I wouldn't mind, but ....

..... while enduring a throat infection instead of a holiday, I was pretty much housebound.  And what do you do when you're housebound and surrounded by books that you've already read?  You watch TV.  Daytime TV.  My remote reached channels it had never reached before.  I lost count of the number of homes on sale in the country; heirlooms sold at auction for less than the bus fare to get there; makeovers of women who stretched the boundaries of photoshop to it's very limit; confessions of men and women who slept with their in-laws (why do they always have spots?).  I clung on through all this until it was time for 'Eggheads' on BBC2.  I absorbed the general knowledge of this joyous programme until I felt I knew the answer to everything.  In fact, if I'd been able to shout through the laryngitis, I'd have exclaimed "stop Eggheads, we have all the information we can cope with".

But, there was one other thing that got me through this period of ill health.  And that was my search for sightings of Pitbull, the rapper.  No music channel escaped my attention.  If he was on, I was watching. Such an intriguing individual.  Never alone, always stuck like glue to a buxom woman and examining her charms with the eyes of one who knows that he's got the sharp suit, the money and the rap to make her skip school for the afternoon.  And his voice, what a sound.  Like a human bassoon.  An orchestra would be proud to find him in their woodwind section.  And his lyrics.  So full of meaning:  "I was playing with her, she was playing with me, next thing you know we were playing with three".  Surely this is a message to teenagers urging them to use contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies? 

And from his collaboration with Ne-Yo: "Excuse me, but I might drink a little more than I should tonight".  Surely this is a warning to teenagers to go easy on the alcopops or to at least have the manners to apologise first for throwing up over the homeless person sheltering in the HSBC doorway.  Here, I think we have a rapper with a social conscience.  Yes, his videos might be full of ladies who forgot to get dressed before the cameras rolled.  Yes, he may or may not have been involved with drugs.  Yes, he speaks out of only one corner of his mouth, but just imagine what the rest of his mouth must be doing.  Yes, he might clog up your BT Friends and Family allowance with Ricky Martin, Shakira and Gloria Estefan.  Yes, he might be embarrassing to hang out with at a bus-stop gyrating with the twirlies (before 9.30am).  Yes, he's named himself after a dog (he could so easily be called chihuahua).  But, he's been awarded the keys to the city of Miami.  And that's one big set of keys!  And who doesn't enjoy latino rythmns?  Certainly, slumped on the sofa, pumped full of strepsils and just enough energy to press the remote, Pitbull spoke to me and it was better than any lozenge.