Arriving in the middle of a Dr.Phil episode is not recommended, since you miss the essential blurb on the latest chemically-imbalanced hick collective who've just pulled up outside the studio. From what I could gather, Ricky and Brandine done been fightin' some. And they kids done been fightin'. And the dawg done been gettin' kicked about. Do yore thang, Dactah Pheeyal!

Dr.Phil: "Okay. So y'all hadn't fought for two weeks. Then what happened?"
Brandine: "Well Dr.Phil, I done drove round and picked up my father so's he could give us a visit. He ain't been well, an' I said I'd make his favourite brownies for to cheer him up some."
Dr.Phil: "Now that shore is a nice thing to do for your father. Good for you, Brandine."
Brandine: "Yayuh. So I was in the kitchen bakin' an' I left Ricky keepin' him company. Then I heard some screamin' an when I rushed in, they was....well, they was shit everywhere."
Ricky: "God dangit Brandine, y'all never told me your father had wannathem colostomy bags! I didn't know!"
Brandine: "You should have respected his personal space! When did you EVAH sit beside him before?"
Dr.Phil: "Okay, calm down y'all. So Ricky - I gather you sat on her father's colostomy bag."
Ricky: "Yayuh. Sent it burstin' right up through the front of his v-neck. Y'know, I still think it was more traumatic for me."

[click]
Hooray for kids TV! Nothing soothes a beleagured booger-bubbling bonce better than a bit of Spongebob. However, the little yellow bastard was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I was treated to "PICME". For the blissfully uninitiated, the "PICME" gimmick involves pasting a child's head onto an animated character and having it interact with other animated characters. Obviously it's a picture of a child's head; the alternative would be less than tasteful.

Today's episode starred Nobby! Mammy Nobby had obviously snapped the poor munchkin while he was in the process of pinching a sizeable loaf into the potty, so we had to endure his rictus of snarling discomfort for the entire episode.

The other characters are voiced by Alan Stanford and Flo McSweeney, who manage to imbue them with a level of enthusiasm rarely seen outside of a psychiatric ward on xanax day.
Ernie Elephant: "Hello-little-boy! Have-you-seen.....my-balloon?"
Nobby: [pained silence]

[click]
Commercial break time! Hooray.
Trout-faced bint: "Y'know, most mums think that choccy-blips are bad for you. Well, most mums are morons. What this mum didn't know is that one bowl of choccy-blips contains 67% of a child's recommended daily allowance of riboflavin! That's more than spinach! Ergo, choccy-blips are better than spinach!"

Hmm.

[click]
Back to Dr.Phil.

Brandine: "...so when I found out that Ricky had been playin' a tape-recordin' of my voice to the dog just before he kicked him up the ass, I got really mad."
Dr.Phil: "Thass understandable right there."
Brandine: "And to make matters worse, it was around that time we found out that lil' Dukey here was sick."
Dr.Phil: "Nothin' worse than a sick child. Except maybe yore son-in-law sittin' on yore colostomy bag an' explodin' it. So what was dickey with Dukey?"
Ricky: "He had like a...massive riboflavin deficiency. Doctor said the only thing to bring him round was choccy-blips mornin' noon an' night."
Dr.Phil: "Wow. Good thing y'all have an outside shithouse."
Ricky: "Yayuh."

After an inevitable forty winks induced by the hypnotic nodding of Dr.Phil's head, I awoke to find myself watching a repeat of "The Late Late show" from the previous Friday. Always one to give the public what they want, Pat Kenny decided that it was time to dust off Alex "Hurricane" Higgins and bring him on for a chinwag. Things quickly became unstuck when the prickly subject of Dennis Taylor was broached, and it was downhill at a rate of knots after that.

Pat: "So Alex, if we can turn now to that incident with Dennis Taylor."
Alex: "Yes."
Pat [adopting parental tone]: "You threatened to spray some of Jimmy White's hair-in-a-can on his glasses and kick him in the arse while he stumbled around blindly. Do you regret that now?"
Alex: "No. Je ne regrette rien. There wouldn't have been enough in the can to coat those massive bloody goggles anyway."
Pat: "Unrepentant, then. Ah...when you saw the carnage and mayhem that was inflicted on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, how terrible did you feel about sharing your name with such a cruel force of nature?"
Alex: "Wha? I didn't feel terrible. What the hell had it to do with me?"
Pat: "And what about those homosexual rumours that dogged you in the late seventies?"
Alex: "What homosexual rumours?"
Pat: "That you were known [snort] to go for a difficult brown over an easy pink?"
Alex: "What the fuck? Are you well in the head?"
Pat: "Ho ho ho, sorry Alex, I've always wanted to use that line. Now - can I ask you about your highest break? I believe it was in-"
Alex: "Ah yes, it was during the world championships in 1972 when I faced-"
Pat: "No! I heard it was in 1989 when you were thrown out of a first floor apartment window and landed on your ankle! Ha ha ha ha!"
Alex: "Right, that's it, I'm off."
[Alex storms out]

Pat [wiping away a tear]: "Oh, my sides. Well! I guess that's our CUE to have some music. Having spent a number of years tickling the lower echelons of the top 80 with the Hothouse flowers, Liam O'Maonlai has decided to change tack. Here he is to perform an old Irish ballad called 'Scailpfánach na HachtaíFachaWachaLacha'!"
[Liam shuffles out to moderate applause which quickly tapers off when people realise that he's balls naked and smeared with moist peat]
Liam: "grbhmagiv"
[Liam shuts his eyes and is silent; the audience look at each other uncertainly]
Liam: "uuuuuuuuuuWAHAHOH mo mhadra, 's é splataithe ar an talamh agus an tarracóir ag imeacht!"
[Liam drums his fingers on his bodhrán]
Liam: "Cad dhéanfaidh mé le rover anois 's é marbh fuair scroiste!"
[Liam twirls about on his tippy-toes]
Liam: "Déanfaidh mé cóta, is pota ragu-"

[click off button/heft telly out window]