He'd never have made it in America

Being on maternity leave means watching daytime TV. Fact. It's probably the law. Not all day (cough) but I am quite a fan of Real Rescues (BBC1 after BBC Breakfast finishes!) - a nice cross between reality TV and medical dramas.

This morning's episode was mostly about an idiot builder who'd fallen about 3', which isn't far, but had landed on the end of a scaffolding pole and broken some ribs. Since the story wasn't too compelling my mind wandered, and I started thinking about the presenter, Nick Knowles. He is, after all, the thinking woman's bit of rough (so they say, I couldn't possibly comment...). I like Nick Knowles - he's quite funny, reasonably easy on the eye, seems like a nice bloke. But he has quite brown teeth, I noticed earlier, I bet he's smoked for years. And it got me to thinking that someone like him could never make it in the US, he's just not perfect-enough looking. In order to become a TV presenter over there you've got to have that cleancut American look, perfect teeth and a very bland accent. Our Nick would fail on all counts. On the whole though I think I prefer the Brit way of doing things - I don't want to watch a load of clones. Having said that, this lack of clones has left us with presenters like Vanessa Feltz and Anthea Turner, so there's a clearly a flaw in the plan somewhere.