Words are all well and good, aren’t they?
Sure, you’ve got your Wordsworths, your Miltons, your Shakespeares and your Bushells. But most writing is just waffle isn’t it? With all those letters, those commas and fancy-dan italics.
Who wants to read all that lot?
Nobody – that’s who! You certainly don’t. You’re not enjoying reading this, are you?
That’s why we love our tellies. Look at it over there, all shouting and bright colours. No words over there, apart from the odd title sequence, subtitle or details on how to donate to a dog’s home charity. And no one reads any of that rubbish do they?
As such, we’re pushing the boundaries once more here at the Watch With Mothers. Here are some previews of the weekend’s television created using the mystical and lost art of mathematics. Marvel at how no words are used. Apart from those in the introduction, these words here and some at the end. And some in the maths bits themselves.
Firstly, here’s a graphic representation of what to expect from ITV1’s new flagship Saturday night game show, Push The Button:
And depicted more simply here:
Here is a probability scale representing the chances of Piers Morgan asking his line manager and employer Simon Cowell any even remotely challenging or interesting questions on ITV1’s Life Stories on Saturday at 9pm:
The third channel’s Friday night offering with Michael Winner can be broken down to the following equation:
The Apprentice (÷ 10) x Come Dine With Me (- wit) + eSure adverts ÷ dignity – any respect for the contestants, crew or audience =
Michael Winner’s Dining Stars
If The Death Wish director’s sweating face and insistence on telling you to calm down doesn’t appeal, you could try Channel Four’s Embarrassing Bodies. Not sure though? Here’s a lovely line graph to help determine your predicted interest levels:
Some Masterchef ratios for BBC One, Friday:
Episode to number of episodes in series – 8:22
Number of judges qualified to give their opinion to number of judges – 1:2
Greg Wallace’s mouth to head ratio when eating – 1:1
The ‘Big Event’ on the BBC over the weekend is Let’s Dance For Sport Relief.
Here’s The World’s Best-Loved Diagram ™, the Venn to explain:
So there.
Conclusive proof that the written word is dead.
You read it here first.
*end of football comment*
106 Comments
NOTE TO PEDANTS:
I got an ‘E’ in GCSE maths.
And seemingly a ‘U’ in IT.
IUT
?
An E in GCSE maths? At the end? The end of GCSE?
*is easily confused by letters, numbers and words*
I got an A* in Maths
*runs away*
*re-enters*
It looks as if someone’s just asked Carol for one from the bottom.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – see what I did there, cos her face looks funny.
*runs away again*
I have O-level Maths, AO-level Maths and two A-levels, in Maths and Further Maths.
I’m still skint though.
this = d/dx nice
Ernie Venn! Would you believe it, he told me about his new diagram in the pub – he only wanted twenty quid for the patent and I’d have had fifty per cent of the company. Fifty per cent! That’s almost half.
I’m a fool to myself (but, fair’s fair, also to others).
For our younger viewers, O-levels were what you took before they started giving qualifications away inside cereal packets.
MATHS JOKE: Why did the cat fall off the roof?
He didn’t have a big enough Mu.
I did OU Maths too, and even at the beginning of the last decade there were still a surprising amount of programmes to watch hosted by bespectacled, bearded men sporting brown woolen jumpers.
I got an A in Maths a year early, then an A in Further Maths and I can transpose letters to numbers with geeky ease. ie Watch With Mothers = 23 1 20 3 8 23 9 20 8 13 15 20 8 5 18 19 I also shagged two girls (not at same time) on the library table at school by putting their skirt under their bum and using a sliding motion. Doesn’t mean a thing though, my crap job is driving me to depression.
Good work Steve, you never see enough Venn diagrams any more. I like it.
I have a Scottish Higher in maths, which isn’t as good as an A Level. The English would only allow us to use fairly small numbers.
I got a U in GCSE Maths. My old Maths teacher says,
“You’ll get nowhere in life if you don’t retake Maths, Perry.”
I chose not to, I got somewhere. They really should test for bullshit levels when interviewing new teachers.
I’d have thought you’d have been good at vulgar fractions, Naps.
*looks at all these fancy Maths qualifications*
Four-eyed pack of SWOTS!
*Gives Pilchard a dirty look for denigrating the Scottish Education system, even if he is right*
This is my favourite chart
I like maths. Maths is a language you know.
Ha, that’s great Thumper!
I was good at bugger all Maths-wise, Jamie. Too busy lusting after High School girls in their tight-fitting gymslips, with their pert tits and fantastic …
*pops off to the loo*
Maths is a language, is it?
*tries to think of anyone speaking in Maths*
Nope.
Well Gordon Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer and he didn’t study maths. And Alistair Darling studied history. So it goes to show you can still go far with no aptitude for basic mathematics.
Dammit, Naps, don’t taunt me with that – I had to leave school before things got like that. Hence, St Trinians is my only point of reference.
Thumps, if the English hadn’t turned over the whole of algebra to sheep, Scotland would still be leading the world in maths.
…and Alan Johnson was a postman. I wonder if he will be in charge of the postal voting?
did you know it was the Arabs who invented zero? The Romans did not have a zero.
Well, Jamie, you four-eyed SWOT, you should have spent a little more time chasing skirt when you had the chance and a little less time being a four-eyed, goodie-two-shoes SWOT doing all Maths and learning and stuff. It’s not like you needed the bloody qualification anyway, you bed-ridden parasite.
Silvio Berlusconi used to sing on cruise ships. And then – all of a sudden – he was redeveloping Milan! And not a hint of a maths qualification.
*sadly acknowledges Napoleon is right*
Same with the queen. She was minding her own business, being a princess, when suddenly she’s made queen.
No maths there!
Hitler was apainter…no maths there either.
Argh no, not maths!
I’ve just had Home Economics and Geography (courtesy of DINLT)
Looks at pictures on google
Mrs T…chemistry…some maths.
Me, I had far more important things to be getting on with: pouring stolen chemicals into the local river, desecrating churches, shoplifting, trying to get into (name removed for legal reasons)’s knickers, putting fireworks up cats’ arseholes, getting pissed, having me stomach pumped, wrecking shit, taking drugs and flogging mucky books to small kids. I didn’t need Maths, and it never did me no harm not neither!
*goes back to sweeping the road*
Nick old mate my point is that a desert is empty, just sand. Hence the name. What desert has come to mean is not what it means. All those plants are in scrubland or sandy soil. A desert is empty!
I don’t think we should be too hard on Maths. It seems to me there was a time – probably in the 80s – when it became socially acceptable for the newsagent to use a calculator to calculate your change after you’d bought your newspaper and chewits and given him a pound. All the while, the Japanese were making robots! Robots! If he’d stuck in more at school etc
The Sahara desert is a desert yes?
(name removed for legal reasons)
*taps nose
Go on…i am ready.
Things do grow in sand, I’ve seen them on beaches all over the planet.
Fermat was versed in Maths Nappers.
I too have maths credentials.
Bloody Hell Fourstar, O levels were abolished 4 years before I did GCSEs. This must make you ancient.
Well yes nick a beach is a beach isn’t it? It’s not a desert. Grasses tend to grow on dunes.
Sticky toffee pudding is a dessert, no?
I have got O’levels too Mel…and bloody hard they were too. Not like this joining up the dots and colouring in that passes for an exam today.
Things grow in the Sahara, the Gobi DESERT, yes?
They don’t grow all over these deserts where there is no water. nutrients but they grow in parts of these deserts. THAT is my point…
If things grew in a desert it would not be a desert. It would be a jungle or something.
They grow in small fertile areas that may have survived the desertation process.
I don’t care if Fermat (whoever he is)was versed in Maths, Mel. Was he versed in pussy, Mel?
Y’know … cats and stuff?
Nice graphs Steve btw. You didn’t show your working out in the margin but good effort 7/10
If things grew in the desert why we would not plant stuff there? Far better to put a concentration of solar panels and build a turbine driven power processing plant, and then build an infrastructure to carry the power to the cities.
Thanks. There’s one thing you can rely on in this world. Not friends, not family, not taxes. It’s Microsoft Paint.
As in the Owl and the Pussycat
They do plant stuff there, DINLT. Them little Egyptian buggers grow all sorts of stuff in the desert, the cunning little Egyptian buggers.
Like this Nick.
I bet it’s hard to find a decent bit of pussy in the desert, wot with their being hardly any cats, etc.
You can bang on all you want DINLT, I’ve said my piece.
Things do grow in deserts…
*moves on*
Nice mic eh Naps?
The Nile , Nap. That was the fertile (and is) the fertile region. All the ancient Egyptian cities were built on the banks of the Nile.
*clicks on DINLT’s link*
WARNING! THIS WEBSITE APPEARS TO CONTAIN MALWARE!
Cheers, DINLT.
No, DINLT, not the fucking Nile. The fucking desert where I fucking just fucking told you it fucking was. O-FUCKING-K?
There’s cats all over Naps. I remember seeing a documentary about them a few years ago. Even up in the frozen north.
As well as the bastard cat that got stuck in my house yesterday and pissed on the mat (not sat)
I just walked in on my boss taking a huge piss
By the way, when I was a nipper I’d empty an entire bag of Tooty Frooties into my gob and end up with a vast and almost unchewable ball of goo in my maw, with all dribble flowing out of my chops. I was able to prise my jaws apart about every half minute whilst breathing violently through my nostrils and staring upwards, gimlet-eyed like I was having a really furious stroke. I can’t be alone in this, can I?
I am ancient, Mel, yes.
*cries*
DINLT – I agree i walked my GCSEs and then got told to forget everthing I had learned at GSCE for A-level, because they were so oversimplified as to be incorrect. Especially in Chemistry. There is a metric shitload of maths in chemistry
There there 4*
*pats 4* on the head*
Maths and me have decided to leave each other alone
(grade 4 cse)
NAppers – I never did that because tooty frooties were fucking disgusting sweets. I never bought them, but my aunt would always give me a tooty frooty easter egg. So I used to force feed them to my sister, and make her give me the egg off of hers
Oi, Schrodinger! Leave it with those cats and come in for your tea, for God’s sake!
Your picture makes you look well youthful, Fourstar. I think it must be the glasses. There’s nothing else unusual about you. Nope. Can’t see a thing.
I once snorted a line of Sherbert Dib-dab sitting outside Circle K in Benfleet – does that count?
‘By the way, when I was a nipper I’d empty an entire bag of Tooty Frooties into my gob and end up with a vast and almost unchewable ball of goo in my maw, with all dribble flowing out of my chops. I was able to prise my jaws apart about every half minute whilst breathing violently through my nostrils and staring upwards, gimlet-eyed like I was having a really furious stroke. I can’t be alone in this, can I?’
“which service to you require?”
“The Police, I NEED THE FUCKING POLICE!”
Thanks, Mel. Watch the wig.
Naps, there are lots of cat mummies in the desert, because the Egyptians worshiped them. Your tomb raiding crowd are forever digging them up when they’re looking for super-powered amulets and all that.
‘I never did that because tooty frooties were fucking disgusting sweets’
Mel, in all honestly out of all the sweets I ate as a kid they were by far my favourite, the mint ones weren’t as good mind
Wine gums and fruit pastiles for me. Oh and pear drops and pineapple chunks. Oh and American hardgums. Also fruit salads.
God in heckfires, Mel, sounds like physics too. I did two maths A-levels, thought I was the big I Am and went to do physics at uni only to be told that everything I knew about numbers and maths was a load of shitcack and I immediately failed everything.
Miserable.
I don’t recall there being tooty minties, piqued.
I liked chewing nuts and that red liquorice stuff.
Snorting sherbet dibdab was a bit hardcore JRME. Did your friends try and trell you it was coke or something?
http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/mtype2/whatever/archives/tooty_minties/index.php
Can’t get them anymore, Mel
yup, JRME, same for biology too.
The best thing about going to uni to do scientific subjects was that we were leqarning about stuff that humankind only found out a year ago or similar, it really brought science alive for me, to find out that it was dynamic and evolving, rather than just facts off of a shitty text book, taught by a moron with no enthusiasm for the subject.
I never had a high opinion of the vast majority of my teachers
Mel, you filthy beast…
The missus has just reminded me of the entire Sherbet Dip emptied into the mouth which resulted in clouds of sherbet being ejected as you choked and half of it went up your nose.
Those were the days.
Piqued, I bet they tasted much nicer than Tooty Frooties. Bleurgh
Science was a pain in the arse between smoking in the break and eating triple chips at lunchtime. The only thing I learnt in science is that it’s not the best idea to try and get high off of bunsen burner gas.
We used to put a fizzy fish on our tongue and see how long we could hold it before the pain and agony of having your skin peeled off with ascorbic acid became too much.
Have we fallen through a time-tunnel into “I Love 1983″?
And Nappers has just reminded me of exploding candy. I never really got the point of that to be honest. Going in, it gave you a sore mouth, and then it left you with gutrot for the rest of the day
Do you remember those ads that went ‘I bet you can’t put a Rowntrees Fruit Pastille in your mouth without chewing it’?
We used to have competitions to see who could at school, which I won everytime.
But then, I was the sort of kid that could still have easter eggs left in advent, just because my sister used to pig all of hers, and I got a kick out of taking it out and eating a tiny piece in front of her everyday, when she didn’t have any chocolate left. Had to keep it locked away, so she wouldn’t eat it out of spite, but it was well worth it.
“exploding candy. I never really got the point of that to be honest. Going in, it gave you a sore mouth, and then it left you with gutrot for the rest of the day”
Most childhood sweets seemed to do this, though that may have been to do with the quantity I’d consume
Aw I wish I’d gone to your university, Mel. I didn’t learn anything dynamic and new. Scratch that. I didn’t learn anything. Not that I can remember, anyhow. I was too busy mooning over boys and getting into Southern Comfort comas.
The Sherbet thing was just a logical extension of the whole “chocolate cigarettes in the cold” effect, apart from causing severe intercranial fizzing and bubbly nosejuice.
It is Andrew Collins’ birthday today, Fourstar, it could be in subconscious tribute to him.
Well, JRME, I loved that. Oh and the fact that my tutors couldn’t have given a tinkers cuss if i didn’t give in my homework. Suddenly, working was for me, and not for my school’s place in the fucking league tables. Stupid bastards.
Every post turns to food. YOU GANNETS!
It has turned a little ‘I Love 1983′. I’m expecting Justin Lee Collins to pay us a visit soon.
I think we all already knew this.
As you were.
At university I learnt there was a hell of a lot more feminism and the oppression of the fairer sex by men involved in animation than I’d previously been led to believe. Silly old muggins ‘ere had it in his head that it was all about anvils being dropped on heads and that Tom & Jerry one they used to show seemingly daily where he’s in a zoot suit in the ’50s.
Speaking of feminism – is this the greatest feminist album cover of all time?
Who saw Question Time last night?
Carol Vorderman is complete belching anus!
That is all.
I saw a bit of it , Mr Green. She was a bit shouty, wasn’t she?
It’s not just the shoutyness, Mel. It’s all the horse shit ejaculating from her mouth. She seemed to have no idea what she was talking about half the time. She’s a reactionary tool. I was genuinely quite shocked, I thought she’d be nicer and a bit more sensible.
I saw that. She was a bit miffed, wasn’t she? Perhaps the company she does adverts for isn’t hoodwinking enough poor people into parting with their ‘broken’ gold for 25% of its market value, thus making her crotchety? Or maybe it’s the loss of her lucrative contract with that loan shark company wot’s wound ‘er up?
I wasn’t that shocked, to be honest, I have seen her go on similar ill-informed rants. She has always struck me as in a similar vein to those loose women, full of opinions that don’t count for much
I guess all the ‘maths’ has corrupted the common sense part of her brain. Borris Johnson was hilariously sickening as usual…
I’ve never seen the like before, and I was shocked
*is shocked*
I actually thought Johnson was a bit of a boor yesterday, continually trying to shout over both guests and members of the audience
I might have to watch yesterday’s QT…
I think she’s made enough money tricking the elderly into part selling their homes (or unlocking the capital tied up in their homes, as she puts it) to start her own gold stealing company. I don’t think it’ll be long before we see her rise to power temporarily thwarted by a failed Beer hall putsch.
I was actually quite impressed by aspects of First Time Voters’ Question Time. Massively flawed, but thinking along the right lines.
I didn’t mind that Boris character because I like bumbling wafflers; Will Self I thought played to the crowd in his usual droll fashion; Carol should have been birched; Lord Adonis was another Labour line-tower and Dame Shirley Williams was her usual ‘this is how intelligent politicians used to be’ self.
If I was in the audience, my Question Time question would be:
What’s best – Herbie or boobies?
There’s a Friday Question right there…
BJ makes me laugh. Re Ashcroft. He said, There’s some bill going through parliament, with some clause and so that will be that.
I rather like him saying Rhubarb too.