My View - Wednesday March 7th 2018 

Watching amateur opera has always been pretty high on my not-to-do list. It's right up there with caving or seeing a snake being skinned in a Chinese market. But my daughter's friend was performing in La Boheme at The Carriageworks in Leeds and I was guilt-tripped into going. It was absolutely brilliant.  

For a start, everyone could sing, which was refreshing because, let's face it, some am-dram groups thrust anyone on stage to make up the numbers. I know, because I was usually the one at the back instructed to mime. I grasped the rough gist of the story - a love affair between struggling artists, set in a refugee camp in France. I was helped along by surtitles, which were handily placed on mini screens near the edge of the curtains. It was only on the way home that I was told Puccini's opera had in actual fact been performed in Italian and not, as I'd thought, French. Quelle surprise.  

So I figured I should push the gondola out and see what else my 13-year-old likes watching. Top of her list was the ITV show Survival of the Fittest. It was like I'm A Celebrity without anyone you recognise from Emmerdale and I was reluctantly hooked. About eight men and women, buffer than Buffy McBuff Face, got holed up in a luxury lodge in South Africa and tried not to get off with each other. At the end of the series, one of them won forty thousand pounds. Challenges involved digging for tokens, rolling in mud or throwing a ball. There wasn't much in terms of mental agility. 

I imagine it's the sort of contest which requires a photograph upon application. Middle-aged mothers need not apply, particularly if you've still got your winter legs to contend with. It would appear that the only acceptable hair on this programme belonged on heads or eyebrows. I looked really hard and there wasn't a follicle to be found elsewhere. 

The non-storylines in this unreality series prompted much discussion in our lounge. Could Metisse really be in love with Tristan? Why did Shanice only last 24 hours? Is Callum gay? How do I download the app to vote for my favourite? It was a glimpse into a tiny sub-culture of a generation, who, in the absence of mobiles, had to find something else to do in the sunshine. 

I think there's a striking similarity between La Boheme and Survival of the Fittest. They're both basically about love and our search for the happy-ever-after. If I had to pick which show I preferred though, I'd plump for Puccini. Not because I want to appear highbrow, but because at the end of the day, I just couldn't give two arias about the state of Mariams's monobrow.