Last Night a TV Saved My Life

Hilde Ovrebekk discovers a digital gem for a drunken Monday night

You know when you get home late at night and you don’t want to go to sleep because you’ll instantly wake up and discover you’re already late for work? You’re two bottles of wine to the good, and just want the night to last for half an hour more…

In pre digital days you would have had to watch the still of that young girl and the scary clown, or worse still, the Learning Zone. Now you can happily spend ten minutes or more scanning the channels, watching shampoo and car adverts, before finally coming across I’m Alan Partridge (UKTV G2, 12.30am).

You don’t need me to tell you how good Alan Partridge is, and I would have to go on memory anyway, because there was a more after the break, but I forgot to watch it because I was making some food. (Suffice to say it was the one where he pitches Monkey Tennis and Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank to the BBC Commissioning Editor). Much more importantly: here was a channel showing a genuine excuse not to go to sleep.

Usually that would have been enough to leave me gently snoring on the sofa, but I had to watch a least one more programme for the sake of this review, and thought I ought to have another drink and an interminable flick around more Herbal Essences adverts.

At 1am on a Monday night the most you can hope for is something, ahem, quite interesting. And, bugger me, if I didn’t, find QI. And, bugger me again, if it wasn’t on (UKTV G2). This possibly isn’t the first time I’ve discovered UKTV G2 on a drunken night. But it is probably the first time I’ve discovered it twice, and definitely the first time I’ve written it down.

I think it had Bill Bailey in it, but I really had to go to sleep.