OK, time for a moan. I haven’t had one for a while and Micky P has just given me the chance I needed.

I finally had the chance to sit and watch Michael Palins ‘New Europe’ this evening and it really was, well – pretty crap.

The opening scene set in Slovenia’s Julian Alps naturally put a smile on my face but it was short lived. Actually, incredibly short lived as MP only managed to squeeze-in a 3 second train scene before skipping the entire country (Europe’s coolest country) and most of the Adriatic and declaring his first destination as Split in Croatia. And what did we get after that? What did he talk about? New Europe? …no, no – the war. The war that finished 15 years ago. The single most reported event to come from the region in the last 15 years wins again. Is it any wonder that the negative war-torn stereo types of the region still prevails in most of ‘Western’ Europe?

Maybe I’d expected too much, after all he had to squeeze the whole of the Ex-Yugoslavia and Albania into 1 hour but, instead of being well researched, insightful, different or interesting we got war talk in Croatia, war in Bosnia and war in Serbia. MP didn’t even manage to find anyone interesting to talk to or an insightful question to ask. True-to-form the old Croat talked about national pride and ‘winning’ the war, the Bosnians talked about the hardships of post war life and the Serbs shrugged their shoulders.

I didn’t even see a Burek, No Lasko, nobody driving like a twat, no lakes and not a single turqouise unifom. Bah!

The interview with Tirana’s Mayor made the final 15 minutes worth waiting for but only just. Maybe he’s kept the ‘New’ for next week.

OK, rant over – there’s more to my life than this TV show, honest.
I’ve been giving some serious thought this week about next year. I have a plan…