It's tragic that the glittering jubilation of international sporting art and drugs designed to disappear without trace into the blood stream is decreased, for this viewer at least, into a petty annoyance.
The one thing that I'm earnestly committed to on television is Coronation Street, and clearly I'm not supposed to intellect at all that instead of sightedness what happens to a large radical of often unappealing, generally doomed people, I have to watch human bodies being forced to start higher and run faster than our good almighty designed them to.
Instead of the comfort of observation bodies wish Ken Barlow's, the midsection of which has become increasingly like those bolsters that the French use instead of pillows, one is forced to depend at youth at its most yucky perfection.
So I boycotted the live orifice ceremony of the Olympics. To rephrase that, I didn't get around to getting up in the middle of the night to watch it, and for the next 2 weeks I'm considering boycotting TV One whenever possible as well, unless it's the finals of the 100 metres, because my sporting attending span hindquarters cope with that one.
I began my gesture of supreme defiance on Saturday night by watching the Extras Christmas Special, or as it should be known here given how long it took for us to see it, the Extras Matariki Special.
I wanted a laugh and counted on Ricky Gervais to give me one.
Wrong. I didn't get many laughs out of the Extras Christmas Special. Instead I had all the other reactions that unspoilt comedy extricates from the viewer�- my toes curled, my skin crept, and I felt overwhelming sadness.
I really admired Gervais for what he attempted to do�- so succeeded in doing�- with this special, which was to demonstrate the base downside of success.
Anyone byzantine in the arts world�- and, to keep to the Olympics theme, the sporting world�- knows how it's often easier to enjoy someone's failure than their success. A small amount of success is fine, as long as it's non too much.
There's that sometimes irrational feeling that person else's success means that there is less to go about for others.
While some hoi polloi deal with personal success with a self-deprecation and grace that allow others to observe for them, in many cases the lack of generosity of others means the achiever becomes both emotionally guarded and lonely.
As the obsession with the lives of celebrities shows, celebrities hang out with other celebrities. What is often not shown is that on that point is a ruthless pecking order and today's celebrity might substantially not be recognised by his ex-peers when things turn tough.
In both of his tremendously successful television series�- The Office and Extras�- Gervais plays a character world Health Organization is identical difficult to like.
At least in The Office you can dislike his part but at the same time feel sympathy for his agonising awfulness.
Not so in Extras, where Gervais' character, Andy Millman, doesn't seem to have a decent side at all�- it's just his lunaria annua (hideous in its unfeelingness) that could possibly redeem him.
We get together him this time when he's had a double-edged success in an frightful sitcom for which he's obliged to wear a bad wig, talk in a high-pitched annoying voice and, worst of all, say his catch-phrase, "Are you having a laugh?" at least once every episode.
Andy Millman knows that his 15 minutes are bittersweet ones. In honest Gervais dash, he sets out not to have the topper of them, but to make the worst.
His best friend Maggie is the first to suffer. He'd cheerfully dump her if he didn't need a reasonably personable companion at the restaurants that today find him a seat even on the busiest of nights.
He moves on from his hopeless handler, treats the extras, world Health Organization are inquisitory for the opportunity that he himself got, with utmost filth, and treats his fans with barely disguised disdain.
The whole time his haunted eyes show he knows all this will be over about before it began.
I do love Maggie. She's the star of this special, just honeyed enough, simply bewildered enough.
The scene in which the leading man in the show she's an extra in refuses to set aside her to play the part of a whore, because even his character wouldn't be desperate enough to sleep with someone who looked like her, is one of the cruellest I've seen on television and her reply was brilliant�- once you're at the bottom, there's nothing much anyone bathroom do to make it worse.
This very was a programme which made you examine very closely what being a celebrity is all about.
It ran in perfect parallel with Paris Hilton's effort at quizzical herself by running for president, asking Americans to vote for her not because she's got a policy, or even a brain, just because she's "hot".
How canful Hilton trick about herself when she's such a joke already? And worst of all, how lavatory she get so much attention for doing it?
It just goes to show how a good deal she needs us to like her. And if we can't like her, then we can do the following best thing�- recognise her.
Perhaps after all, I will watch the Olympics. My refusal to countenance it makes me feel depressingly joyless. At least in its own way it's good clean fun, and the people involved in the races have worked hard.
Though none of them will of all time get the instant facial expression recognition that Paris has, they've earned what attention we do give them.
And it's non as if there's any competition for our care on other channels�- none will be showing anything anywhere nigh the equal of Saturday night's fell, cold comedy. This was Gervais beingness Paris Hilton's polar opposite.
This isn't comedy that has you waiting for a punchline, wiping away the tears of mirth as someone slips on a banana skin. This is comedy that has a freezing hand which clamps down on your heart.
This is funniness just a hair's largeness away from tragedy. This is funniness of the best sort.
But, oh dear. I think with Wellington slipping easy down its saturated hills, I'd rather have had a laugh.
*What did you think of the Extras Christmas Special? Post your comments below.
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