Guilty Pleasures

For those of you not in the know, the phrase guilty pleasures refers to those things in life that bring you unprecedented amounts of joy but which you are simply too ashamed to admit to for fear of judgement. Perhaps under close inspection your I-pod play list reveals a secret love of S club 7, maybe you get cheap thrills from squeezing spots, or maybe you never did get round to giving up the recorder (hey, no judgement!)… Whatever it is it’s shameful enough to warrant hiding from the general public. And let’s face it, we all have a few skeletons hiding in the closet (I speak figuratively of course, my guilty pleasure is NOT corpse storage).

What sets these dirty little delights apart from our other passions is that we continue to indulge them despite their obvious lack of ‘coolness’. Even though we risk losing credibility/lad points our love burns on. And doesn’t the secretiveness of it all make it that little bit more enjoyable? Turning an embarrassing attribute into a scrumptious secret to be savoured rather than repressed.

Now secret shames can vary, from involvement in embarrassing activities to the adoration of a suitable vile celebrity (anybody a Jimmy Saville lover?), with a million equally embarrassing possibilities in-between. My own guilty pleasures are numerous and infinite in variety and against my better judgements I have decided to share them with you…

The first of many vices is my love for what I affectionately refer to as ‘Crap-mags’ (although to me they are anything but…) , more accurately described as ‘real-life magazines’. You’ve all seen , and probably avoided, them - those magazines featuring weird and wonderful titles such as ‘I’ve got bacon in my breast’ (and yes that is a genuine example. Intrigued now, aren’t you?!) Now, often I feel the wrath of judgement when I am caught with one of these mags (normally on those days I haven’t managed to procure a brown-paper bag normally reserved for the filthiest of porn), however, defend them I do.

Yes, tacky they are and often distasteful but there is no denying that they are interesting. As opposed to the vacuous nonsense written in celeb gossip mags. Often my harshest critics are people who can be spotted nose-deep in the latest copy of Heat. A magazine that with my love of trash, I surprisingly have no interest in. I simply do not care what Cheryl Cole had in her sandwich (Full-fat mayo, you are joking? How DARE she?!) or that Jordan was seen leaving a club worse for wear after a whiff of Lambrini. If I want to see photos of drunk people I’ll just look at the contents of my memory card, thank you very much. These are after all, just ordinary people, doing ordinary mundane things- which in my opinions are made no more interesting by the fact they are z-list celebs. Yes it may be gross that a young girl is having her grandfather’s baby but there is no denying that it is interesting and proof of this is that often it is those who are the first to scoff that I later catch red-handed with my beloved crap magazines. In fact it makes me wonder if I’m so alone in this guilty pleasure after all…

My second, equally trashy vice, is day-time TV- those television programmes generally deemed not good enough to go in prime time viewing slots, ranging from property development to antiques shows, I love them all! Even writing this I have the sudden urge for a cup of tea, a comfy sofa and an episode of escape to the country. In fact I can and have, quite happily planned a whole day around the day time TV schedule. If you are a daytime TV virgin (shame on you) I have compiled a list of my absolute favourite day-time programmes to allow you to dip a toe in the couch potato world...

• To Buy or Not to Buy
• Murder She Wrote
• Dinner Date (think Come Dine With Me with an added romantic element and wonderfully cruel rejection).
• Loose Women
• Homes Under The Hammer
• A Place in The Sun
• The Jeremy Kyle Show (yes he is a horrid self-righteous excuse for a man but I’m drawn to it nonetheless)
• Midsomer Murders (the willingness of the characters to live in a village with a higher murder rate than Croyden never ceases to amaze me)
• 60 Minute Makeover

The list could go on and on…

*The noticeable absence of This Morning from this list is in no way a reflection of it as a programme but more on my inability to get up before noon.

Another, more x-rated, secret shame of mine is my love of nudity- I love to walk around naked. Apparently I’m a naturist at heart, who knew?! (Well, possibly my neighbours with my tendency to forget to close the curtains). If I didn’t live in shared housing I could quite happily forgo clothing altogether when at home (that I refrain from doing so is a courtesy my housemates appreciate I am sure).

And to probably my weirdest guilty secret of all…

Plucking my eyebrows/having them plucked. Now, I’m aware that tweezing your eyebrows is not, in itself, something to be embarrassed about- most girls (and more and more men) indulge in a spot of eyebrow grooming after all. But it also equally true to say that for most it cannot be deemed to be a pleasure either. I, however (Freak that I am) LOVE it. In fact, having my eyebrows plucked is a guilty pleasure I have to show restrain in for fear that I will end up with no eyebrows at all. I can’t explain it exactly… ok, ok, at all… but something about that little tweaking pain relaxes me. In fact it has been known to send me to sleep. (I am aware that this slightly masochistic tendency combined with my love of nudity I am coming across as slightly kinky but hey, they’re called guilty pleasure for a reason).

Other, less kinky, secret pleasures of mine include;

• Spontaneous dance routines when listening to the radio
• Eating straight from the pan (as far as I’m concerned less washing up is good for the environment and so this should actually be applauded. Well done me)
• Reading Truelad.com, which I know goes against everything the site stands for and I’m sure there are many men reading this cursing me for my intrusion into their little bit of cyber world but I just love it.

Now to avoid this being all me, me, me (partial to a bit of ego centrism though I am) I have compiled a list of guilty pleasure kindly revealed to me by friends. Ranging from a female friend admitting that she regularly indulges in a bit of ‘alone time’ with her rabbit and her favourite porn site (I should probably point out that this rabbit was of the mechanical kind- if it wasn’t I fear we would be on a whole other topic) to another friend’s slight obsession with the Royal Family. Personally I find the love of the Royals to be the more shocking of the two but this probably says more about me than it does the issue at hand. Anyway, here they are- strange yet stupendous and sure to entertain…

• Knitting (although now very L.A after Cameron Diaz took it up).
• Rod Stewart
• Bubble Baths (not a guilty pleasure for us girls, but this was male friend of mine).
• Old skool 90’s classics
• Girls Aloud
• Finding spelling mistakes in people’s work and correcting them.
• Vintage computer games (Rollercoaster Tycoon, The Sims etc).
• COD (surprisingly from a female friend).
• Really fatty pork crackling.
• Anal sex
• Cocky boys (one that a few of us can probably relate to, I fear)
• Coach Trip.
• Speeding.
• Vengaboys.
• Pizza and mash as a meal mixed up together.
• Robson Green’s extreme fishing.
• www.mugglenet.com- A horrendously geeky site for those who love everything Harry Potter.
• Fake Tan

So what's the moral of it all? Well you asked for it so here it goes… Be proud of all the weird and wonderful oddities that make you, you. Personality at the end of the day is nothing more but the sum of our individual quirks. It is these things that make you interesting. So don’t hide your love of high school musical anymore (although I would argue that this over everything else I have discussed is something to be ashamed of), flaunt your oddities! Variety is the spice of life after all…