American market and a quick Google search confirmed that the show is an entirely original creation here in Britain.

That means that Rob Riggle never presented the US version of WSOD, nor did Bentley Kalu ever referee it. Indeed, Poppy Weathers isn’t even a real person, she is played by Thaila Zucchi, an actor who I’ve never heard of because her acting consisted of an appearance on Big Brother 8 as fake house mate, a show which I stopped watching after it ran out of original ideas (ie, I didn’t watch the second series onwards).

Having these fake back stories and fictional hosts, takes it over the line from comedic trash television to clever parody – and that’s why it’s OK for me to enjoy it 😉 . We can safely take the high ground pointing out to those who claim it’s intellectually defunct that “they simply don’t get it.”

If there is one thing we need to be embarrassed about as a nation, it’s Sunday trading laws (you know, if you ignore complicity in torture, public transport, lack of a constitution, etc). Some of us need to be able to buy baking ingredients at 3am on a Sunday. I say as a nation, but I don’t wish to tarnish Scotland’s good name with this as they have long since abolished such nonsense.

I for one am very excited about the start of the Olympics, as it means these restrictions will be temporarily suspended to allow businesses to cash in on the hype as much as possible.

How this really works I’m not sure. I could understand if the limits were just being relaxed in London around the Olympic Village, but they’re not, they’re being relaxed everywhere. Why? What is the point of allowing B&Q to open until 10pm on a Sunday in Newcastle, during the Olympics? But as I said, I’m not complaining. It’s incredibly irritating having my Sunday shopping limited to 11am-5pm.

The question is though – once we do this for the duration of the Olympics and see that we can indeed buy a loaf of bread and a mango from Asda at 7pm on a Sunday without god smiting us, what is the argument for bringing such restrictions back into place?

Of course you can argue that we should have one day a week where shops are closed so people spend time with their families (which is of course strictly forbidden at all other times; god help you if you wanted to have family time on a Wednesday) but if this is the case, how does this fit into letting shops open for the first six hours? The answer is, it doesn’t, nor so it fit with the idea that only large stores are restricted from opening on a Sunday while smaller shops, offices, call centres, pubs, restaurants and many, many other business types do open because whether we like it or not we’re now living in a 24/7 society (and I do like it).

Sunday trading laws need to go the way of fox hunting and smoking in pubs – an archaic practice that is detrimental and unjustifiable in modern society.

My friend Russ has long maintained the opinion that there is no problem in society that cannot be better understood by watching an appropriate episode of South Park. “There is a South Park for every part of life” he says.

It’s true. Whether you’re addicted to World of Warcraft, worried about the nanny state, campaigning for the decriminalisation of drugs or trying to understand the economy, there is a South Park to explain the issues and put things in perspective.

My friend Raby went one stage further to suggest that South Park could almost be seen as a modern day Bible – it is filled with parables about modern life, not directly telling us how to live right, but giving us a nudge in the right direction. Everything you need to know about life can be learned from the adventures of four boys in a snowy mountain town.

If you’re using MySQL’s MEMORY table storage engine for anything intensive, you may run into the following error.

Table is full

This means what it says – memory tables have a fixed size they are allowed to me, 16mb by default, and once they reach this size, MySQL will prevent you from inserting any more data, to prevent the table from using too much memory.

If you run into this error, you can either increase the size in MySQL’s configuration, or you can switch to a disk based table engine such as Archive or InnoDB.

Last week, the 2012 Grand National took place.

Two horses died – According To Pete and former favourite Synchronised were both put down after taking nasty falls during the race. Despite attempts to reduce the danger, such incidents aren’t a surprise. Indeed, it’s more of a surprise when we get through a Grand National without any horses losing their life.

Take a look at the list on Wikipedia. Two this year, two last year, a total of 11 over the past decade – and this is just from one race! Open it up to wider events and we see the same trend – this year’s Cheltenham Festival saw no less than five horses put down.

No wonder people are starting to question whether there is a future for horse racing.

As you may be aware, the 2012 IPL season recently started.

I haven’t got round to watching any of it this year, but if I was, one of the first tasks I would have to do is to pick a team to support (because obviously, it’s more exciting when you are supporting one side or the other).

The question is though, why would I pick anyone other than Chennai Super Kings? Having demolished their opposition in the final last year, and previously won the tournament in recent years before that, they’re clearly the best team. So it then becomes very difficult to justify supporting someone else.

It seems wrong to support a team just because they are the best team, but given I don’t have any geographic bias to work on as I would with English football clubs, how can it really be justified to pick anyone else given I obviously want to be supporting the winning team?

In February, I went to Paris.

However, despite having paid for reserved seating on my flight out there, we ended up getting moved to a different part of the plane to balance out the weight. It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence that a jet airliner could be so fragility held in the sky that someone sitting in the wrong place could bring it down, but I went with it.

That said, I was rather aggrieved that I had paid for reserved seating and not been given it. So, on my return I wrote a letter of complaint to Jet2 as they don’t seem to have email and I would need to take a personal loan out to fund phoning their premium rate customer service line. So I went old school and wrote a letter.

I’m pleased to say that a month later I have received a letter back from them saying that they will be refunding the money I paid for allocated seating, within the next two weeks.

Last week, Channel 4 broadcast a one off 30 minute comedy by Ricky Gervais entitled “Derek”.

I only heard about the controversy in passing before the show, with some people claiming that it was mocking people with learning difficulties. How you make that decision before you’ve even watched it I’m not sure quite sure, though I suppose you could base it, albeit badly, on the short trailers that Channel 4 had been broadcasting.

In the end, I didn’t find it offensive at all. Or funny really. Karl Pilkington had a few good lines in there but overall, it was reasonably humour free. It was however, incredibly moving. Well worth a watch.

We recently headed to the bowling alley to celebrate Fonze’s birthday.

It was a rather confusing start because the alley used to be owned by AMF Bowling, but it is now owned by 1st Bowl. However, AMF have now bought Hollywood Bowl, so if you search for AMF Leeds you get what was the Hollywood Bowl out at Cardigan Fields rather than the one you are looking for. Never the less, we sorted it in the end.

They have a pretty cool offer called Big Work Party, which is where you can take your office (as long as your office is at least six people) and bowl for £2.25 a game! Being a Yorkshireman, I decided to take all the saving I could get and booked three games. I then bowled the worst games I’ve ever played, but a steak as ‘Spoons afterwards made it all better.

That’s right, I have a photo of Elettra – with a drink!