Transvision Revamp

Some of you may recall my recent shameful confession regarding makeover shows Help, I'm A Binge Makeover Show Addict!

However in lieu of a show yet to help no-lifers like me, I may as well share that one of the best makeover shows in my view was a series on BBC2 several years ago called 'Would Like To Meet'.

Each week a man or woman who had had a disastrous relationship history - or quite often none at all for many years for whatever reason - would be rehabilitated by a stylist, a confidence coach and a body language/sexuality expert, so that by the end of the show they were fit to face the world and hopefully attract a suitable partner with their newfound confidence, knowing that they really did have something to offer/what that something was.

A particularly quality production, WLTM encouraged participants to be totally honest about themselves without injury to their dignity as human beings, or degeneration into emotional or physical strip-tease for the camera. Unlike subsequent low-budget attempts by lesser channels, you felt the WLTM team maintained a lot of respect for their subjects, as indeed did the viewer.

One of their most startling subjects was an engaging former journalist from Plymouth, Jon Massey. Despite being bright, attractive, courteous and charming, Mr Massey (now McKnight) had managed to get to 41 without losing his virginity and lived alone in a small terraced house eating greasy takeaways night after night and despairing of ever finding love. Rather touchingly he'd decorated his bedroom in romantic-fiction style on the off-chance love should ever come knocking, no matter that he'd allowed his wardrobe to go to pot and childhood toys to proliferate.

My heart went out to him, and far from finding him 'pathetic' as he saw himself, I found my admiration for his honesty about himself and how he came to be in his situation grew as the programme went on. Despite having to uproot and face one deeply-held fear after another, Jon threw himself into the process of his own refurbishment, only baulking at the prospect of a professional massage to get him used to being physically touched by another human being in preparation for finding a relationship, and even that fear he overcame.

Within a year of the show Jon was contacted by the woman of his dreams who'd seen the show, and whom he subsequently went on to marry!

I defy anyone to remain dry-eyed at such a human renaissance, or deny that some makeover shows can achieve life-transformingly positive results.

Jon's case, and those of several other of the WLTM participants, also highlighted that all too often human beings have to reach rock bottom in order to be ready to change whatever is blocking or making them miserable about themselves. Also how an unfortunate background, coupled with the lucky breaks in love simply not materialising for some can have a devastating effect on human confidence. Or as Sting so aptly put it; 'How Fragile We Are'.

It also left this viewer wondering how many decent human beings are going to waste being lonely when they needn't be, because some unfortunate life event or unfounded insecurity about themselves has paralysed them from living a full life or making the best choices for themselves.

The show was particularly poignant at the time as I had just endured a horrible relationship break-up and come through an equally horrible illness, which together had conspired to leave my own confidence and feelings of attractiveness at rock bottom.

It was therefore nice to see an interview with Jon in one of the weekend papers prior to a follow-up show of Would Like To Meet Again being screened this week. Apparently true love is still holding good for him and he is continuing to enjoy being the GTi version of himself! I look forward to watching the show and catching up with him and the others, though one subject who opined that she would never consider dating anyone 'ginger' naturally deserves to stay on her tod and unloved for the rest of her days!

As for me, I joined MatchCom internet dating site for a year at around the same time that WLTM was being screened. But that's another posting!

Photographs & Memories

Aaron was a 30 year old part-time DJ with bad teeth and a welded-on 80s leather jacket who lived with his parents and fancied himself as the next James Herbert in the horror-writing stakes.
I was an impressionable 19-year old of similarly limited wardrobe and writing talent desperate for intelligent company in Coventry.
Aaron began to visit me in the greetings card shop where I worked bringing me home-compilation tape after home-compilation tape of all the music he insisted I must listen to.
At some point I visited his parents' house and sat in his black bedroom with its grey, black and red geometric curtains as he plied me with track after track of rare pop music for my delectation, but which in actual fact washed in one ear and out the other as I enjoyed the curiosity of his company for its own sake. Boys and their attention were still a tremendous novelty to a girl from a sheltered rural Northern Irish upbringing and it was rather daring to be alone in a room with one I hardly knew, even if his parents were watching Family Fortunes downstairs.
I confessed to a liking for soul music and before I knew it had acquired a dozen compilation tapes of the hard stuff - not just the right tracks, but the definitive versions sung by the definitive artists according to Aaron.
I should have seen the signs that he fancied me, but as far as I was concerned, Aaron and I were just friends (and fellow writers) who hung out occasionally.
A trip to Alton Towers ensued during which he sulked as I eschewed the three-hour screaming kid queues for dinner-raising rides and was content to just wander about the parkland wasting whatever exorbitant multi-ride admission tickets Aaron had laid out for. On the train back to Coventry he complained bitterly.
I decided he really was a bit controlling in a way I didn't care for, much though I realised even then he was probably quite a good moulder of my scant musical knowledge.
That night, possibly as a conciliatory gesture for being a somewhat ungrateful mare, I allowed him to kiss me goodnight outside my grandmother’s house where I then lived. It turned into a full-blown moneysworth snog. I didn't resist, but found myself guiltily repulsed by the acrid smell of his breath and sticky tackiness of his leather jacket in the chilly Autumn air.
The next time I saw him he was full of plans for our next date, a local concert to see a band I now forget, but I felt it was only fair to come clean and admit that I didn't want to date him, just be friends. He was furious and stormed off, displaying a pronounced limp I had hitherto never noticed, seldom to be seen again, except to tell me in no uncertain terms I had made a big mistake and would regret it for the rest of my life.
For a week or so I wondered if he was right and then forgot about him except to occasionally put a tape on and slowly over the years form an appreciation of certain tracks such as the wonderfully overblown soul number ‘Patches’, much though I could take or leave most of the rest which seemed altogether more middle of the road, despite Aaron’s lyrical waxing.
But there remain two other things I still thank Aaron for - firstly introducing me to Jim Croce's hauntingly beautiful 'Photographs & Memories' despite the fact that he and I were to revel in no ‘morning walks and bedroom talks’ of our own, and secondly, and less flatteringly, for giving me a whole new appreciation of comedy series 'Garth Merenghi's Darkplace' when it came along – the spoof of a horror-writing hack who succeeds in getting his improbable dialogue, continuity chasms and holey stories screened on the most obvious of shoestring budgets.
Yet I find I make this second observation with surprising affection for someone who could at the very least have been a ‘cult’ had he but known it and stopped trying to take himself so anally seriously.

Mind you it came as a bit of a shock to find Jim Croce looked (to coin a line from fellow poet Sue Johns) 'like Burt Reynolds washed at the wrong temperature' when I looked him up on YouTube (see my first attempt at ‘embedding’ below) I had always had a highly romanticised view of him as a bit young Justin Hayward-ish in my head.

But then aren't things always more romantic in our heads...?

When Late Night Digital TV Starts To Have A Detrimental Effect On One's Poetry

Romance Isn't Dead

He's 'sofa surfing' for a 5' 2" brunette with a spare hour
Who likes dressing up as a pony girl within a five mile radius
And will wink suggestively while eating cream puffs
Preferably flaunting black and white striped toenails
While dancing a Cuban mambo along his spine
On a rainy Tuesday at twenty past three
His Google search engine returns 'thirty three'

© LS King 2008

*The TV programme (in case you hadn't guessed) was about saddos who surf for extremely 'Brief Encounters' with strangers. Be quite funny to know what actually turned up on their doorstep in real life though - knowing the internet!