Everybody's happy nowadays.
Our society has found an answer to the problems of existence that has all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol, but none of their defects.
We are talking, of course, of psychologists, and there is none in that profession as remarkable as Dr Phil.
And that wonderful man, who has healed so very many mad souls, is about to return to our screens for his 2000th show.
That's right - 2000 episodes of Dr Phil.
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in't.
The television sort-of psychologist (he is reported to have allowed his psychology licence to lapse in Texas and has never had one in California, where his daily show is taped; also, in 2002, the California Board of Psychology determined he did not need his licence for his show because he was ''doing more entertainment than psychology''), returns on Wednesday, August 27, at 1pm on TV3.
Dr Phil first shot to prominence on the equally medically helpful show Oprah.
He has apparently welcomed nearly 15,000 guests, received letters from five million viewers asking for help, made available $US21 million in guest support services, referred 61,000 hours of therapy from a network of over 500 psychotherapists and impacted countless lives across the US and around the world.
The show is not clear on whether any healing was involved, but apparently Dr Phil's show was also the first of its type to interview a sitting US president, when George W. Bush and Laura Bush sat down with Dr Phil and his wife in 2004.
Best of all, he has developed the Dr Phil Advisory Board, after his brilliant television treatment programme of a show became ''the first show to create an advisory board of the top minds in psychiatry and medicine''.
I don't know what it does, but it just sounds fabulous.
Show one in the latest series grapples with some of the ethical and diagnostic issues the psychological community struggles with.
We find out what happened to Todd from Survivor.
''I was clearly very drunk,'' Todd tells Dr Phil.
We also find out what happened to the 181kg 4-year-old from Dr Phil's first show.
But that's not all.
In another breakthrough in the world of healing, Dr Phil promises: ''By the end of this show, one lucky guest is going to drive home in this 2014 Chrysler 300 SRT.''
Dr Phil notes that when his show first launched in 2002, there was no Facebook or Twitter.
''Boy, oh boy, has this been one incredible journey for me and my staff,'' he says in his folksy, down-home sort of way.
Gold.
- Charles Loughrey
