Yesterday, delightfully trumpeted by the BBC, came the news that a serious row had broken out on the daily lunchtime talk show Loose Women between one of its regular presenters, Coleen Nolan, and a deliberately antagonistic and quite disturbed guest, Kim Woodburn.

It turned out that there was a beef between these two; both had appeared on the 2017 edition of Celebrity Big Brother, and had fallen out at that time over something likely quite trivial.  Furthermore, it also transpires upon further investigation that Ms. Woodburn had not only fallen out with Ms. Nolan, but she had additionally fallen out with almost every other guest on that particular show.

One way of putting it is that Ms. Woodburn loves a row.  I saw a number of videos on YouTube in which Woodburn called her fellow housemates names that were, even to my hardened ears, vile.  She shouted, swore and spat her way through 21 days, or however long it was, on the show.  If the producers knew that including her would lead to fireworks on a show where everyone is couped up together for three weeks, they hit paydirt with Kim Woodburn.

Another way of putting it is that Ms. Woodburn is suffering from a number of issues.  For the most part, it was obvious that she was acting like a cornered animal; nowhere to go, nowhere to run, so all that was left was to spit verbally at her perceived ‘attacker,’ and to try to fight back.

During her ‘interview’ on Loose Women the other day, a tearful Kim Woodburn detailed a great deal of sexual abuse that she had suffered as a child, and when fellow presenter Linda Robson tried to comfort her, she violently pushed her arm away and told her to leave her alone.  This was a classic reaction, I thought: leave me alone, get off me, I feel ashamed and I don’t want your ‘comfort.’  No doubt about it.

It would appear that Ms. Woodburn has fought and fought her entire life.  She has been angry at the world for what she suffered as a child, and she is making everyone she comes into contact with pay.  The sad thing is that, when she was offered counselling after the show, she refused it, saying she didn’t need it.  I think the world and his dog could see that it was very much needed, as would other forms of therapy.

Unfortunately, the regular ‘Loose Women’ of the show rather let their anger get the better of them, one of them shouted out that Ms. Woodburn had ‘no talent’ whatsoever; which, whatever the case may be, was extremely inappropriate to shout at anyone on live TV, let alone in a heated argument.  Janet Street-Porter, sitting in the middle of them all and clearly enjoying every moment of it, was asking all the ‘provocative’ questions, knowing it would push Ms. Woodburn’s buttons.  She was absolutely aware of the media attention this would get, being the most experienced broadcaster on the panel, and wanted to nab some of it for herself.

In the end, I felt very sorry for Ms. Woodburn.  In shouting her rage at Ms. Nolan, and indeed the world, in crying over the abuse she suffered as a child, she cut a very sad figure indeed, and it was clear she needed help.  She needs help.  But the fact that she refused it shows that she is not in full possession of her faculties, she believes she doesn’t need it, and she is going to continue to make the lives of those she comes into contact with much poorer as a result, and that is her responsibility to do something about.  She is a fighter, and a lone fighter at that; she doesn’t want any help or even comfort from anyone.  God only knows how her husband of 39 years copes with it; unless she is entirely different at home.  Perhaps she is.  Maybe this is all an act; her schtick for the cameras and the newspapers.

But maybe it isn’t.  Maybe, at 76 years old, Kim Woodburn really is in a deep emotional crisis for which I believe it is her duty to seek help, her age should not be an obstacle in the way of that.

Putting all of that aside, the fact that she appeared on Loose Women, the fact that the producers of the programme lied to both Ms. Nolan and Ms. Woodburn (they said to each of them that the other wanted to apologise and draw a line in the sand to get them to agree to appear on the show together), and the fact that it was clearly a staged media event knowing Kim Woodburn’s emotional state, gives you a large clue as to the first reason why I do not watch television anymore.  I hate it.  It’s all loud noise and shows like this – cheaply made reality TV shows with some tenuous hook, mostly nicked from American television at that.  In the U.S., there is a talk show called The View, which began on ABC in 1997, while Loose Women began two years later in 1999.

I haven’t watched regular television in maybe seven years; we have a TV, we pay a licence, but the TV is not connected up to the aerial or satellite dish, or cable.  We don’t watch Netflix or Amazon or any of thoe online delivery services either.  We do occasionally watch BBC’s iPlayer for drama or comedy, and I watched some of the World Cup games online in June, but telly?  Nah, it’s all smelly. x