Wings Over Sealand

I made the mistake of reading this on the BBC website today.

And I don’t think I’ve ever hated humanity more than I do right now.

Nobody has ever “wondered who the voice inside your TV belongs to”. The only thing anyone has ever thought about a continuity announcer (and especially at the end of anything with any degree of emotional impact) is “Why won’t this irritating babbling cunt shut up and fuck off? I’m trying to listen to the end-credits music that someone carefully chose and paid to licence in order to enhance the experience of the show, not have some tosser blurt random idiot brainspew all over it”.

(Imagine if the end of the last episode of Blackadder Goes Forth had had some awful shitgibbon wittering about how Strictly Goes Bake-Off In The Jungle Uncut Backstage Under The Hammer was coming up next, drowning out the birds in the poppy fields.)

At the very best of times, continuity announcers are the Earth’s least useful humans. Even a YouTube “influencer” is of more value to civilisation, because at least they’re generating some money for someone somewhere and therefore providing a benefit to the economy in some minor way. Continuity announcers literally do nothing except ruin people’s enjoyment of television for no reason.

Not a soul has once, in the entire history of mankind, said the words “Thank God that continuity announcer was there to inform me at 5.59pm that the Six O’Clock News was imminent” or “I am tuned to the channel that shows EastEnders, at the time when EastEnders is normally broadcast, but I could really do with there being someone to confirm to me that EastEnders will indeed start in 20 seconds’ time as I expect.”

Apparently the newly-revived BBC3 needs vastly more of these squawking oxygen thieves than anywhere else – a third of the entire Corporation’s roster of continuity announcers across its 11 channels – even though BBC3 is only on air a few hours a night and almost every programme on its schedules is RuPaul’s Drag Race or some godforsaken, insufferable spinoff thereof.

(Obviously I’m not very in touch with the youth zeitgeist, but are the nation’s under-30s really obsessed with creepy drag queens to the exclusion of almost all else? Should we also expect a grime remake of the Black And White Minstrel Show soon?)

But that’s not even what I’m having this old-man-shouting-at-clouds moment about. While continuity announcers are worthless scum who would perform more of a service to the rest of society if they were all to be killed and minced up to feed stray cats, it’s the article that’s really pissing me off, because every single sentence in it is a colossal insult to the intelligence of the long-suffering people of these benighted islands.

No it fucking isn’t. Nobody needs to hear ANYBODY’S voice in between TV shows unless the Queen’s just died or World War 3 has broken out. There’s a button on my remote that tells me what’s coming up next that I can press if I don’t already know. I don’t need you and I couldn’t give the steam off a field mouse’s piss-bucket whether you have the same accent as me or not, you witless egomaniac child.

What? Do you think I’m a fucking moron?

Yes it fucking is. (And even that job is already being done better by a button.)

You are not the voice of the nation. As we’ve already established, the actual voice of the nation is people saying “Get this vacuous regional fuckwit out of my ears and get the programme I’ve tuned in to see on”.

Nor do you need to overstrain your tiny intellect by pondering whether it’s cold outside. The UK is about 1000 miles from top to bottom and the weather is very likely not the same in Torquay as it is in Durham or Wrexham* or Lerwick or Belfast, peabrain.

(And if you have to concentrate to tell the Prime Minister from an episode of Bargain Hunt, then it’s unlikely anyone would trust you with a weather report anyway.)

But let’s move on, remembering that line about the importance of “being reactive and in the moment”, because we’ll be coming back to that one shortly.

The piece highlights the impressive diversity of the new channel’s continuity staff – two English blokes, one of whom is black, one young woman from Liverpool and two Welsh girls, one of whom is gay (although I don’t know why they told us that, as you can apparently identify gay people by their voices). Everyone represented there.

We’re not told how often Carys is instructed to be someone else, or who she has to be on those occasions. Eddie Izzard? Su Pollard? Cristiano Ronaldo?

But here comes the best bit.

Remember that stuff about being “reactive and in the moment”? Yeah, that was pure bollocks. It’s all pre-recorded, and poor Jenni and her 10 pals will in fact have not the slightest clue whether it’s cold outside or not, or who the Prime Minister currently is.

Millions? On BBC3? “Hundreds” is probably more realistic. And most people actually have quite a lot of experience of speaking. But since you’re NOT asking them to do it live, shut up you micro-witted twat.

Wait, are the new outbreaks of COVID scheduled in advance? Shit, the conspiracy loonies were right all along!

But… you’ve just told us it’s all on tape. “BBC3” is in fact one bloke (or non-binary disabled Muslim lesbian, please don’t cancel me) sitting in a broom-cupboard studio with a keyboard and everything pre-recorded and lined up in advance. Their only job is to press the Start and Stop buttons and  make sure nothing catches fire, and if it does THEY’LL have to do the continuity announcements while they’re putting it out, which will be a lot more entertaining than whatever scripted, sensitivity-screened drivel Jenni and Carys and Matt and Omah had been given.

Authentically what, exactly? Incompetent? Authentic as opposed to who? Which of these people have only “a bit of” authenticity? What percentage fake are they?

“So, Christie, what makes you think you’re right for this role in the new Jason Bourne movie?”

“Well, I’m quite good at reading a line off a piece of paper in my own accent telling people there’s a repeat of Gavin And Stacey coming on in a minute.”

(True story: I was watching an old Frasier on Channel 4 this morning and the continuity announcer was so regional that when they started talking about some new “hit show” I thought they’d done a documentary about people who hate Cher.)

(But I digress.)

Don’t panic, folks, if there’s a continuity emergency there are experienced irritating pointless dickheads there to help our heroes perfect their ability to read up to two sentences out loud, even when they’re being terrified by buttons and screens despite being the first generation that has lived from birth with the internet and smartphones.

Try not to have a panic attack, mate. Nobody’s asking you to liberate Arnhem under heavy enemy fire. They’re asking you to quack out some random sounds that not one single human on the planet is actually listening to or giving a single shit about.

In fact, rather than telling people to be excited about the upcoming series of Nail Bar Boys, you could probably detail your plans to carry out a nailbomb attack on your local synagogue while dressed as a transgender Hermann Goering and absolutely nobody would notice or care. Because at the end of the day, and as we noted back at the start, literally the only thing that anyone on Earth actually wants from a continuity announcer is for you to shut up and fuck off.

And I know. I have too much spare time. But for the love of Jimmy Savile, if this is what the organisation of Lord Reith is offering us as a news story now then I don’t think the Tories should just defund it (although if it can still afford 10 new continuity announcers for one part-time channel when a single barking dog would do a better job for some leftover biscuits, and have more personality to boot, there’s clearly quite a bit of scope for economising). I think they should drive the entire fucking thing into the fucking sea.

.

*Well, it certainly doesn’t do ’em any good.