We’re off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Odd – who is currently sitting in a control room surrounded by knobs. His mind is ticking over the ideas being shouted at him, behind his eyes in his great brain the cogs are turning and wheels are spinning to concoct the next big crowd-puller.

Suddenly, he sits up with a yell of joyous euphoria.

“Ukrainian!” he yells so as to avoid the copyright police, and save him paying more money to the Einstein Estate. “This Summer we will give them Prime Minister Idol! Let the search begin!”

Yes folks, the world of Reality TV is an insanely real world that is virtually unbounded by law, talent, taste, smell or touch. Yet where did it all begin, and where will it lead? Who knows how it will end? I’ll check the TV Times while you read on.

Today’s Reality TV can be summed up in two words – Big Brother, or possibly Good God. However, back when Reality TV was but a twinkle in the eyes of Channel 4 bosses, it was not purely based on the concept of people sitting on a couch having a grouch and a scratch watching people sitting on a couch having a grouch and a scratch. Can you remember the first Reality TV programme? No? Good, neither can I. Despite this, by the wonders of modern technology and Wikipedia, we can reveal the title of that first demon-spawn programme was… Candid Camera.

That’s right, from a show that secretly recorded innocent members of the public being set up in unusual situations, and inadvertently instigated the career of Jeremy Beadle, an unforgivable act, the Reality TV genre was born.

What is the meaning of Reality TV? Well other than it having no meaning whatsoever and being comparable to a broken pencil – pointless – Reality TV is the supposed recording of people in unscripted, real situations. Obviously if you are an unemployed slob of a man living in a council flat in Basingstoke, being dumped on a desert island with six female Next Directory Models or being thrown into Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen fires is not an everyday occurrence, which asks the question – What is real about Reality TV?

Now if you took the same person from their cockroach-ridden, rat-infested flea pit in Basingstoke (It should be noted that this is not a personal opinion of either Basingstoke or the council flats found there, but is a known fact taken from the unbroadcast programme, Basingstoke Council Flats From Hell.) and placed them in another cockroach-ridden, rat-infested flea pit in Basingstoke then the reality aspect would be well and truly restored.

That is not the way of Reality TV though. In fact, other than the people involved being made of flesh and blood, or occasionally cereal boxes and sticky-back plastic, there is little else that can be called real – unless of course you live in Russia where it is amazing what you will call real when you are being offered a plate of Plutonium with side-salad.

On another side of the Reality TV Coin we have Celebrity Reality TV. The best example of this can be found in the Pope’s favourite programme of all time, The Osbounes. Yes, Ozzy and Co opened their doors, their lives and their Good Guide to Swearing books in the name of entertainment. In the most bizarre way, it worked. Then again, spending one hour in an empty room with Ozzy Osbourne and a Kenwood Smoothie Maker would be worth the four years of therapy that would follow it. The worst example of this kind of Reality TV would then be the fly on the wall series following the publicity-hungry Peter Andre & Jordan. Unfortunately, this newsletter is a PG rating and to further elaborate on this programme would jeopardise the article’s approval by the Lisa Form Board of Newsletter Classification (LFBNC).

It is not as simple as it once was to decide where the line of Reality TV is crossed. Jerry Springer, the hero of the uber-porky American, the tattooed barbarian burglar beater and the size six eighteen year old stripper who ran off with her grandmother’s 95 year old toy boy for his energetic lifestyle, brought Reality TV to the Talk Show environment – lets face it, he’s not exactly Parkinson is he?

Cilla Black, surprise surprise (cheap pun intended), turned dating into a Reality TV show of sorts, taking members of the public and inexplicably succeeding week after week to allow the Hot Hunk from Hollywood to choose Mundane Martha from the Moors, and the Baywatch Babe to pick Number Three a.k.a. Norman the Pig Farmer from the remotest corner of Cornwall who’s ideal woman is Miss Piggy!

And it doesn’t stop there. Ready Steady Cook, presented by Ainsley “I’ve got my own brand of cooking sauces so why shouldn’t I have my own show - it was good enough for Lloyd Grossman” Harriott; Hell’s Kitchen, starring Gordon “insert favourite profanity here at least 20 times every ten minutes” Ramsey; Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook a.k.a. Will Burn, May Burn all can be found under the ever expanding umbrella of Reality TV.

So what does all this teach us about Reality TV? Nothing of course, this is a darkly satirical newsletter article not a GCSE class in Media Studies.

While we return to the Wizard, still surrounded by knobs and pushing the buttons that will put his schemes of television schedule dominance into action, let’s cast a final eye over the Reality TV of the here and now – just don’t forget to reel your eye back in as I’m sure you will need it at another time, probably to watch more Reality TV.

American Idol 5 is currently broadcasting across the world, showing to the whole planet – apart from jungle dwellers in Borneo and Eskimos on the Ice Planes – that being tone-deaf and musically inept is a disease that also affects ones ability to know that one is tone-deaf and musically inept. This series of American Idol has been unique it that for the first time in the history of Idol, or X Factor, Simon Cowell finally asked a contestant “What the fucking hell was that?” It’s a question we have been asking for years.

And let us depart from this place with mention to the largest Reality TV Show of them all, Big Brother. Currently BB 294 is preparing for broadcast if (Non) Celebrity Big Brother doesn't give the show an overdose and kill off the franchise immediately. We can but hope for this glorious outcome, or for the hand of God to pick up the controller of Channel 4, our great and powerful Wizard of Odds, before he can commission Big Brother 295 and toss him into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without food or floatation device. Naturally we would give him a camera crew and broadcasting signal to snd back the full uncut coverage of his drowning - we have to keep the viewing public and the Reality TV junkies happy after all.

2. England + Sport = Disaster

This month, Tales from The Back Side is coming to you from a secret location, in the remote part of an unstable country, on a planet the other side of the sun. Yes that’s right; the Planet Hollywood restaurant behind the head office of The Sun newspaper in London.

What does this have to do with this month’s tale? Nothing at all. Because as yet there isn’t a tale, although I am praying with the might of a mouse in a cattery that some kind of divine intervention will make itself known.

In the last year this column has taken a cockeyed look at Halloween, Jesse James, the Titanic, Sherlock Holmes, Henry VIII and had a version of The Nativity banned…and that was the censored version. It also gave birth to the epic Christmas Carol Retold – the tale that grew too big for its column and burst out to invade the Intranet.

And of course, there is also the Tales From The Back Side Website, containing the uncensored versions of all previous Tales, and some extras.

But all of that is in the past. Now to the present, wrapped in a wonderful bouncy bow and sparkling like a bald man’s head on a frosty day.

With the number of world sports going on at the moment, perhaps it is time for the Tales Crew to pull on their vest tops and shorts, and jump into the first taxi they see to be driven within a metre of their destination. We wouldn’t want to tire them out before they start, would we?

So where do we start? The start line of course. Three times around the track brings us to where the England Rugby team are practicing hard and hitting each other harder. Yes, Rugby the wonderful game that to the uninitiated seems to involve hulking male gorillas touching each other up and frequently attempting to push their heads as close to the crotch in front as possible without suffocating. 

A country celebrated when Johnny Wilkinson kicked England to victory in the last World Cup. This time around many countries have celebrated as they have kicked the crap out of England. What goes around comes around, the circle goes on and on, and all those other well known phrases that people over the age of 60 come out with at inopportune moments.

The despair of the Rugby is no reason to become downhearted, however. There has been good news in the World of British sport – yes ladies and gentlemen, please raise your hats, or cock you leg, for the retirement of Tiger Tim Henman. It’s true, Britain’s best hope of winning Wimbledon is gone…one thinks that with our best hope gone things can only get better. Wimbledon watchers will find their disappointment comes and goes much earlier now allowing them to relax and watch the true professionals at work. Perhaps we should all start supporting players from other countries and have a chance of supporting a winner.

But we always have the cricket to fall back on. The fearless men in white, with their sticky wickets, googlies, and polished balls. The fearless men in white who like nothing better than to go down on bended knees and beg for bad light to save them from humiliation at the hands of their opponents. Many times do we hold the upper hand in Test Matches, yet somehow it soon turns to having a hand shoved up us as the nerves of fans are tested to their limits.

Yes, once again our quest for a spot we are good at leads us to a dead end, and to make matters worse a cricket ball has just slammed into my head to score a six. Not for England obviously.

So with a lump on the bonce and blisters on the feet, it is time to move to the ultimate sport of the English. That mothership of the sporting man’s mind. The sport that relies on the glory of 1966 – football. 22 men running around a field trying to move a ball from one end to the other without making contact with anyone – unless your name is Ronaldo.

The sport that stops the country working and takes the glory of newspaper headlines time and time again. Grown men cry and woman do more housework than usual when the World Cup comes to town. Then the knockout stages begin and they think it’s all over…which of course it usually is.

We sit transfixed as the players collapse on the grass with tears in their eyes and a boot up their backside (who knows which came first?), and then the tension is broken with the most devastating works ever uttered. “Well that’s over for another four years. Cuppa anyone?”

So yet another well loved but little won sport passes by on an express train to the wilderness. Yet the list does not end there.

Horse racing, motor racing, cycling, athletics, snooker, basketball, ice hockey, and boating are just a handful of those the English actively take part in and are actively beaten into the ground in. Will there ever be a sport that is taken to the heart of the nation that we are actually dominant in? Or are we so sadistic that we only love the sports we are diabolically *bleep* in.

It’s time we began competing in areas where we could succeed in winning something. Speeding, swearing, drinking, burglary and murder. Queuing, paying over the odds, being ripped off, forgetting wedding anniversaries and birthdays, and complaining.

There are, it seems some things that the English are good at, but unfortunately you don’t win medals for them. You do occasionally get certificates, signed by someone whose name begins with Sergeant or DCI and in extreme cases by Her Majesty herself.

Now it seems this month’s column must end. There is a man knocking at the door who says I’ve won an award for the content of this soon to be published article and I should head over to the Tower of London straight away.

Well what's the worst that could happen? I wonder what you win for a thousand words detailing the country's sporting failures? There are whispers that it could be the Bloody Axe Award. I just can't help wondering why they asked me to make sure I had a clean neck?