Beauty and The Beast

One of the best shows ever has started again this season: Battle of the Blades. Figure skaters are paired with NHL players and it is breathtaking. 'Beauty and The Beast' comes to mind. So do 'The Gentle Giant', 'The Frog and the Prince' and 'Cinderella'. Do yourselves a favour and watch CBC at 8 p.m. on Sunday and Monday nights. The gallantry of these brutes with their porcelein doll partners is magic. I blogged this last year, but it's even better this year.

I mentioned a photographic show we went to last weekend. It consisted of huge colour photos of women I didn't know going for $200-$300 apiece. Whaaaaaaaaaaa???? Why would I buy a photo of a woman I didn't know to hang in my home? I asked this of the photographer and he said it was for a good cause, breast cancer. OK, I get that. But still, why would I hang these women in my home? Did they have breast cancer? No, none of them did, he replied. So, duh, why would I fork over $300 to buy one?? I told him that only their mothers, kids or husbands would buy them. He admitted that I was not the only one who had asked that question.

Another show I have been enjoying is 'Come Dine with Me' -- a British show in which five strangers compete for $1,000 pounds for producing the best meal. Now this is a motley crew of misfits and ordinary folk. Rock stars they definitely are not, which makes the show facinating. Each participant prepares a three-course dinner and is then rated secretly in the taxi rides home by the others. The outfits some of them wear are beyond belief and as the evening wears on, they all get more and more tiddley until silliness reins. The narrator who provides the voice over is the best. He provides quips and retorts to each ridiculous remark the diners and hosts make. And talk about over-estimating their culinary skils! They all think they have won until the final dinner when the truth is revealed. The only problem with the show is that they run five half-hour segments back-to-back on Sunday afternoons, so I have to sit there for two-and-a-half hours to find out who wins and how they all react. But again, the show proves that the Brits are just head-and-shoulders above the rest of us when it comes to tv shows.

Except for Chuck Berry. Last night they re-played a 25-year-old show by the master that had originally aired back then on his 60th birthday. Peerless. He was so great -- and when he did his chicken walk, well forget about it. The fans went wild. This show had Keith Richards dressed in a matching backup suit playing backup guitar. Etta James, Linda Ronstadt and Julien Lennon were also on, but no one could touch the master.