Hurrah for June 21. Midsummer, summer solstice, beloved of pagans, hippies, fairies and Seasonal Affective Disorder sufferers alike.
So what, I hear you ask, are we as the great British public supposed to do to celebrate midsummer's night in traditional fashion?
Simple! The proper and correct thing we should do to mark the day is the same thing we do to mark every other holiday. We should watch television.
And to help you decide how to spend your longest night of telly, we have the picks from this week's Guide and today's edition of the Guardian...
Big Ideas That Changed The World 7.15pm, Five Before Gorgeous George, before Red Ken, there was, and remains, Tony Benn MP — the politician as self-made folk hero; inspiring and infuriating in equal spoonfuls. In tonight's to-the camera address he vents forth on those lesser-known Brits who gave us the vote and attempted to spread democracy to the far-flung corners of the British Empire, a "bitter and bloody" process, and one currently being undermined by global big business, its stooges and goons. This generation, he argues, has got to self-organise.
Ali Catterall
The Office: An American Workplace 9.30pm, BBC3 After the fairly slavish adaptation of the opening episode — where it was just as funny as your mates are when they misquote lines from the show — the second outing tries a different tack with better results. Using the training day episode as a springboard, we get Diversity Day. The Brent character's performance of a Chris Rock skit has led to a slew of complaints, resulting in a workshop to enlighten him about different cultures. Of course it backfires horrendously so he instigates his own training programme — "Is there a term besides Mexican that you prefer? Something less offensive?" Get over the obvious fact that it's not Gervais and company and you might actually enjoy this.
Phelim O'Neill
ONE life 10.35pm, BBC1 This moving and frequently disturbing documentary focuses on 29-year-old Tamsin, a psychiatric patient at the Arbours Crisis Centre, the only such facility in the UK, where the psychiatrists share their home with their patients.
Neil Crossley
Sugar Rush 10.55pm, Channel 4 In the third instalment, Kim (Olivia Hallinan) begins to toy with the notion of drugging Sugar (Lenora Chrichlow) in order to have sex with her, and chooses the evening of her parents' wedding anniversary as an opportunity. After rounding up all the prescription and non-prescription drugs in the house, she waits for her parents to go out and invites the unsuspecting Sugar round.
NC
Of course, if none of those happen to tickle your telly-bone, there's always Gordon f***ing Ramsey (9pm, Channel f***ing Four) in a "revisit" episode of one of his earlier Kitchen f***ing Nightmares.
The good old "revisit" structure, eh? What would we do without it? In my day we used to just do without the three minutues of "one year later..." footage roughly stapled on the end and just call it "a repeat". Those were the days.
Still. Tele-f***ing-vision: the science of f***ing progress, isn't it?
As Gordon would say.
Except without the asterisks, and a little more 'uck'. But, as you know, Gordon's all about the bleeping now that he's set his heart on the US market... Or the f***ing US market, rather (sorry, Gordon).
