I enjoy watching infomercials on TV. They’re like dramas written by Stuie King, Stephen’s older brother, who works full-time driving a recycling truck.

There’s the villain, the star of the infomercial, whose role it is to sell you something you don’t need or want. And the secondary characters in the audience oooh and ahhh like their hometown boy just won an Olympic medal or the homecoming queen successfully bought back and destroyed her sex tape. They gasp when the pie comes out of the oven. They actually applaud when Swivel Sweeper cuts a clear swath through the carpet’s dirt and grime. Whenever I see an infomercial audience give a standing ovation to an ultra-absorbent tea towel, I think somewhere there’s a theme park in Florida missing its seal trainer. 

But the infomercial drama could never work and the ads themselves would die a quick death, if it were not for the dumb schlep on the couch at home, the victim of the drama.

The typical purchaser of these too-good-to-be-true products is not very bright, lonely, naive - What? Okay, so I bought a darn Slap Chop while watching the infomercial on TV. Sue me!

It was Boxing Day and I was in the den at a family gathering having a glass of wine by myself in order to avoid children. And a guy Vince comes on and he’s chopping carrots and slicing tomatoes “Wham! Bam! Slap Chop style. Vince is having way too much fun than a man is supposed to have in the kitchen by himself.

“Slap, slap, slap your troubles away.” Set to some really cool music, Vince is hammering this little round, plastic guillotine. One slap and potatoes become home fries, fruit becomes salad and when Vince whacked the mushroom, the green onion and ham three times, there was an omelette awaiting only the eggs.

I didn’t love his nuts as much as Vince said I would, but everything else from the strawberries that topped the ice cream to the onion that shed its own skin made one wonder where Slap Chop had been all my life. Oh yeah, Vince could sell Bibles to al-Qaida.

Vince combines the very latest in snake oil offerings with the confidence of a snake charmer. Yes, Vince is a snake, a rake and a shill with attitude, but as I kind of grooved to the music with a second glass of wine in my hand, I wondered how much the Slap Chop costs.

If you’ve ever watched an infomercial, you’re going to be amazed that the Slap Chop, for all its wondrous applications was not $59.99, not $49.99, not $39.99.  No, basically, Vince gave it to me for the cost of shipping and, and I got Graty - the gourmet cheese grater - at no extra charge. Graty not only grates cheese, it, no, that’s pretty much it, cheese.

But like the Slap Chop, Graty comes apart in seconds for easy cleaning. Not that that’s a big deal for me because I already own Streak-Free, “the next generation’s cleaning cloth” as well as Didi Seven, “the worlds’ greatest stain remover in a tube.”

In fact, I sometimes use Grill Daddy to clean my George Foreman Grill, which I purchased late one night after I jotted the toll-free number down at the Belmont Hotel. Did you know you could also cook salmon fillets in the George Foreman Grill?

Once, I made a mistake and used Spotless Paw to clean my Compact Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ Oven, which came with a free recipe booklet and stainless steel pick for only $59.99, plus shipping. “Set it and forget it” - this thing could roast a pig, if I could find one small enough.

I bought the easy-to-assemble rotisserie oven after a Robert Burns single malt tasting I hosted a few years ago and, is there a pattern developing here?

Now, there are a ton of complaints on the Internet that the Slap Chop is a piece of junk. Apparently, you have to cut stuff with a knife to make it small enough for Slap Chop to chop it, blah, blah, blah.

I know nothing about this because I have never taken Slap Chop or Graty out of their respective boxes. After the holidays, I realized that chopping vegetables on a cutting board while watching the 6 p.m. news is a mindless pleasure at the end of my day. Plus, it’s a good idea to have a big knife in your hand when whackos like Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingram come into your kitchen at night.

So, the Slap Chop has triggered calls for the screening of products sold on TV and performance inspections, and I couldn't care less about any of that stuff. You know that breathalyzer device the police are pitching, the one that would not allow you to start your car if your blood alcohol is over the legal limit? Well, I want one of those things adapted to my telephone.

If I’ve had more than one glass of wine, my Bell Breathalyzer feature would not allow me to dial any toll-free number in North America. If, somehow, I were able to trick it, any conversation that included the words “As seen on TV” would automatically terminate the call.

Looking back, I think I got off easy buying just the Slap Chop and Graty. If there had been a CD with the theme song “Slap Chop Rap” or a video of Vince “making America skinny, one slap at a time,” I’d have bought them too.

For the record, no, I have not purchased Shoe Dini: the shoehorn on a stick that helps old people put their shoes on. And the Pocket Fisherman has been temporarily out of stock for months. The Bell Breathalyzer? I hope to star in the infomercial.

For comments, ideas and copies of The True Story of Wainfleet, go to www.williamthomas.ca

JANUARY 2011 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE VANCOUVER & LOWER MAINLAND