"Gillian McKeith ought to be banned from television .. she is perpetuating the myth that women must be thin in order to be happy'

After watching another brilliant Three Minute Wonder (focusing on a shoe shiner with aspirations to go to University) I left the television on as I casually surfed the Internet. After about 20 minutes of half-watching/half-surfing I noticed in my peripheral vision the sight of a woman walking down the street with a megaphone. Interesting. So I pricked up my ears and began to actually listen. "Ban Big Bums" "Big Bums are a Big Bother" and other such derogatory comments towards those with a slightly robust derriere. Why, I thought, do Channel 4 allow this dwarf of a woman, who isn't so healthy looking herself, coerce women into losing weight? With respect to her own show 'You Are What You Eat', people apply for this show; but here was Gillian McKeith brazenly walking down a busy shopping street like some kind of neo-Nazi fat hater.

It totally took me aback that more people don't realise this myth that women must be skinny in order to succeed is not just perpetuated by magazines, but also in the television we watch. On one hand you have programs like How to Look Good Naked making women feel good about themselves and how to dress for their shape. This to me - a borderline adolescent - is good, showing women that they can have a more curvaceous figure and still be sexy. But then on the other hand there is this little pixie spreading the dust of self-doubt using the airwaves of Channel 4. Another thing is that if McKeith wants to help women perhaps she ought to be a little bit more polite. Obviously there is the 'no pain, no gain' cliche but if you're telling a woman outright that she is going to die fat and lonely it does make it quite unsettling to watch.

Tomorrow I find myself endeavouring on the hardest day a working man will ever have to face; the first day on the job. It's only temporary bar work but tomorrow is Nurses' Pay Night which is one of the busiest nights of the month. I don't understand why you'd have someone with but two weeks bar experience behind them working on a night so notoriously busy. Yes it allows for my new manager to see how I cope under pressure and what not but talk about throwing someone in at the deep end! I also find myself unusually nervous in the hours leading up to this event. Not only because of first day jitters but also the impending 2 x 7 hour bus rides to and from London in order to be an audience member of Loose Women; a television show that has regaled me many a lunchtime in a period of unemployment. I find myself thinking is it really worth it? Travelling all that way to sit for maybe two hours to watching a quartet of middle-aged women gabble on about current affairs. However I am going to persevere over this nagging self-doubt and go, i'm sure it'll be an experience.

On an unrelated note, this is quite frankly the most disturbing cover I've ever seen in my life. It's a cover of Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" by the most unlikely artist ever to cover said record. It's disturbing because by the end of the video you get used to his bossa nova style lilting guitar and bizarre early Dylan-esque voice; not the hair though ... it's bloody awful.