Programmes to avoid, but one to watch

We're winding down - if you can unwind from an already unwound position - now that it's proper autumn (well, it's proper winter as the snow of the past 24 hours has proved, but chronologically it's proper autumn) which means it's liable to become the silly season on this blog: be warned!

But we still have a few horses on the go, and the recent runs of To Be Or Not To Be and Ethics Girl have been pleasing. Not productive mind you, but pleasing. The trip to Yarmouth was at least as pleasant as trips to Yarmouth usually are, with the presence of Anthony, visiting us for part of his half-term, an added bonus. Another bonus was seeing what I think will be a really good horse, the Saeed Suhail-owned and Michael Stoute-trained Desert Creek, winner of Ethics Girl's race. He's by Refuse To Bend (whom I regard as a stallion with a big future) from a mare whose credentials are impeccable: she's by Rainbow Quest from the Oaks winner Bireme, who herself was by the Derby winner Grundy. Desert Creek stood out in the parade ring and in the race, and I think he'll do very well next year. In fact, he looked nearly as promising as another from his stable whom I saw on television last week: Leocorno, winner on debut at Doncaster and a Pivotal half-sister to Golan and Tartan Bearer. I only hope that my brain is able to keep these names in a safe place so that I can retrieve them next spring when I'm compiling my Twelve To Follow.

The trip to Great Leighs when To Be Or Not To Be ran was also a pleasant one, notwithstanding a couple of nasty radio moments on the way down. I might have been a Police fan for a year or two in the late '70s or whenever they sprung to prominence, but the novelty soon wore off - so it was something of a shock to find 'Message In A Bottle' playing simultaneously on both the stations into which my car's radio is tuned. What was even worse was that the two renditions must have kicked off approximately four seconds (or however long it takes to sing "I hope that someone gets ma") apart, which meant that if one changed channels during the part when Sting sings "I hope that someone gets ma - I hope that someone gets ma - I hope that someone gets ma ..." over and over and over again, it seemed as if the two outpourings were running exactly in tandem. And this thirty years or so after the song was in the charts - amazing. Worse, however, was to follow because (for obvious reasons) I started to explore the dial, and found myself on BBC Radio Essex, which seemed initially to be quite a good station. Until, that is, the (female) disc jockey put out the following request: "Could you phone in, please, if you have ever had any mishaps with bathroom appliances or toilet seats; if so, we would like to hear about them". Not even Alan Partridge could have come up with that phone-in theme!

Not that I'm against banality in the media, as I prove by enjoying Stephen Fry's extremely untaxing tour of the States on a Sunday night. Even the discovery that I might be being played for a fool hasn't diminished my plan to watch the whole series, although it did come as something of a shock to find that I had fallen for what seems a pretty obvious TV fad, as was indicated when I noticed that this is running alongside Paul Merton in India - in one episode of which, I read, he jammed or strummed or skiffled or bongoed or whatever one does with a small-time amateur pop band (sounds like Kolkata's answer to Midlife Crisis) before seeing a man trying to break a world record by swimming across a river with a football on his head. This gave me the clue that perhaps I shouldn't be adding to the voting figures for the 'Quasi-intellectual celebrity does quasi-oddball travelogue' TV craze, and a snippet in Private Eye has further confirmed my misgivings: 'Your TV Tonight: Someone Famous Goes Somewhere Foreign And Tells Us About It, Channel 5 9.00pm; Someone Else Famous Goes Somewhere Else And Tells Us About It, BBC 1, 9.00pm; Yet Another Famous Person Goes Somewhere Else And Goes On About It At Length, ITV 9.00pm; Someone Famous Bangs On About Trains And (That's quite enough, Ed)'. But what the hell? We're enjoying the programmes and we'll jolly well watch 'em.

What I won't watch, however, is a programme which Steve Wright suggested as one of yesterday's TV highlights (with his tongue in his cheek, I hope). I caught this on the radio as Anthony and I were driving back from a visit to the Duxford Air Museum, which really is one of my favourite places. Apparently there is a programme on TV called 'Whose Hair Is It Anyway?', and it features a supposedly well-known pop singer called Jameela investigating the "hair extension industry". As Alan Partridge would say, "This country!".

What will, however, be worth watching (I say with a straight face) will be At The Races' overnight coverage of Melbourne Cup Day at Flemington, 11pm Monday to 6pm Tuesday. It actually really should be worth watching, because even if Dave Compton and I cock it up (ie if I cock it up and Dave isn't able to prevent me, and that isn't likely to happen because he is such a good broadcaster that he's usually able to make the show run smoothly and well, however inept his co-pilot), the bulk of it will be the live feed from Australia, and that will be really, really good. As will, of course, be the racing. At the moment my suggested trifecta is Septimus, Nom Du Jeu and Mad Rush, although I'm just trying to work out how I can slot Littorio somewhere in there, and not just because one feels as if one ought to give one Australian horse, at least, a chance. And, of course, the barrier draw could cause calculations to be revised. So that'll be a great but tiring night, leaving me with the dilemma of whether I'll have the energy to go to Southwell on Tuesday afternoon to watch Filemot run. I hope that I will have because she seems to be ready to run well.