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Canberra Today 20°/23° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

A cringing look at the national capital

I’M really grumpy. Did anyone else watch “Travel Guides” on Channel Nine on Tuesday, April 2 at 8.40pm? I watched it right through to the end.

It was billed as “ordinary Australians” look at a week’s holiday in Canberra. That sounded great, but the actual show left me cringing to think that relatives and friends overseas might actually see the show and think that’s what ordinary Aussies are really like!

Well, at least they did show us some of Canberra’s highlights, but mostly through the eyes of a group of four “presenters”, who must surely have been rejects from “Gogglebox”, making incredibly stupid and inappropriate comments, then laughing and wheezing themselves silly at their own humour; also spending much too much time messing about with flowers while trying to see which of them could make the most inane remark (at which point they would then giggle like a bunch of schoolkids – no offence intended, schoolkids).

Not to mention the two young women “commentators” wearing Stetsons, who thought it funny to keep referring to Floriade as “Fluoride”, while they mangled the English language as they tried to sound like a pair of fair-dinkum Aussie yobbos.

And then there were the three young men, whose major contribution was to complain that Canberra had no nightlife and too many roundabouts.

Just who selects these amateurs to visit and evaluate tourist destinations?

And just what was the show’s judges’ verdict on Canberra? Four out of five as a place to visit and spend some time (can’t be too grumpy about that!).

 

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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