POOR Kate Middleton. She’s recovering from “abdominal surgery”, her husband’s dad’s got cancer, the brother-in-law and his wife have both gone rogue over in Los Angeles.
Then daft uncle Gary pops up on prime-time ITV to reveal that, underneath his shy, insecure facade, there lurks the very spirit of Colin Hunt, The Fast Show’s office “nutter”.
It never rains but it pours with Celebrity Big Brother, which arrived with a great deal of main channel fanfare, but no actual public demand or great enthusiasm, as far as I could tell.
I’ve got a certain degree of sympathy, then, for the presenting duo of Will Best and AJ Odudu — or Will this Dudu? as I think of them — who, either through accident or design, have that unnerving ability to say exactly what the audience isn’t thinking, in such a rich variety of ways.
Drink own p***
“Ekin-Su, you look amazing.”
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“Sharon Osbourne, amazing, amazing.”
“They’re wearing the same designer! Amazing, amazing, amazing.”
Not a word that could actually be attached to much of what happened on launch night, where Louis Walsh had already blown the secret lair twist, “with Mrs O”, before Strictly’s Nikita Kuzmin was asked who he’d like to be his partner in Big Brother and promptly sucked all remaining life out of the occasion with his answer:
“Gordon.”
“Gordon Ramsay?” said a startled Will, “You’ve set your sights high.”
He had indeed. For having blown an obscene amount of money on Sharon Osbourne (£100,000 a day) there was no one in that price range lurking round the corner in an ITV limo.
Instead we had to make do with the likes of: Levi Roots, who seems a lot less cuddly now we know the irresponsible old fool’s got eight kids with seven different women; Zeze Millz, who really should be operating under the stage name Zeze List. And Ibiza Weekender’s David Potts, who was last seen being invited to drink his own p*** on The Big Celebrity Detox.
There’s also someone called Lauren Simon, who boasted “I’m one of the OGs from The Real Housewives Of Cheshire”, which I can’t see elevating her to the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square any time soon.
However, there’s no point in belittling the status of any of these housemates because, bewilderingly, ITV had set up Louis and Sharon to do exactly that in their lodgers’ lair. A task they set about with little enthusiasm or flair.
“He’s got big ears” (Colson Smith). “She’s done a lot of TV” (Ekin-Su).
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“He’s a bit too much” (David Potts). Indeed, the only person who got a collective flicker of recognition and warmth was former This Morning host Fern Britton, whose presence would make a lot more sense if ITV had parachuted in Phillip Schofield as well, as Channel 4 and Channel 5 would surely have tried to do in the show’s heyday.
But she’s already said she’ll “walk” if he appears and the network’s lawyers will have a fit of the vapours if Fern says anything too revealing about him in the meantime.
With the clock already ticking on his potential exit at tonight’s eviction, the only vague hope left for the show seems to involve Gary Goldsmith really spilling his guts about Kate, William, Harry and Meghan.
A tawdry and desperate plan that certainly won’t be forgotten the next time ITN’s Tom Bradby performs one of his more- in-sorrow-than-in- anger documentaries about the tabloids’ treatment of our young royals.
Yet, with his uncanny gift for tapping into the public mood, Will Best surveyed the 13 desperados at the end of this week’s launch and actually said: “I think this could be the most glamorous bunch of Big Brother housemates I’ve ever seen.”
Amazing.
OUT Of Order, Comedy Central, Judi Love: “Where’s my agent?”
In a very, very dark place.
ONE DAY? ONE BIG PROBLEM
ONE Day? If only, if only, if only. ’Cos – hands up – it took me nearly a month to sit through all 14 episodes of this cloying, goopy mush, and not once did I come close to overcoming the credibility issue that sits at the heart of this “romantic” Netflix drama.
He wouldn’t fancy her.
You know it, I know it and Leo Woodall, the actor who struggles with the role of Dexter, definitely knows it, which is why the couple have got all the sexual chemistry of a 24 Hours In Police Custody interview.
It wouldn’t matter quite so much, of course, if Emma was as charismatic, funny and clever as the script keeps assuring us she is, but she’s not.
Ambika Mod’s character is a preachy, self-righteous yawn of a woman without a hint of any real warmth about her.
A creature very much of the 2020s, which is why they keep adding in all those lingering cutaway shots of the London skyline, before The Shard got in the way of everything, just to try to persuade us it’s a 1990s period piece.
Self-pitying creep that he is, Dexter isn’t much better, obviously.
But by episode six he has at least turned into my favourite sort of television presenter. The sort who reads his own crits out loud.
“Is there a more smug, self-satisfied smartar*e than Dexter Mayhew on TV?”
Yeah, her.
TV surname of the week? Not just one of the directors of the superb Shogun remake, on Disney+, but also my rolling review of BBC Breakfast.
Fukunaga.
TELLY quiz. Who said, this week: “Lulu will not defecate on anybody’s carpet, but she has drunk water out of the toilet before.”
A) Her agent, at The Brits.
B) Gary Barlow, on Reel Stories With Take That.
C) Beth Lee-Crowther, C5’s Pet Psychic, on account of Lulu being a cat.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
TIPPING Point, Ben Shephard: “A flip cocktail typically contains what oval poultry product?”
Leigh: “An olive.”
Ben Shephard: “In British politics, the term Bennite was applied to supporters of which Labour politician?”
Ken: “Nigel Benn.”
The Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In TV, the news presenter knighted in 1999 for services to broadcasting and journalism is Trevor who?”
Miles Jupp: “Nelson.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “In his early designs, Alexander McQueen often includes a lock of his own what?”
Steve: “Front door.”
Random TV irritations
THE sudden, shocking realisation that Roman Kemp was meant to be “bringing the funny” at the Brit Awards.
Gogglebox producers letting their own left-of-centre political bias get in the way of the programme.
And BBC1’s Football Focus, which used to be home to some of TV’s finest reporters, who asked proper questions, but is now a place where you can find Love Island’s Jordan Mainoo-Hames telling fellow Mancunian Cole Palmer: “Bro, I feel, like, Manny people, we’re well received down here.”
Now watch in horror as the BBC destroys this show just as surely as it killed A Question Of Sport . . . bro.
HIGHLIGHT of The Brits? Almost an hour into ITV2’s red carpet event when Jack Saunders finally ran out of ways to kiss ar*e as he was confronted by someone called Caroline Polachek.
“Hey! Lovely to see you. Is the dress home-made?”
Caroline, left (very firmly): “No. It’s couture by Jean Paul Gaultier.”
“Oh. The horns look . . . brilliant.”
But hey, what else can you say when confronted by someone dressed like a Norwegian serial killer’s trophy cabinet?
THROUGH a mutual devotion to the BDO World Darts Championship, at Frimley Green, I had the great good fortune to meet Tony Green, the BBC commentator and quiz show legend who sadly passed away, this week, and can confirm he was everything you’d want him to be. An absolute gentleman.
Those of you who fell in love with television during Tony’s golden Bullseye era will remember him for eternity with a smile.
GREAT TV lies and delusions. Celebrity Big Brother, Gary Goldsmith: “They call me ‘the buncle’. Bad uncle.”
’Cos what I think the Middletons actually call him is “the cuncle”.
Same idea but a whole lot more accurate.
TV GOLD
LARRY DAVID’S Fish Stuck episode putting in a good shout for the best ever helping of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The casually funny one-liners on The Weakest Link: “Who thinks Halloween is the night before Goodbyeen?”
The glorious pandemonium of Saturday Night Takeaway’s Ding Dong, That’s My Doorbell game. Channel 4’s mesmerising two-parter The Push: Murder On The Cliff.
And the brutal but brilliant remake of Shogun, on Disney+, which can get very confusing when it delves deeply into Japanese feudal politics, but the scene was set perfectly by Cosmo Jarvis’s John Blackthorne, episode one: “Here we are, 12 s**t-smelling but generally able-bodied Protestant scoundrels on a mission against a savage horde.”
So try to think of it as an early-Eighties Old Firm game, but slightly less violent.
Great sporting insights
MARTIN KEOWN: “The most important player is the two centre halves.”
John Dunn: “The rain is being floodlighted by the highlights.”
And Jamie Carragher: “Chelsea never ever made that pass. Only a couple of times.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Boris Johnson and Big Jack Horner from Puss In Boots.
Emailed in by the prolific and brilliant Michele M.
