I recently came back from a trip to Romania. While that might not be too high up on your bucket list, it's clear that there are many perks to being in Romania that we just don't get in the UK. Quality, wholesome food, fruit juices with actual fruit in them, sweeping mountainous roads and, perhaps most important of all: good breakfast television.
Photo by cottonbro studio
Every morning, I awoke to a show called "Neața cu Răzvan și Dani". Of course, I have no idea what that means but, whatever it does, it was good. One morning on the show, the presenters interviewed a pop star, had a dance-off, baked some cookies, and then casually transitioned into a 'girls vs boys' game of ping pong. That was all before the ad break.
The show continued. Now, there was a guest magician. A dog in the studio. And, what's this? The presenters were now flirting with each other! Was something happening between them!? Was that a leg touch during the helium balloon segment!? I almost choked on my crenvuști.
Honestly, I've never been more entertained by breakfast TV in my life, no small feat given that not a single word of it was spoken in English. I didn't even need my coffee that morning; this show had enough drama to wake me out of a coma.
Hop back a few thousand miles though, and what's our answer to that in the UK? First up, we have BBC Breakfast; a show so obsessed with not making it's content offensive to anyone that it's casually forgotten to make it entertaining to anyone.
Of course, the BBC has outstanding journalistic prowess and it's news team are exceptionally talented journalists, but I'm not in the mood to hear about an election in a country I've never heard of when I'm trying to wake myself up; I want to see someone get pushed into a swimming pool, or see if you can make a hamster do a backflip.
I know some people want to hear the news, but that's what a news channel is for. I would imagine the show has quality weather reports too but, to be honest, I couldn't say, because I've never managed to sit through one of Carol Kirkwood's weather reports without entering a vegetative state.
Happily, if you can't be bothered to paint a wall and watch it dry instead, you could always tune into "Good Morning" Britain and be guaranteed to be delivered exactly the opposite of that.
ITV's breakfast offering will you give you some more entertainment, sure, though that entertainment usually comes from the presenters shouting at politicians, rudely interrupting them mid-sentence, and then complaining that they haven't answered the question properly. This all falls under the umbrella of "holding politicians to account" which roughly translates as "being thoroughly unbearable" because that, apparently, is what the public wants.
Leading the charge of guerilla journalism is the delightful Susanna Reid. Susanna's party trick is to call the guests by their titles ("Mr. Foreign Secretary") while spewing venum at them as if that somehow excuses her tyrade of self-obsessed bile and gives her the moral highground. Well, I'm sorry, Ms Reid, but that's not going to fly. Now would you mind awfully shutting up?
Following her "I want to speak to your manager"-esque rants, she'll transition back into a sad news story and, despite her bestest impression of someone who cares about anyone other than herself, expresses compassion like someone who's only ever read about it in books. She can hardly lean on co-host Ed Balls for emotional support either because the man has roughly the same amount of charisma as a breeze block.
Of course, Good Morning Britain doesn't just rely on its presenters to insult your intelligence. If you really want to feel patronised, you won't want to miss the regular segment with two white elitest middle-aged men, Andrew Pierce and Kevin Maguire, telling you exactly what you should think about the world and the people in it. Just in case you're worried about political bias, you'll be pleased to know that they are the consultant/associate editors of the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, so gutter rags are exceptionally well-represented.
Otherwise, in an attempt to keep the show engaging, the producers will invite members of the general public to have a debate about something completely ludicrous, like (I don't know): "Should dogs be allowed to drive buses?" On one side, you'll have some nutter they picked out from the street, and someone else who's never heard of a dog before. Then, after five minutes of mud-slinging, just before they're whisked back to their padded cells, the final vote will go to the general public who will respond exactly how you expected they would. You'll then wonder, quite rightly, what the point of any of that was.
We can do better than this, and I know this because we already have. For those who didn't grow up in the 90s, the Big Breakfast was the pinnacle of breakfast TV in the UK. Big personalities, risqué jokes that went over the heads of children, the occasional gunging... It was absolutely delightful.
However, since Channel 4 is now more interested in producing voyeuristic sleaze with a thinly veiled academic slant to justify itself, making a decent breakfast show is hardly top of its agenda, so we're forced to look elsewhere.
You can't watch YouTube now because, by the time the adverts have all loaded, you'd have finished your breakfast, had a shower, and made it half way to work. Sky may well have a breakfast show (I should probably check) and I'm not even sure Channel 5 still exists.
So, here's my solution. Turn off the TV and turn on the radio. Breakfast radio is far more entertaining than breakfast TV and has been for a long time. Better yet, stick a camera in front of Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden and turn their excellent Heart breakfast show into a solid breakfast TV show we can all be proud of.
Or just keep watching Frasier.