Perils of daytime TV – Ian Botham and shingles jabs Who would buy a vaccine off a telly ad? My mother writes Grumpy Old Man: Matthew Norman
Although my mother had a successful career as a fashion journalist, she missed out on not one but two other vocations. Those with ungodly staying power will find the second outlined at the end, but the first career for which nature ideally equipped her was that of interrogator. She could break the hardest Lubyanka inmate with nothing more in her arsenal of torment than verbal relentlessness. ‘Have you booked it yet?’ she asked a couple of months ago, the ‘it’ being one of those enticements with which the daytime television audience is unceasingly bombarded. Joining funeral insurance, recliner chairs and pulsating devices on which Ian Botham places his feet is a commercial for a viral vaccine. ‘Have you booked it?’ she reiterated after the first enquiry was met with sullen silence. ‘Inexplicably,’ I replied, ‘what with it being a few seconds since we became aware of its existence, no, I...
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