Square eyes

No way to catch up on all that's been missed, so let's dive right in. I've been off work today, trying to finally kick a cold that I've had pretty much since 2010. It has been driving me SPASTIC so this morning I realised that something drastic had to happen, and by drastic I mean static, and by happen I mean not happen. I have lain very still indeed all day, and weirdly, I do feel better.

While I was lying still, I watched a lot of television - two episodes of Stephen Hawking's Universe, which I found annoying, ostensibly because I don't really like speculation and doubt, but probably because I am simply not clever enough to understand him, so watching him talk makes me feel thick. I also watched three episodes of Masterchef, where I became increasingly convinced that Jackie must be giving a lot of incredible blow jobs to Greg and/or Jon, because there is simply no other possible explanation for the fact that she is still in the competition - she has childish tantrums, jumps up and down with stress like a bizarre combo of Su Pollard and my old ukulele teacher, she dropped her Phad Thai on the floor in a panic about four weeks ago and had ten minutes to make another one, and then in the food critics' test episode, she was running so behind schedule that she cut her thumb and was banned from cooking her pudding. Yet she still got through. Triumph despite obvious weakness is my bete-noire and weirdly something I've been talking a lot about in therapy. Can't handle frailty - it should be non-existent, and, if it's not, it should at least be hidden. She wears her faults like poshos wear Jack Wills: loud and proud. Anathema. Get her off.

Then I watched the last three episodes of Jamie's Dream School, which was about as frustrating a programme as I've ever witnessed - it's basically The Secret Millionaire, but without the secret and where the beneficiaries don't realise they need any help and so swear and shout instead of saying thanks. What could have been a fascinating experiment into how to change the behaviours of some of society's most determined cast-offs became an excruciating, upsetting farce, where thousands (millions?) of pounds of expertise and facilities, and some of the most experienced and respectable experts in the world came to teach 19 young people, most of whom didn't give a flying fuck. Just like most of the naive, entitled upstarts at private schools have no inkling of just how lucky they are (and I wholeheartedly include my teenage self in that), these kids didn't seem to understand what they were doing at Dream School - and certainly, four weeks was never going to be enough to get them qualifications.

Instead, they got an unrivalled taster course into privilege: students went sailing with Ellen MacArthur, cooked stirfries with Jamie, oil painted on seemingly unlimited canvases with Rolf Harris, used top of the range photography and lighting equipment with Rankin, went swimming with Olympic gold-medalist Daley Thompson, ran a scene from Romeo & Juliet onstage at The Globe with Simon Callow, had science lessons with Robert Winston that were so good I was seething with jealousy and music with Jazzy B in a room packed with production equipment, mikes, synths, percussion. I get the concept - this is Dream School - but if it had worked, the message would have been devastating: kids won't change unless they have world-class facilities and celebrity teachers.

As it was, the kids (and I kind of loved them for this) remained steadfastly unimpressed, smoking, swearing and storming out with boring frequency, except for a fortunate minority who were given a fast-track into some of the best work experience placements in the country - one wannabe lawyer had a meeting with Cherie Booth, another girl did a day's work at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant while a third spent a morning in surgery at St. Mary's Hospital. Inspirational work experience is hard to come by, and is of course only available to those with the contacts or the confidence to find a place, and the money to afford not to work while they're doing it. It's hardly a fair system and I was profoundly disappointed that, in the end, this had to become the programme's only success story.

I'd hoped Dream School would say something profound about the problems in education, and make some practical suggestions about changes that could be made nationally and which would make a perceptible difference to those students while they are still at school. The kids on the programme were disruptive and angry for very good reasons - just like the hundreds of thousands of disruptive, angry kids across the UK. I wanted to explore how best these kids can be helped while they're still in education. Unfortunately, a well-meaning but fundamentally weak headmaster, combined with the clear uselessness of a four-week timespan, meant that Jamie's Dream School only had one lasting message: 'You lot haven't got qualifications and we can't give you any, so if you just shut up for five minutes, we'll throw a ton of money at the problem and give you an unparalleled celebrity leg-up. It's up to you what you do with it - you might be inspired to change your life forever - but whether you like it or loathe it, it'll make great TV. For those of you not at Dream School, I'm afraid the problem's the same as it's always been - the noisy minority ruin it for everyone, and we don't have the authority to change that. You can't all have Rolf Harris teach art. In short: you're fucked. Soz.'

I'm not advocating caning. To be honest, if you'd given me those same 19 kids and the same budget, and one month, I would have sent them all into therapy. Wouldn't have made quite such dramatic TV, and poor old Jamie wouldn't have been able to polish his halo or show off his celeb contacts list, but I guarantee a bit of introspection would have helped. That and some basic English language skills, which weren't addressed once in the programme. Communication and meditation. Janey's Dream School. How about it, C4?