Is it normal to hate societies attitude toward life in general?

Attitudes change. My mother's generation idolised the famous and never felt they could belong to a world peopled by the obscenely talented. The famous were untouchable.

I think my generation was the first to grow cynical about celebrity, particularly here in England. Dennis Pennis is a good example, a spoof journalist who didn't play along with the fawning that was going on. Everyone at home, watching an interview with a film star who'd just made an atrocious film, could see a sycophantic interviewer pretend it's exciting and wonderful and everyone needs to see it. We groaned inwardly at how facile the lie was. Good old Dennis wasn't that kind of interviewer, though.

It was one thing to do it with our own TV stars, it was another to do it with Hollywood stars, who are global royalty. I'll never forget Dennis Pennis asking Michael Jackson (who had just become a father), "So, Mike, do you want any more children, or are you afraid of being arrested again?" It was calculated to disarm and demean and (in a way) bully. As was the attack on Tom Cruise with the water in the face. Yet the prevailing mood (after shock) was pretty much a growing culture of "Ooh, we're allowed to tell them what we think now". This was about the time of the rise of the paparazzi (in the form you and I know them). It's also the time Big Brother started.

Very early on in reality TV, producers realised that while the viewing public had an interest in humiliating celebs, there was probably even greater interest in letting stupid people humiliate themselves, allowing the viewing public some measure of superiority over these poor ingrates who think "East Angular" is a foreign country. It's a consensual freak show.

Lines between reality and drama are a little blurry. Are the people on TOWIE really that stupid? It must be scripted? Mustn't it? Skins is also stylised almost as an ideal lifestyle. It's a magazine programme. I remember a journalist saying Skins is what you pretend youth was, and The Inbetweeners is what it actually was. I agree with that. Interestingly, how often do you get people wanting to be Will, Simon, Jay or Neil? It doesn't happen. Nobody aspires to it because everybody recognises we're already it.

But whether it's TOWIE, Skins, Geordie Shore, Desperate Scousewives, or Peter Andre showcasing his crushingly boring idiot life (actually, worse, Natalie Cassidy doing the same), it's presented as aspirational. As if this is what we could achieve if only we looked right and were moronic enough. Ten years ago, in a forum I was part of, I made a joke about Natalie Cassidy one day releasing a dancercise video. I was being sardonic. Not so many years later, it happened. I'm also the person who turned to his sister the first time we heard Wannabe by the Spice Girls and ask, "Is this a joke?" I thought it must be, because it wasn't music. At this point, I'm going to predict that the dog of someone out of reality TV is going to have its own show within five years and that when the dog dies, it'll be front page on all the red tops: "Nation Mourns Mitzi".

I feel as badly as you about all this but I was stupid enough to laugh along at the steps which got us here. The public gets what the public wants. Kind of makes me ashamed to be one of the public. The only saving grace is the BBC. I know it makes crap too, but it's also made pretty much all of the best television I've ever seen in my life. Little gems, not the stuff we export or will ever export. Things that people in other countries couldn't ever conceive of being made. The type of thing that makes you feel more intelligent just from watching it. How often can you say that about television?

To finish on a downer - everything is a rung on a ladder - if Skins is where we are now, imagine what's next? And next? And next?

Dude, you don't sound weird, you sound awesome!

I've never watched Skins but I do remember watching Grange Hill and thinking that schools like that couldn't possibly exist as I went to a traditional grammar school where they still wore robes, and we all stood up when a teacher came into the room.

I also hope that society returns to basic respect and manners - although I don't see how it ever can :o(