The de-box diet

By Peter Lowndes
January 22, 2005
Illustration: John Shakespeare

Illustration: John Shakespeare

Agitation, cold sweats, nausea ... Peter Lowndes barely survived a week without a dose of TV.

'You can also hire a television set for $10 a week," said the woman behind the check-in desk. Two keys, one for our room and another for the bathroom, are handed over to my partner by the landlady.

Being between places, our home for the next eight days would be room seven in a 200-room city hostel.

Now would be an ideal occasion to gauge our inherent dependence upon television, something I have always been scientifically curious about. It's also the non-ratings period, when television flatlines and everybody's love for Raymond, Seinfeld or The Nanny is put to the test one more time.

I have little love for that bunch, but admit to a pious predilection for Richie Benaud. Doesn't everybody love Richie? I could survive without my regular dose of cricket if my partner could relinquish her daily immersion in the festering suds of The Bold and the Beautiful.

In the wise words of Homer Simpson: TV is your friend, although that friend does begin to smell a little during non-ratings time.

"It's just for a week," I consoled her. "We can use the time constructively." Whatever that entails.

Our challenge would be to go where so few had gone before and plumb the depths of the non-television abyss. Which may entail a detoxification of the sort experienced by divers suffering the bends.

And so we set sail that fine Friday, brimming with an optimistic sense of discovery, for now we were heading into uncharted waters.

A transcript of that epic journey:

Day 1. Spirits high on this maiden day. Much productivity transpiring, including a rough draft for a sitcom about a man who is allergic to television called Everybody Loves TV, Except Me, with Ted Danson in mind as the jaded protagonist. Hope to glimpse an albatross at some stage of the voyage.

Day 2. Are reading much, including Moby Dick, Homer's Odyssey and the poetry of John Laws. Entertaining the first mate with sea shanties done in the style of a Laws diatribe.

Gather round pansy prigs
Bout to give ye a spray,
Uncork the Valvoline me matey
We're bound for Double Bay

Day 3. Dead calm. Visited a tavern to curb an impending malady that appears to herald the symptoms of "cabin fever". Symptoms include delusions of Kelsey Grammer, quoting the bedside Bible and restless-leg syndrome.

Day 4. The nights now truly starless without Rove guiding us through the mire. No sign of the albatross yet.

Day 5. Dire times. Dissent mounting in first mate, who is sorely missing her beloved Bold and the Beautiful and could well do with a reality slap from Donald Trump or Richard Branson.

Day 6. Rough seas. Nausea and vomiting induced from overhearing Eddie McGuire on television in quarters near to ours. The enemy is near, my friend, and he sports an antenna on his crown.

Day 7. Locked inside the cabin as the situation turns perilous on deck. Crew has turned mutinous and is attempting to lure me from the captain's quarters with bogus sightings of an albatross. The horror! The albatross?

Day 8. Land ahoy! Or, rather, check-out day. Seven nights on the high seas without Friends, Kerri-Anne, Eddie or ad breaks has cleansed mind, body and soul, but only temporarily. After finding our sea legs, we settle later into our new television-friendly abode, complete with two sets, pay TV and numerous remotes.

Team hugs all round, although no hugs for the television set - not until interactive TV is bona fide, anyway. The experiment has been a triumph despite the delirium and seasickness, and it even appears that little was missed on Bold and the Beautiful; Brooke is still the scourge of those Forrester men.

Upon the lounge I contemplate our voyage into darkness; something of a modern odyssey, at times invoking the legend of Homer (particularly that episode where the TV is hocked to pay for a Simpson family therapy session).

It is between innings in the cricket later on that I switch to the Discovery channel and finally catch a glimpse of the elusive albatross. Seems smaller than I had envisaged.