Survivors: wearing glasses can harm your health

Slightly off-topic today in that this post is about the media rather than language use, but...

...have you been watching the remake of Survivors currently showing on BBC1? And if so, have you noticed how few of the survivors wear glasses?

None of the main characters in the TV programme is bespectacled, as the photo below shows. Dexter's group, from the second episode, is similarly lacking in glasses-wearers. Two of the elderly folk at the eco-centre (episode three) have specs on, but that's it, and they hardly have a speaking role anyway.



So why, when around two thirds of the UK population wear glasses or contact lenses? Possible reasons:

• The programme-makers didn't consider glasses cool enough. Unlikely, seeing as Doctor Who often wears specs and he is the sexiest man in the universe (apparently).

• Wearing glasses puts you at an increased risk in a world "with no society, no police and no law and order". True, someone might be able to sneak up on you if you were busy cleaning your bins, and it could make life very difficult if you happened to break them, but I don't think this can account for the almost total absence of glasses-wearers in the programme.
  
  
• The virus that struck down 99% of the UK population is especially dangerous to the myopic. This seems the most likely explanation - perhaps someone should tell the scientists working on a vaccine (incidentally: why bother, when almost everyone who was susceptible to the virus is now dead?). And this explanation would account for the two elderly folk at the eco-centre: they were wearing reading glasses, and weren't short-sighted at all.

Of course, it could be that the survivors are all wearing contact lenses: but really, in a post-apocalyptic world, would you bother?

"We must defy Dexter's thugs and mount a raid on the supermarket!"
"Why, what do we need: food, fresh water, medicines?"
"No, I'm nearly out of contact lens solution..."


Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

UPDATE 10.15pm: You can watch the Survivors remake on the BBC's iPlayer.

I'm half a headline, get me out of here...

Right. After today I'm going to stop picking on the freesheets for a while.

Spotted this on page three of yesterday's London Lite (and sorry about my wonky cutting and scanning):



Yes, there's part of the headline missing. Is this an honest mistake (and we've all made them) or the result of a sub trying to suggest that the celebrities in reality show I'm a Celebrity... are actually nonentities?


(For those who can't see the scan, the headline reads: "Deadly storms threat to the I'm A ".)

Daytime English

Being a pensioner I have lots of time to enjoy daytime TV which, besides making your brain leak out your ears, offers some lovely eye-watering use of English. F'rinstance...

From Under The Hammer, a daily look a house buying: "We have a handy local shop nearby."

From Grand Designs, a daily look at house building: "It's a great example of greenification."

From one of the may copdocs: "...the never-ending war against criminals and law-breakers..."

Much nicer was a phrase used by an American lady in a news report: "I was breath-taken."

And I was taken by a phrase coined by a cabaret singer during a documentary, Benidorm Unpacked, in which he bemoaned the total lack of job security with the warning: "That's why your name's in chalk - not lights!"

And while not strictly relevant to this blog, I have to add that it was heartwarming to see this guy, who had lost a leg and an arm aged 10 when he was run over by a train. His remaining leg's still broken and in a caliper. Sorry for himself? Not a bit of it. He's married to a charming and exquisite Swedish blonde who is clearly devoted to him. They have a couple of lovely kids and, with work being short in Spain, are heading off to, of all places, Bulgaria in search of work.

Cool or what?

Julie Walters: good message, bad timing

That fine thesp Julie Walters is featuring in a public safety TV ad (pictured below) reminding viewers to check their household smoke alarms. The message is direct: don't brew up during this ad break, check your smoke alarm instead... do it now or put your loved ones' lives at risk.

But should this ad be broadcast at 1am? Sometimes it's not what you say, it's when you say it.