Sun, Sex and One Very Annoying Parent

In a move that has surprised even myself, I have found myself glued to BBC3 every Monday night. Well, not quite. Such is the unique way that a student house operates our TV signal is about as good as what you'd expect to find in the middle of the Sahara desert using a cardboard box and a coat hanger. Praise the Lord then for BBC's iPlayer, a service with such swagger even it's name suggests it's made by the self-proclaimed rulers of the free world at Apple.

So every Tuesday, I sit down at my computer with a hot chocolate and a pack of digestives like a woman who's been recently dumped and sit back and watch British teens making complete tits of themselves as they galavant and vomit all over European holiday destinations. Well I say 'holiday destinations', they're more like parallel universes where society is just a crazy idea and they're run by people like Lady GaGa and The Mad Hatter. Yes gentlemen and ladies, this is Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents.

The program plays out like an Essex-version of The Truman Show. British teens set out on their first holiday away from the parents, hoping for a week of exactly what the title suggests. However, mum and dad (or for some of the more broken families, mum and a 'family friend') get to watch the whole thing, either from a TV monitor or through a set of binoculars. Cue scenes of parents tutting, teens revealing they 'haven't seen Dad as much as they'd have liked' and then everyone learning more about each other and it all ends happily ever after. Nonsense, I'm waiting for the episode where the teen comes back with so many STIs that they have to quarantine him on the Isle of Man.

One of many drinking games, this one entitled 'are you fucking starting?'

If you've been on a holiday with your friends it's brilliant. As I sat there watching Mr. and Mrs. Daddy's Little Princess watch their little angel investigating what every guy in Malia's throat tastes like, it did make me think what my parents would have said when I decided some toilets in Zante could have done with a new lick of paint. Well not paint, more like sick. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would have gushed at my efforts.

The episode I watched yesterday though had me shouting at the telly like a mental person playing along to You Say, We Pay. An 18 girl from Nottingham was the unfortunate offspring of a man named Chris.

Chris is a huge twat.

"I'm not strict," says Chris, as he trawls through a list of rules ranging from 'no boys' to 'no drinking'. That was it, first blood vessel had gone. The man is insane.

Such was the medieval view of life that this brain-dead Midlander had that he spent most of the time watching his daughter complaining about what she was wearing. "She's in for a bollocking!" he spluttered as he saw his daughter at a foam party in a bikini. Second blood vessel exploded. Thanks Chris, now I need an ambulance.

I get the idea of strict parents; I hardly have Pete Doherty for a Dad, but at least he lives in the real world. 'Chris' (whether that is his real name or if it's just code for 'Stalin') had his head so far up his own arse he could taste his own stomach acid. The poor girl wasn't even allowed to bring home a guy or have a boyfriend. Chris' big realisation at the end was that "she'll have to get a boyfriend at some point." Well done sir, unless you've raised your child to be a nun or a raving homosexual.

The man had Daily Mail written all over him, the sort of man that chortles rather than laughs, smirks rather than smiles, and writes a letter of complaint rather than manning the fuck up. I've got no qualms about a decent upbringing and a few rules, otherwise literally every corner of Britain would look like the Ayia Napa strip. A funny sounding idea yes, but you'd get tired of some Liverpudlian flogging you cocktails for 40p before you've even agreed to going into whatever piss-poorly named landfill-site of a bar. But, there's a limit. Chris, who I might name Britain's Worst Parent after Karen Matthews and Elton John, has taken this parenting thing a bit too far, like he's in command of a tank regiment, not an 18 year-old girl.

I'd like to think I could find the right balance between strict and liberal as a parent. I'm not about to turn this into a 'how to' guide, but I'd like to think watching Chris I could avoid turning myself into Colonel Twat and make a good hash of raising a child properly. But that's not for another few years yet, I should probably make sure I can look after myself before I think about a little sprog.