'Bubble' far too jolly a term, nation confirms

BRITONS have decided that ‘bubble’ is too cosy a term for a grim huddle of bored people stuck indoors with only each other for company.

Whilst a household bubble sounds like it should involve bouncy pink balloons and a giggling baby, the reality has been confirmed as depressingly different.

Bubble member Tom Logan said: “Before the pandemic, the word ‘bubble’ conjured up nice things like bottles of champagne and long, relaxing baths.

“Now, it means a household populated by a gang of increasingly resentful people in grubby bathrobes who can no longer be bothered to wash their hair.

“It needs to be renamed. Something like ‘consolidated unit of gloom’ or ‘pressurised time bomb of dislike’. Or perhaps ‘cluster of tedium’, which is snappy while still being honest.

“I suppose the only thing that makes it bubble-like is that eventually it will have to burst and I will never, ever see it again. I know they’re my parents and sister, but I just want them to f**k off forever.”

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Five shows you don't need to watch the middle of

PUSHED for time? Bored of all the padding in a typical hour-long show? Here are five you can safely fast-forward through the middle 40 minutes of:

Grand Designs

After the first five minutes you’ll know the couple and the plan. The middle is predictable: early snags, extra costs, creating fake tension with the crane lifting big windows, even though they’ve never dropped one in 21 series. Skip that and go straight to Kevin walking down the drive of the finished house. Instant payoff.

The Repair Shop

Essentially two shows in one: the beginning and end are for people with human emotions, and the middle is for dads. So enjoy the opening where the team find out the story of the damaged melodeon, ceramic harlequin and Regency snuff-box they’re repairing, then watch them do the job at 32x normal speed before weeping tears of joy when their owners receive them.

Midsomer Murders

Everyone loves a murder, and it might be worth slowing down for the more grotesque killings along the way, but watch the beginning, either skip or drink through the middle, and stop at the end to discover that it was the choirmaster who impaled six people to discredit the harvest festival.

Game of Thrones

The only stuff that actually happens in Game of Thrones takes place at the beginning and the end. The rest is conversations in dark rooms and laborious changes of location. Only view the stuff with special effects and the ninth episode of each season and you’ll miss, say, Jorah getting greyscale then getting cured, and you’ll never know or care.

Twin Peaks: The Return

Cutting everything out but five minutes at the beginning and end will make this exactly as incomprehensible as watching all of it. Time saved to bake a cake.

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