Love Island

In my head I’m picturing the tall bad guy and his bowler-hatted henchman in The Man With the Golden Gun: sun, sea, sand and Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight. I’m pretty happy to bet Love Island isn’t all about lasers and world domination as the ultimate goal, but not enough to go to a bookies.

Learning new stuff, discovering things, is the preserve of the young and foolhardy. They can take risks. They can, if so inclined, watch Big Brother to discover how Gary Dafthair reacts to what Gloria Pagethree-Model did in the house pond. I can’t do that now because the bulk of my allotted years are behind me and I feel the pressing surge of mortality. Not only might I forget things if I learn new stuff but I run the risk it could be essential to me living a few weeks longer.

And so I rely on the ability to make snapshot judgements from morsels of opinion. If there’s a point of view given by a person I respect then I go with it. Film decisions are always made with deference to Mark Kermode‘s reviews. Even better, if someone I have little respect for expresses a liking for something then I’ll avoid it like the plague, which has meant I’ve never eaten Nandos, never watched Titanic and never heard a single song sung by Adele or Taylor Swift.

‘Oh but that’s just ignorant,’ they might say. And they are probably correct. Such is my level of ignorance it could well be that I’ve never watched Nandos, heard Titanic or eaten Taylor Swift. I simply don’t know – Taylor Swift could be a rugged builder or a new kind of coffee. But whatever it is they all do or are I’ve not done it. Just like I’ve never watched Love Island.

The thing is, if I wanted to know more about Love Island or Bruno Mars I could switch on the TV or Google. I reckon there are websites and news stories and video files by the bucket load. If I waded through them all I could become the world’s foremost authority on all things Selena Gomez. If I wanted.

And that’s what irks me about the restrictions being imposed by the Tobacco Products Directive. Once I’d delved into the plethora of bytes dedicated to Twilight I’d be able to decide for myself that, on balance, it was an awesome series of films (as my daughter seems to think). Or not. Almost probably definitely not. But if I’m a smoker then the only thing on offer to me now are things like Daily Mail stories, shared on social media, telling me how ecigs contain “toxic substances such as embalming fluid and weed killer.”

There’s one thing condemning people to ignorance of something 95% safer than smoking, it’s another thing entirely when the bulk of permissible coverage is nothing but an outright lie. Right, time to find out what this whole Big Brother thing is…I hear someone did something incredible.