Hey, kids, get off my television set! What are you doing there anyway? Shouldn’t you be in school? And what’s that ridiculous getup you’re wearing? Say what?! You’re being paid how many millions of dollars to play some unbelievable character no one your age could possibly resemble even in the slightest, providing he or she isn’t entirely deranged? Get away from there!

Whatever channel I choose and whichever film I go see at the cinema, you’ve always got a representative on it or in it, respectively. That’s great. No, really, good for you and all that bollocks! But I’m not interested! I don’t want to pay five quid to see some small girl act as though she were forty, or some little boy pretend to be charming and cute. That’s the silver screen you’re befouling, kids! Can you even grasp what catastrophic cultural consequences that entails?

In my opinion there are two types of children in films. There are the realistic ones who are portrayed unrealistically, i.e. small, loud, utterly disorganised, unhygienic “and cute”. And then there are the unrealistic ones, who are portrayed with equal lack of realism, i.e. kids delivering lines fit for people ten times their age “and cute”. Take that girl for instance. Or that boy, for that matter. Can’t think of their names at the moment… Sod it.

I don’t want to see any kids on film. I mean, every comedy has the cute kid, every drama the judgemental boy, every thriller the neighbour’s easily frightened child, every horror film the creepy possessed girl in the well. God! What’s wrong with the film industry today? Has Hollywood gone sterile? Does it feel some need to overcompensate by lobbing as many kids as possible our way? Can’t I just watch DeNiro order a hit on someone without there being some annoying kid on a swing lurking in the next scene? Sheesh…

And not only sane people like yours truly are suffering because of this. It is society that will reap the consequences, be sure of that. Here’s the film industry abducting kids – perfectly apt specimens of future sweat shop workers – stuffing them into films that no one wants to see, and giving them heaps of cash as compensation for robbing them of the opportunity of receiving an education they wouldn’t know what to do with anyway. Just try to imagine what that’s going to lead to twenty years from now. Huh? That’s right.

In all honesty, listening to what a kid in a mainstream Hollywood production has to say is about as intriguing and pleasant as snogging a tumour, so just use dummies, cardboard props, short beardless adults, whatever! There are measures that one can take as a producer to ensure the absence of children on set. So why can’t the people in charge of these things consider them? Surely, with the technology available to Hollywood producers and casting directors today, we could do without child actors. I’m pretty certain of it. After all, I did see Lord of the Rings. Couldn’t they just CGI some kids into their film, if they can’t forgo the catharsis of inviting one of the little buggers to join the plot?

I mean, films can be good without child actors in them, too, and I don’t want to watch pornography just so I can see a moving picture without running the risk of hearing some small kid recite Carl Jung in an attempt to reunite her dad with his ex-girlfriend. I stopped caring about what kids say and do around and about the time when I stopped being one myself.

So, for the love of God, please just keep those creepy little things off my television set. Spare me from worries of that calibre until I’m dumb enough to procreate.