The Only Way Is Stanley

Recently I received a rather over-excited e-mail from a woman in L.A. A producer for some US version of ‘Relocation, Relocation, Relocation’, she was after people who had moved to weird places abroad to demonstrate the extreme loveliness of filling in all those damn immigration forms, arriving in foreign climes and subsequent issues with forgetting to top up you kerosene etc. Said woman had been given my horrible history by an ex-colleague in the teaching and learning game she’d met in some Vietnamese drinking den. These things don’t happen to normal people.

I considered the matter in depth for approximately 45 minutes. It was a sweet deal;- free return flight to Brize to fake me leaving home and hearth etc. I thought this presented an ideal opportunity to buy some reasonably priced tampons and go to McDonalds, but in the end I elected to demur.

The reason I don’t have a tattoo is that I don’t necessarily think, given my total inability to control my impulses that having an identifying mark would benefit me in the long term. Given this, appearing on international television is entirely at odds with my desire to remain utterly anonymous. Plus I am freakish and unpleasant in the extreme. I don’t think I would come over well.

However it got me thinking. Last week I was invited to dinner with a colleague who first arrived here in ’82 when most of Stanley was a wretched rubbish dump awash with Argentine detruis and a dirty great shell hole through his bathroom roof. Also at dinner was an entirely taciturn functionary with the British Antarctic Survey. I don’t denigrate the taciturnity as after all, conversation is not at a premium if you spend nine months of the year in total isolation removing snow from Nissan hut doorways. However after the Port came out, the assembled guests became more than conversational and yer man outlined his involvement as an an extra in the TV show ‘An Ungentlemanly Act’ a BBC film about the Argentine invasion.

‘I played a Marine in Government house one day and an Argentine conscript on Wireless Ridge the next day’ said he, which led to much debate as to whether he was able to force out a legitimate gaucho 80s tache in less than 24 hours. With the 30^th anniversary of the war imminent there are many a scheduled film crew descending our way at the moment – a fact which singularly fails to excite anyone under the age of about 25.

I began to wonder if a TV show devoted to Stanley life in general wasn’t somewhat overdue. Since moving to Alpha Phi beta, I have luxuriated in TV reception. Admittedly I only receive one channel, but any port in a storm. Consequently and rather worryingly I have become addicted to TOWIE. I no longer live in a world of endless consumer opportunities. I no longer teach orange children with hair extensions. Watching TOWIE gives me a quick fix of trash culture that is a neat antidote to frontier living.

What this woman in LA needs to pitch is a Falklander version:- The only Way is Stanley. It would spark off a whole new set of crazes. Not vajazzles – no one in their right mind would think of affixing diamonte to their bits in wind like this, but we could see a craze for mass consumption of mutton chops and wearing boiler suits and bobble hats.

I can see it now! Join the principal cast as they fraternize over tins of out of date John Smiths in Deanos. Watch the drunken excess as a bunch of people meet up in a shed to castrate livestock and drink their own weight in unbelievably strong spirits.

Girls in loadsa make up wearing size 2 clothes meeting up in wine bars to discuss the latest infidelity? Nah! In TOWIS, a bunch of massive women with horrendous haircuts will meet up wearing fleeces to knit and bitch about each other. Boys go to boot camp to lose excess poundage before hitting the colonic parlour? Nah!  Some geezers who are abnormally strong meet at the jetty and compete to see who can drink two cases of beer and unpack a shipping container using only one finger.

Shopping in the boutiques before a pedi with champagne? How about having a nice bit of cake in Jacs before mooching round the charity shop?

It would be brilliant! All the same basic elements of TOWIE – small insular community, constantly exchanging partners. Petty infighting and weird leisure activities, but with wind instead of fake tan. You could devote an entire episode to the rows and recriminations resulting from the bogging of a Land Rover. If TOWIS existed I would happily pay the subscription for the Satelite service FITV. As it doesn’t I’ll just have to stick with my worry that Lucy and Mark’s dalliance will permanently damage her hopes of moving in with Mario. Dang

Borah Out