The Blue Pill.

[BIAD]

Way back in a time I used to watch television... and I mean when I was in my teens and early twenties and there were
only four channels to watch on your goggle-box, when it came to a Saturday night the idea of entertainment was a genre
far removed from what it is today.
It's true that some regions of the country had local channels that broadcast for part of the day, but the Government-funded
one and it's advertisement-paying rival, were really the only winners.

The UK's evenings of the weekend consisted mainly of game-shows derived from other countries that were morphed
into programmes suitable for a British middle-class family and comedy duos who's repartee would only occasionally
stray into the risque terrain of underwear and saucy window-cleaners.



Of course, we had American shows like The A Team, Knight Rider, McGyver and a British version of 'Gladiators', where
a range of well-muscled men and women competed in a strange obstacle course.

All compulsive to a person who embraced the religion of the Blue Pill and the only tiny caveat would be that all of these
audience-pulling programmes were broadcast on BBC1, ITV (Independent Television) or the brand new channel with the
avant-garde title of 'Channel 4'!

However, there was another channel, a lonely outsider for Saturday evenings that spluttered and farted to draw an audience
from the merriment of these highly-coloured broadcasts where eyebrow-wiggling comedians hinted a hidden innuendo or
some burnt-out, boozed-reddened lounge-lizard crooned a song that your mother liked.
Its name was BBC 2.

I'd grown up from the sixties believing BBC 2 had only twin roles to play as a broadcasting medium.
One. to show English cricket from 10.00.am on weekdays for those who enjoyed the sport, but had to endure working in the
House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Two. Offer restrained documentaries on British history, strangulated plays involving Russian dissidents back-lit in lonely
settings and once a year, that stalwart of tennis, Wimbledon.

Now, I'd venture that Saturday nights on BBC 2 holds the same impecunious hold over the British television watchers and plods
on with only it's stiff-upper lip for company.

So maybe that's why...

Prince Andrew speaks to BBC about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.



'The Duke of York has spoken for the first time about his links to Jeffrey Epstein in an interview with the BBC.
He spoke to BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis in a interview recorded at Buckingham Palace on Thursday.

Maitlis said it was a "no holds barred interview", which will be broadcast on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Saturday.
The duke faces serious claims over his ties to the 66-year-old US financier, who took his own life while awaiting
trial on sex-trafficking charges.

In 2015, Prince Andrew was named in court papers as part of a US civil case against Epstein.
One of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Roberts - now Virginia Giuffre - said she was forced to have sex with the duke
three times between 1999 and 2002, in London, New York and on a private Caribbean island owned by Epstein.
At the time she was under-age according to Florida state's law.

The details were later officially struck from the court records when a judge ruled they were unnecessary to the case,
saying they were "immaterial and impertinent" to the "central claim".

Separately, a woman called Johanna Sjoberg alleged that the duke touched her breast while they sat on a couch in
Epstein's Manhattan apartment in 2001 in documents from a defamation case.



Buckingham Palace has issued strong denials of all allegations against the duke.
In 2015 a statement said that "any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors" by the duke was "categorically
untrue"...'

BBC:

Maybe it's the only slot they have available...? Which wasn't something Epstein ever worried about! Sorry.
(And by the way, he didn't kill himself.)