NEVER in my life have I been to the United States of America. At the ripe old age of 30 (yes I know, I know, I look about 21) I’ve yet to make that time-honoured tradition of crossing the Atlantic and staring slack-jawed in awe at the towering skyscrapers and the towering plates of food.
Every year I plan to go, and every year something else comes up – usually a lack of cash – which means I can’t live the American dream. Yet on a recent bout of channel surfing I caught a glimpse of a programme which made me incredibly jealous, but which has finally motivated me to pull the finger out and sort out a trip to the States.
The show was centred around a grinning moron who used to be on nightmarish “reality” show ‘The Only Way is Essex’, or ‘TOWIE’ if you’re the sort of braindead clampit who spends time watching this dross.
Anyway, Mark Wright, or ‘Wrighty’ as he’s dubbed, has brought along a gang of fake pals to live out the ‘Entourage’ dream of hanging around LA with impossibly good-looking models. Basically I’m green with envy, and not ashamed to admit it. Being a huge fan of HBO’s Entourage show, I want to do what this perma-tanned pleb is doing, but I can’t, as I’ve no cash, no camera crew, and no weird interest from the Daily Mail about my every single move.
(A recent ‘story’ on their site was about how Mark went on a night out with friends…yes, that’s it, while previously an entire piece of journalism was devoted to how he chose to wear a blue jumper and white shorts while walking down the street.)
I digress, as “Wrighty” and the lads clearly didn’t have to pay a penny to enjoy a few weeks living in the Hollywood hills. Their entire trip seems fuelled by the sheer idiocy of the viewers of ITV2. Is it possible, I wonder, to somehow con a TV station into paying for my own American adventure? Well, if anyone from UTV, RTE, BBCNI, or hell, even Northern Visions TV is reading, I’m available at any stage for as long as you can afford it.
Now, this might seem a bit far fetched, but the Beeb once spent licence payers cash sending local sports pundit Jackie Fullerton of all people, to the USA where he wondered around talking about his accent, and how Americans love our accent….did I mention the accent?
If they can do that, then by God they can send me and a handful of mates to New York at the very least. Firstly, we wouldn’t spend the entire show prattling on about just how amazing “Norn Ireland” is, and how fascinated the entire planet is with the place. I have the feeling that the average American thinks Belfast is a suburb of Dublin, and that Dublin is a town somewhere near Paris…i.e.: they couldn’t care less about some Paddy grinning in their face talking in an exaggerated Belfast accent as if you’re the first foreign visitor to set foot in a country founded by foreign visitors.
Nope, fire me across the Atlantic and I’d give you the full Hollywood experience, arriving fresh-faced, smiling, and full of healthy energy, and finishing a few weeks later, shaving my head in an LA carpark, in a Vicodin haze, with Lindsey Lohan on my arm having married her in a Jim Morrison-esque blood ritual. For the show finale I’d even die puking outside the Viper Rooms. If only “Wrighty” would show us the same courtesy.
