ROLAND WHITE reviews last night's TV

Nine fruit ‘n’ veg portions a day? Now that’s difficult to stomach: ROLAND WHITE reviews last night’s TV

Five-A-Day: The Big Con?

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Peter Sellers: The Dark Side Of The Goon

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Have you ever been partial to Angel Delight, Pot Noodles or Smash instant mashed potato? Then here is some terrible news: the nation’s poor health is pretty much your fault.

According to Five-A-Day: The Big Con? (Ch5), it was the introduction of foods like these in the 1970s that began the obesity crisis and our strange reluctance to eat vegetables.

This documentary must have set a new record for the amount of bad news that can be crammed into an hour’s television. The gloomy statistics just kept coming.

A quarter of all food produced goes to waste. Of the food we do manage to eat, 57 per cent is processed. In fact, the UK eats more processed food than anywhere else in the world.

That’s very bad for our health. Rickets and scurvy, caused by lack of the vitamins C and D, are on the rise. Worse, our diet might be passing ill health down the generations.

Five-A-Day: The Big Con? (Ch5) must have set a new record for the amount of bad news that can be crammed into an hour’s television

A doctor told the programme: ‘If you don’t get enough fruit and vegetables, you can pass chronic disease to your grandchildren.’ It’s something to do with our stomach bacteria, apparently.

As if all that weren’t bad enough, the future looks bleak for the UK food industry. Nearly 70 per cent of our food is imported, and prices are being driven up by the Ukraine war, border problems, energy costs and a labour shortage.

The obvious solution is to grow more food at home, but farmers can no longer rely on the Eastern European workers who traditionally picked fruit. We saw a farmer in Kent digging up an orchard, and another explaining why he could no longer afford to grow raspberries.

And then came the final blow. Never mind five, we should actually be eating eight or nine portions of fruit and veg a day, from 30 different plants across the week. Who has time to keep track?

Even if you hit that target, there is a downside. As a doctor advised: ‘You might get some feedback from your digestive system.’ Which is putting it politely.

Watching Peter Sellers: The Dark Side Of The Goon (Ch5), you might have wondered: why are the people who make us laugh so miserable?

There were interview clips and home movies in which Sellers looked in uproarious form, but friends found him difficult and unhappy. ‘Peter loved laughing, loved thinking of funny ideas,’ said the actress Nanette Newman, ‘but he never discovered the bluebird of happiness for himself.’

Watching Peter Sellers: The Dark Side Of The Goon (Ch5), you might have wondered: why are the people who make us laugh so miserable?

He was, the programme suggested, a real-life version of one of his famous film roles: Chance the gardener in Being There, a man without a character

He also pursued women in a way that would land him in trouble today. He once came home and announced that he was in love with Sophia Loren. His wife Anne immediately packed her bags.

‘He was very difficult to live with,’ said actress Audrey Nicholson. She was the wife of his best friend, Graham Stark, but that didn’t stop Sellers suggesting that they went to bed together.

He was, the programme suggested, a real-life version of one of his famous film roles: Chance the gardener in Being There, a man without a character.

There was just one celebrity interviewer who got Sellers to admit this. ‘I could never be myself,’ he said. ‘There is no me. I do not exist.’ Sellers was wearing a Viking helmet at the time, and the tough, no-nonsense interviewer in question was Kermit the Frog.

CANCEL CANDIDATE: Picasso: The Beauty And The Beast (BBC2) portrayed a moody, manipulative artist

CANCEL CANDIDATE: Picasso: The Beauty And The Beast (BBC2) portrayed a moody, manipulative artist who locked his lover indoors when he went out, refused to acknowledge the African inspiration for his work, and sketched his 13-year-old adopted daughter in salacious poses. He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in today’s world. 

CHRISTOPHER STEVENS is away. 

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