Look to TV for a happy marriage (From Watford Observer)

Look to TV for a happy marriage

10:21am Tuesday 16th February 2010

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I enjoyed reading the story about Britain’s longest wedded couple in the newspapers last weekend.

Celebrating 77 years of marital bliss, the nonagenarians, who have never moved from the Toxteth area of Liverpool where they first met, attributed the secret of connubial bliss to having separate televisions.

When I was a junior reporter on this newspaper, most of my thrusting, wet-nosed, bright-eyed, newshound colleagues would rather spend three consecutive evenings locked into a Watford Council planning committee meeting than stoop as low as compiling a golden wedding report, but I rather enjoyed pottering off to far-flung parts of Watford to have a nice long chat with utterly charming people.

Seated in their cosy living rooms balancing my notebook in one hand and brimming tea cup and saucer in the other, I’d while away a delightful hour or so scribbling down their obliging answers to my probing questions.

I have to say that the very best thing about interviewing Watford’s more mature residents was that they always had excellent chocolate biscuits in their larders and weren’t afraid to offer them. And it was also strangely satisfying to sit and listen to people who had something positive to celebrate as opposed to the usual round of news diary interviews, which tended to err on the danker side of gloomy.

(As you can probably tell, in terms of great investigative journalism, I was never up there with Woodward and Bernstein) Anyway, following the long-established precedent for golden/ruby/diamond wedding interviews, I’d generally draw our chat to a close with the line: “..and what’s the secret to such a long and happy marriage?”

The usual answer to this was “give and take”, although I once interviewed an unusually perky couple in Garston whose actual reply: “lots of kinky sex” appeared in my report as: “lots of give and take” because I didn’t think their 14 grandchildren would want to read that or be haunted for years to come by the images it conjured up.

Give and take is pretty much the standard final response from couples celebrating their big anniversaries, so it was refreshing to read that Britain’s longest married couple had so heartily embraced new fangled technology, that they saw it as one of the planks of their marriage.

How very 21st century.

Not for them the slushy, gushy stuff. Cutting straight to the heart of the matter, when asked the million dollar question, the lady of the house happily admitted that the long-standing success of their marriage owed a lot to the arrival of a second television enabling her to watch favourite programmes like Midsomer Murders and The Antiques Roadshow in peace.

Her husband, on the other hand, was largely interested in sport - any sport apparently - so instead of tussling dangerously over the TV zapper, they had decided to view in separate rooms.

Considering that the BBC is just about to unleash hundreds of hours of Winter Olympics coverage on us all, I reckon that a second television is a marriage-saver.

Fortunately, I am blessed with a husband who regards any form of team game with the sort of fear and loathing usually exhibited by a vampire faced by a crucifix.

Consequently, I’ve never been subjected to hours of televised football or rugby, or, better still, the eons of mind-numbing debate involving squeaky-voiced presenters called ‘Dave’ or ‘Gary‘, that usually accompanies a sporting event before, during and for what generally seems like several days after.

Mind you, we still fight over the zapper.

Just in case you are running away with the impression that an evening in front of the telly at Maison Cain is some sort of soft-focus, harmonious, sofa-surfing Utopia, I should point out that most of our arguments involve TV programmes.

More specifically, I should point out that most of those arguments involve programmes I want to watch. From How to Look Good Naked to pretty much any reality show, the only time our neighbours hear raised voices and slammed doors through the paper-thin walls of our terraced house will be when we are arguing about my viewing habits.

As I settle down for an evening in with Gok Wan and a packet of Quavers, my husband will ostentatiously leave the room to ‘do some work’, read a book in solitude or run a bath.

Last week, when I tried to watch Embarrassing Bodies, he plaintively pointed out that if he had another bath when I was watching rubbish, he’d end up looking like a Sharpei - or, even worse, like Dale Winton, who is currently presenting that pointless National Lottery quiz and who looks uncannily like a simmered mummy.

I gave way on the Embarrassing Bodies dispute, although I have to say that programme fascinates me.

I mean, if people are so embarrassed about something nasty in their nether regions that they can’t bring themselves to make an appointment with their doctor to discuss it in the privacy of the surgery, what on earth is going through their minds when they strip off on prime-time TV and wave their buttocks to camera?

I can only think that in this democratic age of The X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent (coming back soon. I can’t wait) the bottom line is that everyone is hungry for their 15 minutes of fame, no matter how humiliating it might be.

And, of course, Embarrassing Bodies is able to wrap what is essentially freak show prurience in a comforting blanket of sympathetic concern.

Let’s face it, the programme should really be called Britain’s Got Haemorrhoids, but that’s probably just a tad too graphic?

I must point out here that my husband is no slouch himself when it comes to hogging the zapper.

I’ve lost count of the times when I’ve been engrossed in the dramatic closing moments soap or a medical drama, only for him to switch suddenly to the menu in search of a re-run of some golden age of comedy oldie like Dad’s Army or Steptoe.

If he can’t find anything like that he’ll happily settle for QI, which generally seems to be running somewhere most evenings. (Is it just me or does anyone else out there bridle at the way Stephen Fry consistently ignores the women on the panel?) So, I have to say that, like the couple in Toxteth, having a second television is certainly the key to marital harmony in Maison Cain - or would be if only the darned digital reception in our bedroom actually worked!

Although, we’ve stopped arguing about what to watch, it’s where to watch that’s causing friction these days.