Dialogue: Here's a few ideas for some really toxic TV

This week the unthinkable happened. Two television programmes I wanted to watch played at the same time. What was with that?

On Tuesday night, Da Ali G Show went head to head with Sex and The City. TV2 went into ratings battle against TV3, fighting for viewers in order to satisfy and attract advertisers keen to talk to my demographic - whatever my demographic is.

Did the networks want me to learn to use a video recorder? Because that's what happened. I've always considered myself technophobic, but on Tuesday my hand was forced, and it wasn't tricky at all.

Consequently I've mastered taping TV and will record everything I want to watch from now on and screen out all the ads. That can't have been the programmers' intention - isn't advertising the reason for TV programmes?

I do get excited, though, when good TV happens. It gives me hope that perhaps the tide is turning, that there will be a shift away from the diet we're being poisoned by: the smorgasbord of home improvement shows, Temptation Islands and Hey, Bitch, You're Sleeping with My Boyfriend.

I understand that it's cheaper to buy canned product from overseas, cultural cringe doesn't come into the equation and that we have a small audience base, so programmes often have to made here in a rush and on the cheap.

But surely the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Do the public really want to watch bad TV or do the ratings just make it look that way because there's often no other option?

Who knows? But, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I say. I'm going to pitch a few ideas of my own. I'm thinking of having them patented and copyrighted so that exclusive all-territory profit goes to me. Just in case, because I really think some of them could take off.

First, there's Celebrities Eat Crap, a sort of Russian roulette with food.

We have an undercover waiter at functions where celebrities hang out. We entice them into having a canape our two. Then, on any given plate, there will be a surprise morsel - a brandy-snap stuffed with oysters or a sponge finger filled with creme brulee and sand.

As the celebrity takes a bite and chew, chew, chews, we do a close-up on his or her face, surreptitiously filming to see what goes down. Or what comes up. It could be such a lot of fun.

Then there's the concept my pal Jed thought up, before it became public knowledge that students were finding it harder to obtain affordable accommodation. A kindly production company puts a bunch of low-income students in a hostel, provides plenty of booze and films their every move.

If it's true that there's a new Blind Date show in which single women pick, sight unseen, a donor man to inseminate them and provide them with a child, then anything is possible.

Or how about Widow For a Year? The punters will love it. We get a happy couple and tell one of them that their partner has been killed. We then follow the "bereaved" round for a year as he or she grieves, recuperates and perhaps even starts dating again.

We trace the person's every move, fly-on-the-wall style, while showing the "dead" partner's reaction to his or her loved one's new life. Then, at the end of the year, we bring the departed spouse back from the dead and film the happy reunion.

Following all kinds of people round is cool. Provoking them into acts of rage or madness has been proved to win viewers. When Good Friends Turn Bad?

How about Jail Bait, hosted by the presenter formerly known as Nick Eynon. We'd dress 15-year-old girls up to look 30 and send them out with 100 bucks for a night on the town. Then, if the kid gets lucky, we tell the adult that the kid is only 15, and have a partner show called Statutory Rape - The People's Court. I know it would rate.

If any of these ideas were taken into production it would mean Helen Clark would never have reason to be ashamed of locally made television again.

She'd never feel inclined to berate homegrown product overseas. She could take tapes of Celebrities Eat Crap to any country in the world and know that our TV ranked up there with some of the best.

And more and more often we might find that there were two shows playing at any given time that we, the punters, wanted to watch.