Who'd like to nominate their worst heart-sinking dismal crappy plotline in a children's book or TV series?

[BalloonSlayer]

You know the sort where you wonder who, just WHO are they employing to come up with these things, and you seethe because you could do SO much better AND you would be able to call yourself "a writer" at parties and people would be all impressed and that.

My nominees are.

Little Red Tractor video.

The TV breaks down. So two ADULTS decide that what they'll do instead is put on a show.

Yeah. Because when our TV breaks down, DH and I reject all of the following potential courses of action:

• Getting out the one from the other room
• Calling a repair man
• Going to Tescos to get another one
• Reading a book
• Having a conversation
• Having sex*

In favour of singing and dancing for each other, perhaps even juggling.

Please, has anyone ever in the history of history put on a show because their telly won't work?

• Disclaimer. The children might have been wanting to watch telly in this episode so maybe sex is not a suitable option in this case

Nominee Two

Thomas the Tank Engine Book - Jeremy (the Jet Engine)

"The Children" - that amorphous mass who must never be disappointed on the Island of Sodor - are having a picnic. Oh NO - it starts to rain!! The picnic will be RUINED! Does anyone say "Oh it's nowt but a bit of rain, it won't kill you." ? Of course not. It's a disaster.

Thomas steams to the rescue. Good old Thomas! What does he do? Takes them to Jeremy's hangar and they have their picnic in there.

So on what planet is having a picnic in an aircraft hangar a) safe or b) pleasurable? Why can't they eat their sandwiches in the train?

I take my DCs on days out and pay good money for them to eat their lunch in the carriage of a steam train.

Further nominations welcome.

The worst one DS has is one my mum picked up in a charity shop. It proclaims itself excitingly on the front to be all about "Choosing heads!" and is called "Panda Makes Faces". I can tell you are all gripped already.

The premise of the book seems to be a woefully lacking plot based around a large picture on each page of a headless panda. The idea is you work out which feeling the panda is having on each page and go to the back to select the appropriate head.

Sounds fun, until you read it and realise it was written by someone who not only has a pitiful understanding of grammar and punctuation, they also can't think up a plot for toffee peanut butter. (Haha! See, my hilarious joke is almost as good as the time you'll have reading this book!)

Look, Panda has woken up, but he doesn't want to get up, he's still sleepy. So he has a wash and is now feeling awake, but oh look! He is surprised to find that his peanut butter is gone. Panda is sad. What will he have for breakfast now. [sic] Oh no! Maybe it's been stolen! Now he's angry. Oh no, he's just so fucking stupid that he forgot he left it under the bed in case he needed a midnight snack. Now Panda is happy. (may be paraphrased)

And DS is obsessed with this and asks for it constantly. Sometimes I mix up the heads on purpose in a hopeless attempt to liven it up a bit. He notices.

Oh there were some utterly illiterate horrors that my mum picked up for DS at jumble sales - sort of sub-Bob The Builder rip offs of animated machinery that didn't do much, and so badly written...

Barbar the Elephant. Where the king eats the bad mushrooms and dies. Freaks me out every time.

I am feeling relieved that I have avoided a lot of these!

There always seems to be a set of standard plots that feature in TV series.

These include

• it is the main character's birthday but no one seems to remember. He/she spends the day making increasingly heavy hints to no avail, getting only deeply insensitive comments back from others, such as "Oh it's such a boring day, nothing ever happens." Just when he or she has reached a point of total despondency - ta da! - there's a surprise party! Which, mysteriously, involves a cake and balloons (blown up by someone's mouth but mysteriously floating in the air) but NO presents. In my experience, if people seem to have forgotten your birthday, it's because . . . erm . . . they have forgotten your birthday.

• the children get taken out for a surprise special treat. This turns out to be a picnic! They are overjoyed!!! ( My DCs would be foaming at the mouth if a surprise special treat turned out to be a bloody picnic. They have packed lunches at school every sodding day.)

• someone is very downcast because they are not good at something everyone else can do reasonably well. After a pep talk from someone wise, they find they can do something no one else can do, but they can do it to Olympic level. In real life, sadly, there are children who never manage to be good at anything.

• someone has allergies. They will be almost universally wet, stupid or useless in addition to this. (Examples, the computer repairman in Bob the Builder, Benny the Bull from Dora the Explorer, and the one from Arthur whose mum didn't realise that if he had a nut allergy then it wasn't just peanuts he had to avoid.)

SGB - what about the drunken horse from Biff, Baff and Fucko? That's a great one to have to explain to a five year old.

"Know it's an old one but find the whole goosey loosey, henny penny, ducky lucky one a bit macabre too..."

That's Chicken Licken - it was my favourite story when I was younger - so much so that my mum knew the whole thing off by heart, and I can still recite much of it now

Surprise surprise, Postman Pat is on, and he's just done something fucking stupid after hanging out with his ficking stupid mates, Ted and Alf. Ted particularly seems to be involved in a lot of Pat's fuck ups.

"- the children get taken out for a surprise special treat. This turns out to be a picnic! They are overjoyed!!! ( My DCs would be foaming at the mouth if a surprise special treat turned out to be a bloody picnic. They have packed lunches at school every sodding day.)"

Yes! Or they plan a picnic and it starts to rain so LOL LOL LOL they discover that a picnic indoors can be just as much fun - that's like....normal everyday eating right? I have seen this plot on flowertots, Charlie and Lola and many others....it's almost as common as the hiccup one mentioned earlier.

Being small can be great after all - look you can fit through the gap and save the day. We all like you now....

Is anyone else old enough to remember The Singing Ringing Tree'? Very European, involving aa evil dwarf that scared me when I was younger. (A slight highjack I know, as I can't remember the plot much, but couldn't resist bringing it in, as nobody I know remembers it at all)

Ballonslayer, if your TV breaks down you are meant to turn a cardboard box into a tv by cutting a hole in the front. Then you make the bored small children take turns sitting in the box and pretend to be the tv programmes. There certainly shouldn't be any juggling going on.

Tinyclanger, I assumed that everyone on Fireman Sam was gay. Certainly Fire Captain Steel, Sam and Elvis Cridlington are. They couldn't not have Elvis on the show. Who would Sam go out with?

Crappy plot - Granpa in my Pocket - every one of them. "This time granpa had gone too far". I hope someone steps on him.

The Original Peter Pan - where nanny 'hails an omnibus whilst out walking with the perambulator' and hauls the children from underneath the bed by their feet and slaps them.

Waybulloo - Just stop your nonsense immediately.

No one's mentioned Goodbye Mog?!

I hate Where the Wild Things Are, and I'd quite like to throttle Katie Morag to be honest but that's after getting stuck on the flipping islands of Scotland because of cancelled flights, having a 18 hour epic journey to get home via numerous trains before the country shut down for New Year, including a dash through Edinburgh city centre dodging bagpipers as all the roads were closed... getting home and then getting left as a supply lesson twice in the following week - "How can we get to Katie Morag's island?" I'll fucking tell you how - not by sodding Ryanair to Inverness (apologies are £10 extra)!!!

Oh yes, and in Grandpa in my pocket Jason constantly running around "saving" grandpa from various non-situations, until he gets into an impossible seeming situation and, um, saves himself. So why doesn't Jason realise and stop bothering?

All the children get slapped around a bit in old books though!

I haven't read Goodbye Mog, emptyshell

I was horrified however by Mog and The Baby, where Mrs Thomas looks after a neighbours baby for the day. She lets the baby torment the cat, take a fish out of the cat's bowl and try to eat it < boak >, and finally crawl out of the house and into the road, right into the path of a speeding car. Mog manages to get the car to stop, thus saving the baby's life. The neighbour is delighted with Mog's action. There is no mention whatsoever of the appalling neglect of the baby my Mrs Thomas or the baby's mother's reaction to it.

I was so shocked when I read it, having bought it as the DCs loved Mog and The Tiger that Came to Tea.

emptyshell nooooooooo!

I absolutely love Goodbye Mog! It makes me cry every single time I read it. It introduces children to the idea of loss and the permanence of death and yet with a spark of hope at the end. I can't think of any other book as fitting to read to a youngster if/when a relative or pet has died. When you know that Judith Kerr wrote it as her last book, when she too was very old and looking ahead to putting away worldly things then it is doubly moving.

And Katie Morag is so beautifully drawn and coloured that you need not worry about the story line at all. When the DC were young we spent long afternoons with watercolours painting in that style (and other afternoons with oil pastels and Mog...I still have one of those - where Mog is ascending into the sky surrounded by bright abstract coloured swirls - framed and hung on the wall.)

Dreadful story lines though: oooh, what's that one where the girl's redemption is to be allowed to do HOUSEWORK for 7 lonely undersized men. That is freakie.

Oh Waybuloo! Arrgh! Arrrgh! Fucking hate it. Simpering pink goblins doing yoga and screaming 'It's good to share! LEt's be kind to each other' relentlessly. And I hate the babytalk as well. Particularly as DS likes to imitate it (he is 6 but still likes to watch Cbeebies now and again).

all 'In the Night Garden' episodes, and don't even get me started on the books- think it is a disgrace that they have made it to print, utter, utter, lazy crap. (not that I feel strongly or anything...).

For sheer WTF!! I give you "The Story of the Little Mole who Knew it Was None Of His Business"

About a mole who comes out of a hole and has a turd land on his head. He then spends th story asking the animals if it is their turd and gets a demonstration of the smell and consistency of various animal excreta. Eventuallty the flies (who really should know about these things) tell him it was the butcher's dog's turd. The mole then goes and poos on the butchers dog.

The end

slug - i had to google that to make sure you weren't making it up and

I agree that the Bear in the Bear Hunt just wants to be friends. I hate the illustrations in it- the mother looks ths same age and height as the children. Is she in fact Dad's new teenage girlfriend?
Mr Magee is somehow quite unsavoury.
Bob the Builder's approach to work.
The awful sneering tone and mind shatterring tedium of Thomas and anything associated with him.

I want that mole book :o