Are you watching Jersey Shore? You should be. It’s perfect car-crash TV. Self-obsessed guidos and guidettes living together, all boozed up, horny and aggro. It’s entertaining in the same way that nature documentaries are entertaining. The pure, primal instinct of a pack of lions is always fascinating to watch because you never know when things are going to kick off. Now, imagine those lions were drunk - how much better would that be? Well, that’s what Jersey Shore is like. Drunk lions, covered in fake tan.

How good/bad is it? UNICO, “the largest Italian-American service organisation in the USA” has called for it to be canceled, describing it as “trash television” and saying the show “relies on crude stereotypes” and deliberately highlights the worst aspects of guido culture.

Trash television? Crude stereotypes? Why not just put out a press release, saying “Everyone, stop what you are doing and go watch this show now”?

During a promo for the rest of the season, they showed a clip of one of the girls, ‘Snooki’, getting a full-on punch to the face. From a big, muscly dude. Now, I’m totally against violence towards women, but HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THAT SHIT! HE BOPPED HER RIGHT ON HER STUPID FUCKING NOSE!

Idiots like me have been posting this clip all over the internet. It’s huge. It’s, as they say, “gone viral”. And so, MTV have decided to cut the scene with the punch out of the episode. They said that “seeing how the video footage has been taken out of context to not show the severity of this act or the resulting consequences, MTV has decided not to air Snooki being physically punched in next week’s episode.” I’m no expert, but if they’re that concerned about the context of the clip, I would have thought that the best way to give some context would be to show it in full? If I search for this clip now, I just get a load of user-uploaded videos taken from the the promo clip. If MTV don’t show the full clip, with context, then this is all there will ever be. There won’t ever be context.

Oh well. Punch or no punch, this show is still ridiculously entertaining.