TV's The Circle is too rubbish, even for me '“ Zella Compton

Wow '“ Channel Four has reached a new low with The Circle, a desperate attempt to be part of the conversation by sticking a group of people into flats and only letting them communicate on social media.
Genelle, who is one of the contestants trying to win up to 50,000 on the new Channel 4 reality show The CircleGenelle, who is one of the contestants trying to win up to 50,000 on the new Channel 4 reality show The Circle
Genelle, who is one of the contestants trying to win up to 50,000 on the new Channel 4 reality show The Circle

Seriously, this is total dross and although I tried very very hard to be interested and enjoy it with my teenagers, we all gave up about halfway through episode one.

It reminded me of the Big Breakfast which was excellent for a while when it had big name presenters with talent and then rubbish with ordinary people centre stage.

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This is cheap ordinary telly at its worse. I watch a lot of dross, but if anyone can bare to sit through The Circle, they seriously need a life. 

Isn't it hard to learn to trust a garage? And even harder when you're abroad. We ended up leaving our car in France after it overheated on the motorway. 

The mechanic, who answered our call from one of those little orange boxes on the toll road, fixed it for about one mile before we overheated and ran out of water again. 

He then towed us off the road to his garage, and off we went to a hotel for a night as he was on rescue duty and not able to look at our car.

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Thank goodness for our breakdown cover company which arranged taxis and hotels. 

And thank goodness for the hotel concierge lady who sneaked several rolls out of the fully-booked Michelin mentioned restaurant as this was a Sunday evening and everything else in slightly-off-centre-of-nowhere rural France was shut for the day.

But let's be honest, anyone who has holidayed in France will know that not only is it shut on Sundays, it's also mainly closed on a Monday, too tired to open on a Tuesday, not working on a Wednesday and so on and so forth.

In fact, I think it's fairly safe to say that France opens for a couple of hours on a Friday morning.

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So we eventually went home sans car to await a prognosis from the not-open-until-Wednesday French Ford garage.

And that, when it came, was frank '“ our car was trashed, corroded, and not worth salvaging.

They wouldn't even bother to quote us for the work required as it apparently wasn't worth the hassle.

Thankfully my persistent husband badgered the car rescue people into bringing the car back. 

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It was delivered with our bags, wine, mouldy avocado and cheese, laundry and surf boards, to our local garage who looked in it, and within an hour had fixed the problem.

It needed nothing more than a new hose somewhere.

Honestly, I love France, I love the pace of life, the food and wine, the architecture, but when it comes to mechanics, I prefer and trust my Brits any day of the week '“ especially as they're open on six of them.

Charge a pound a ride to get people out of their cars 

Last week I had to catch a couple of buses. With one car in France, and the other needing a new clutch, I public transported the heck out of my day and was astounded at the price.

To go about a mile, from the Gosport War Memorial to the ferry, cost £2.60. How is this a viable alternative to car travel? It's ludicrously expensive '“ and then another £2.50 on the other side of the harbour (which got me a bit further, but still).

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If we want to reduce the number of cars on the road, the cost of public services must be reduced to make an actual incentive to slow-moving sharing.

Charge a pound a journey and surely the number of customers will increase to cover the short-fall?