My parents just got back from a holiday in Italy. When they were taking time out from doing the usual tourist stuff, i.e. visiting old things, they watched a bit of television.

My mother send me a couple of e-mails describing two of the more entertaining shows they’d seen, and I thought I’d share them with y’all.

We saw what we thought was an interesting game show, so we watched it. Let me introduce the main players.

Compere – A forty-ish overweight man with a mo, the entertainment officer on a cruise type.

Setting – The deck of a ship, complete with deck chairs and a fruit machine, and a couple of platforms.

The rest of the cast – 6 lovely ladies in skimpy costumes, they were the colours of the fruit on the fruit machine, and they had little fruit symbols on their costumes.

The main contestants – Carla and Leopold.

Secondary contestants – Four lovely ladies. These four ladies were wearing identical outfits consisting of tight fitting short black sparkling dress, bra, stockings, knickers, suspender belt and a lovely pill box hat. The hats were in a different colour for each lovely lady. They were also wearing black shoes.

There was a lot of chat between the compere and Carla and Leopold. Once or twice they pulled the handle of the fruit machine. When this happened the lovely ladies clapped and laughed and then they all bared their boobs to the camera. Their tops were boned or wired so that they could just pull them open and then they would close back again. It was difficult to tell what all the chat was about.

After a few minutes, Carla went up onto the platform and did a strip tease. She could not reach her zip on the back of her dress, so one of the lovely ladies undid it for her, ditto her suspender belt. She jiggled away and when her act was finished she went off and was given a dressing gown to put on. Then Leopold took centre stage, and he did a strip act too. He wasn’t very good, he did things like trying to take his shirt off when he still had his bow tie on. He took off his shirt and he appeared to be wearing a grey cotton t shirt under it. This turned out to be an all in one neck to knee job which stayed on. He was also given a dressing gown to put on. Leopold and Carla earned more points or dollars depending on how much they took off.

Next it was the turn of the hat ladies. They appeared to be trainee strippers, and each one in turn came on stage and did her little act. They also had to have one of the fruit ladies to assist. They all stripped down to stockings, knickers, and most important of all, THEY KEPT THEIR HATS ON.

I was so pleased that they were demonstrating a little bit of modesty. As each of these four finished their strip, they went to the back of the stage and jiggled away in time to the music, no dressing gowns for them. Of course through all this we kept getting boob shows from all the fruit ladies.

Then it all appeared to be over. The compere said his little bit and all the credits flashed up on the screen. But the finale was yet to come. A new lovely lady came on and she seemed to be the numero uno of the show. She put on a very professional strip where she ended up with everything off, (I can’t recall whether she had a hat or not) Mind you some camera angles were a bit fuzzy, but then so was she. All in all, an interesting evenings entertainment.

On our last morning in Venice I was surfing the channels and I came across the home shopping channel. (This was 6.15 am.) There was a stripper on the screen provocatively stripping to slow music, and across the bottom of the screen was a phone number which I presume you call for telephone titillation. But the strangest thing of all was in the top left hand corner of the screen in quite large print was the message VERY SEXY BLOB I cannot imagine what they were intending to say, boob, boobs, body?? It finished as 6.30 and the channel reverted to more mundane home shopping. I assume the lovely ladies had been stripping all night.