NEGATIVE VETTING ?..

The other afternoon I just caught the very beginning of a BBC daytime quiz show called `Perfection,` hosted by the adenoidal and extremely irritating Nick Knowles, one-time announcer of traffic problems on BBC Radio Berkshire.   Anyway, one of the contestants was asked what she would do with the money if she won and she seriously replied that, as she sponsored an orang-utan through some rinky-dink charity, she would dearly love to use the money to fly out to Borneo and visit her sponsored orang utan.   Seriously.  There are some things you just can`t make up, hard as you might try.

Now I believe there is some sort of `vetting` procedure for contestants before they are accepted to take part in the programme and clearly one of the questions they are asked is what would they do with the money if they won any.   And in the BBC, of course, answers like the one above are obviously going to find favour.

So I`ve been wondering what answer I might give and there is, of course, one which is glaringly obvious to guarantee acceptance into the puerile world of Knowles and his Perfection. The pre-acceptance vetting exchange might go like this.

"Now, Snopper, what would you do with any money you might win on the programme?"

"Well, NIck, I`ve always wanted to live in a community which is self-sufficient through sustainable crop rotation without resorting to any chemical soil enhancement and where everything is recycled or re-used so as to minimise waste and its effects on the environment and climate change and I can see myself living in my yurt whilst tending to the needs of my alpacas and llamas.   Errr....what was that question again, please?"

Well, it obviously worked for the woman with a thing about orang-utans, so why not?