LUV & HAT

LUV - Womens. What do they think? Why do they do? Where do they think, and do? These are just three of the questions Loose Women answers every single day. Is it on every day?

As far as reasons to LUV Loose Women, though, this is but a mere amooz boosh. For the main course, let’s talk about what precedes it in the ITV schedule.

It’s Tuesday, or one of those days. You started your morning with Daybreak, when you pondered idly in your jim-jams why Adrian Chiles looked just like every single cornflake you were shovelling into your mouth.

Then you watched Lorraine, in which every feature allowed Lorraine Kelly to look either deliriously happy or deliriously concerned. Nothing in between. Thus primed to accept that the spectrum of human emotion has been reduced to :-) and >:-(, you now plump up your cushions for The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Within an hour you are a snarling, vengeful husk of a human, furious with anyone who even looks like they may once have juggled two partners at the same time. You are 2 seconds away from leaping through the window to inflict some cathartic, lethal violence on the first person you encounter when, allasudden, Loose Women starts.

Smiles, laughter, jokes about genitals and the sexual techniques of ex-husbands wash over you, warming you like the sun. You sit down, slowly, slowly, transfixed by these ladies who seem… they seem… they seem to be enjoying life.

“I bet they roam about the corridors of ITV in a pack, stinking of cigarettes and hairspray,” you think, wistfully. Soon the ladies’ conversation turns to vajazzling and pubic hair bleaching, and you are in raptures.

Tonight you will get drunk and laugh raucously with your “girls”. A male patron of the establishment in which you quaff will look over at your party with thinly-disguised disapproval. You won’t notice him.

He doesn’t know - and neither do you - just how close he was to death earlier this very day. For he was walking past your house this afternoon, just as you were about to go on a post-Kyle rampage. He doesn’t know it, but Loose Women saved his life.

And yours, reader. And yours.
- Stuart Waterman

HAT - Claiming to hate the Loose Women for the content of their TV show is like shooting fish in a barrel - admittedly menopausal, man-hating fish in a barrel made of alcohol, hormone replacement medication and the fading memory of youth - so I’ll try to avoid that as much as possible.

That said, if you’ve never seen Loose Women, allow me to fill you in. It’s essentially a British version of The View; the American daytime institution where outspoken women with different political and ideological viewpoints - right-wing, left-wing, black, Jewish etc - discuss the topics of the day in an entertaining and forthright manner. However, Loose Women is different in two important ways: 1) instead of representing a varied cross-section of society, the hosts are basically a load of brassy orange middle-aged actresses and presenters who’ve found themselves with waning careers, and 2) instead of discussing the topics of the day, they basically all just shriek about willies and generally make you feel like you’re trapped on the last train home with the world’s most intimidatingly awful unpleasant hen party.

But however bad the show is - and it’s really, really bad - it’s still not as bad as coming face to face with the Loose Women in the flesh. In the summer of 2008 I wrote a TV show that was filmed in the same studio as Loose Women, and our green room was situated next to theirs. Usually they’d be packed up and cleared out by the time we arrived, but not always. And when they weren’t, you knew it. They’d roam about the corridors in a pack, stinking of cigarettes and hairspray and shooting flinty looks at anyone who had the audacity not to be a Loose Woman. They were terrifying. I might have seen Andrea McLean deliberately shove a runner into a wall, but I might have imagined that. I might have seen Coleen Nolan pick up a bin and tip it over a producer’s head, but I might have imagined that. I might have seen Carol McGiffin stop dead in her tracks, point at me and, without breaking eye contact, run her finger across her throat in an obviously threatening way, but I might have imagined that.

Oh, and also I hate Loose Women because of this. But then again, wouldn’t anyone?
- Stuart Heritage