Are we really this thick?

[bogeyman]

The public, I mean.

You know, the good old, salt of the Earth British 'man on the bus', 'woman in the supermarket' kind of public.

I've been resting at home since Christmas before rejoining my arduous assignment, in the backs of the frozen beyond, next week.

During some of that time, I have had the misfortune to witness several televisual 'Game Shows'.

Fork me! Are the British people uneducated and stupid, or what?

Take 'The Weakest Link' for example. Who in their right minds would go on that - to potentially win a pathetically small amount of money and be insulted by an elderly, failed dominatrix, just for the privilege?

I'd poke the plastic-faced, sarcastic cow in the eye if she started picking the shyte out of me, but these lamers just lap it up and grin like the morons they truly are.

Then there's Egg Heads. A show with great entertainment potential but polluted by some of the dumbest quizz teams ever. The odds are loaded in favour of the 'Egg Heads' simply because the 'top drawer' pub quizz teams from around the UK don't seem to know that Vladivostok is in Russia rather than Turkey, or some such.

Which brings me to University Challenge. Oh Christ! Where to begin with this one.

A simple premise: The top seats of learning submit a team each and see who can answer the most questions correctly.

The ancient colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, together with the redbricks and the city institutions unfailing parade a bunch of utter, utter dunces!

Anyone of my year at uni could beat any of them with their cap!

My wife has advised me to stop watching TV gameshows lest I die of apoplexy.

How stupid have we become?

[pmeswani]

Not a fan of Game Shows then?

[Mich the Tester]

Yes.

Clarkson might be a prat, but when he stepped off the last Concorde flight and said ‘that’s one small step for a man and one giant leap backward for mankind’ I think he summed it up.

Being brainy is ‘out’ and has been for many years. I remember having the piss ripped out of me at school for being good at maths, chemistry and geography and all those ‘geeky’ subjects while all my classmates preferred Business Studies, Economics and Art. Just look at how often techies and scientists are represented as insane, badly dressed and ugly ‘boffins’ in the press; not exactly encouragement to young people to make the best of their brains is it?

[bogeyman]

Not a fan of Game Shows then?

No. Just not a fan of pigshyit-thick people - which seems to be the majority of the UK population nowadays.

[Pickle2]

I remember having the piss ripped out of me at school for being good at maths, chemistry and geography and all those ‘geeky’ subjects

So how come you ended up as a tester?

[expat]

...Which brings me to University Challenge. Oh Christ! Where to begin with this one.

A simple premise: The top seats of learning submit a team each and see who can answer the most questions correctly.

The ancient colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, together with the redbricks and the city institutions unfailing parade a bunch of utter, utter dunces!

Anyone of my year at uni could beat any of them with their cap!

Yes: I used to watch it with a flatmate. He was classics and literature, with good modern languages; personal interest in classical music. I was maths and physics, with good other sciences and repectable geography; personal interest in popular music. Together we struggled to answer more than a few questions.

But we answered our few with pride, knowing that these questions were meant to be testing even for the brightest in the country. Now I suspect that, like most of education itself, they are designed not to make too many people feel too bad about themselves.

[oracleslave]

Agree with most of that with the exception of University Challenge where I can go for alarmingly long periods without shouting out an answer before one of the contestants.

[expat]

So howcome you ended up as a tester?

I sometimes ask myself qustions like that. I wanted to get out in the world, and somehow after a few hiccups ended up in IT, then called DP. It's as cushy a number as there is, and I've never seen any sense in getting out of it; for occasional escape from it, I have taken the money and run to faraway places until broke again.

But, being much older now, I sometimes wonder what else I might have done.

[bogeyman]

Yes: I used to watch it with a flatmate. He was classics and literature, with good modern languages; personal interest in classical music. I was maths and physics, with good other sciences and repectable geography; personal interest in popular music. Together we struggled to answer more than a few questions.

But we answered our few with pride, knowing that these questions were meant to be testing even for the brightest in the country. Now I suspect that, like most of education itself, they are designed not to make too many people feel too bad about themselves.

Yeah. The questions have become easier over the years.

My wife and I can generally answer a lot of them correctly between us. What insufferable big heads we are

[TykeMerc]

Yes the country is thick.

Just look at how wildly popular "Reality TV" and the Celebrity Culture nonesense is and you realise that the UK has become the native home of chavtastic morons.

At least we aren't mostly fundamentalist Christian loonies though.

The UK used to be the leading source of Engineering and Scientific innovation now we have Universities closing Science and Engineering departments through lack of demand and research funding.