Wouldn't it be nice to be super-rich? I'd buy a new car, a new house and a football stadium in Richmond. I'd buy my mum a cottage and a haircut and if my brother was good, he'd get a pair of trainers. If they were half-price.

There is, though, one problem with being rich. The parties. Honestly - they look rubbish. You know the type. There's one in the first five minutes of Dirty Sexy Money. They stand round in stiff dinner suits, sipping champagne and eating mini sandwiches. They talk money and swap business cards, while some pianist in the corner plays a tune you've never heard of. Rubbish. Compare that to poor people's parties.

You sit round in your jeans and polo shirt, drink lager and eat ready-salted Pringles. You talk football and swap jokes and listen to Take That on a portable CD player. Marvellous.

Rich people, you see, never seem to be happy. Sure, they'll smile, but will they bellow "I LOVE YOU, MATE" in their best mate's ear? Will they text marriage proposals to ex-girlfriends? Will they nowt. They'll be too busy talking shares and salmon vol-au-vents.

They should try binge drinking. It's brilliant. I know you're not allowed to say that, but it is. And you know it. The news and Tonight With Trevor McDonald always bang on about how bad binge drinking is. But I just think: "Have you ever tried drinking too much, Trevor? It's amazing." No one forces us to drink too much. We do it because it's enjoyable. Rich people should try it.

Anyway. Back to the tv review. Dirty Sexy Money is about a rich family from Manhattan and their lawyer. These glitzy, American series all seem the same to me: everyone's good-looking, everyone's rich, they all sleep with each other and they all drink champagne. Mind, America - unquestionably - does tv better than us. While their programmes have sex and champagne, ours have rain and that weirdo from the sickly-sweet BT adverts. (Am I the only one who will never give BT money again?)

Fact is, there's one big giveaway this is American. It's good. Honestly, I hate telly, but I quite liked this. Give it a go. There's another clue it's American: the background music. It's a whole new genre, I reckon. "American Soap Pop". You hear it in the OC and Newport Beach and other pap like that. It's the sort of music they play between scenes, usually over a sweeping panorama of a beach at sunset. There's pianos, or acoustic guitars, strings in the chorus and sentimental lyrics that mean nothing. For example - and this, honestly, is from tonight's episode: "In the air, the question hanging. Will we get to do something?" What. On earth. Does that mean?

But - to distinguish it from the other programmes with rich people - the characters in Dirty Sexy Money are SUPER rich. And they must be, because their evening's entertainment is poker on steroids. To enter, you need $20m. (Although, with the strong pound, that's less than £10m. Peanuts, really. Count me in.) But, after a while, $20m's not enough. They start gambling their hotels and shopping centres. As you do.

One bloke ends up losing an 80-floor shopping centre. Honestly, mate, next time, try binge drinking. After eight cans, you'll be too busy texting your ex and looking for a kebab shop to bother with poker. You'll never accidentally lose your shopping centre again. (Although you might lose the keys. Just wait until the day after and phone the last pub you went to. Or your mates. Or the taxi firm. Or the kebab shop...)

10:38am Friday 25th April 2008

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