Commemoration to End All Commemorations

Having moaned about the BBC's over-the-top coverage of the Commonwealth Games last time, (as we speak, BBC 1 has effectively ceased to exist as a TV channel is now simply a live stream of random sporting 'events'), I thought that I'd continue in similar vein today.  This time it's the First World War that has got my goat.  Not the actual conflict itself - I wasn't there, I'm not that old - but rather its centenary.  At first I thought that it was just this year that we'd have a commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the 'war to end all wars'.  However, it was with growing alarm that I realised that, here in the UK, there are plans to commemorate the whole bloody thing - from now until 2018 we're going to get a blow-by-blow remembrance of the war.  Every minute will have a TV documentary and half a dozen books dedicated to it, even if nothing happened in that minute.  Aspects of the war you never knew existed (the hitherto unheralded contribution of the Peruvian Llama Volunteer Brigade to the victory at Vimy, perhaps) will be highlighted and lauded by the great and the good, (there will undoubtedly be a docu-drama starring Hugh Laurie and some Llamas).

I mean no disrespect to those who fought and died in the Great War, but really, isn't this all a little excessive?  Already I'm feeling overwhelmed by it all - we haven't even reached the actual centenary of the war's outbreak and I feel shell-shocked by the bombardment of documentaries I've been subjected to, (the day-by-day countdown to the declaration of war on Radio Four is particularly wearing).  But it isn't just dedicated documentaries - just about every TV programme feels obliged to work in some mention of World War One, regardless of how inappropriate it might be.  Honestly, if I tune into the One Show, I want to turn my brain off to mindless fluff, not be lectured on how awful the Great War was via the medium of Giles Brandeth patronising descendants of those killed in it.  And patronising is what the whole endeavour is - I bloody know how the war started and how bloody awful it was.  From infant school onwards we were taught about it.  I'm old enough that actual World War One veterans came to my school to share their first hand memories of the trenches.  Really, we don't need the government and media raking it all over again to serve their particular agendas.  Don't forget, once this year is over, we've got another four years of this sodding commemoration to go - I'm not sure I can make it...