ITV Cooks Live Turtle For Tea, Gets Told Off

Right now there literally isn't a thing that television can do right, whether its editing a documentary to make the Queen look like a hooligan, making Penelope Cruz look like she's got giant eyelashes or showing clips of a man cooking a turtle at teatime.

That last one's the latest one to happen, by the way. Ofcom has reprimanded Harry Hill's TV Burp for repeating a clip of berserkoid survival programme Bear Grylls Born Survivor where enthusiastic survival expert weirdo Bear Grylls bites the head off a frog and then cooks what appears to be a live turtle at teatime. Disgusting yes, but ask yourself this - what's more disgusting - the sight of a slightly gonkish man chewing the head off a tree frog or other Saturday teatime ITV programmes like X Factor? 

OK, probably the frog thing. You're right.

It's hard to think of a time when television was in deeper trouble than it is now. Dear departed Quizmania was hauled off-air for saying that women keep wall plugs in their handbags, Richard And Judy's You Say We Pay was hauled off-air for ripping everyone off, the BBC has got in trouble for making the Queen look like a ninny and Penelope Cruz got in trouble for saying that her eyelashes are longer than they really are. Nobody is safe any more.

And that includes Harry Hill. Despite beating the odds by making a consistently funny ITV show, Harry Hill has had his show Harry Hill's TV Burp censured by television regulators Ofcom for editing a clip of oddball survival monkey Bear Grylls to make it look like he was cooking a live turtle when he wasn't and for biting the head off a live tree frog when, well, actually that's exactly what he did. The Times reports:

ITV breached broadcasting rules during a family show by showing Grylls apparently biting the head off a live frog and cooking a turtle in its shell on an open fire. Edited clips from the former SAS soldier’s Channel 4 show, Born Survivor, were included in the ITV1 satirical show, Harry Hill’s TV Burp. Viewers raised concerns about the animals’ welfare, and several parents complained that their children had been upset by the scenes.

For those of you who have never seen Bear Grylls in action, he's basically a terrifying mixture of Ray Mears and Steve Irwin. He's the sort of man who sees a mountain and, instead of thinking "Bollocks to that, I'm going home to eat Doritos and watch Doctor Who" like a normal person, decides to go and climb the mountain using only his mouth while he gets attacked by a flock of ferocious pelicans. In a thunderstorm. In short, Bear Grylls is a bit of a nobsack. 

And, let's be fair here, Ofcom was perfectly within its rights to give Harry Hill and ITV a ticking off for showing something as grisly as a man cooking live turtles and eating live frogs at teatime, as it should have anticipated that families and children would have been disgusted and shocked by the sight of something so gruesome. And, by censuring ITV, not only has Ofcom shown the broadcaster who's boss, but it's also made the first step in banning the most disgusting and shocking aspect of ITV - Antony Worrall Thompson.

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ITV Censured For 'Cooking A Live Turtle On A Family Show' - The Times