NewsGush: Bookies on Boyle

Now, I don’t watch ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent because it’s a pile of shit. It’s also got a judging panel made up of three arseholes and is fronted by Ant & Dec. Frankly, if I tried to watch that rot, my telly wouldn’t survive the thrashing I’d inevitably mete out to it from a mixture of frustration, despair, ruinous fury and good, old-fashioned common sense.

But some people do watch it, and the majority of them are going mental about Susan Boyle in the clip above. She’s turning into an ‘internet sensation’ with her Youtube clip being watched at a frightening rate. Bookies have shortened her odds on winning the thing, and Guardian journalists are getting in a tizzy about her initially being judged on her appearance.

So – apparently people who look like normal folk can sing!

Who’d have thought?

What a patronising and worryingly profitable shit-bonanza Cowell’s running.

NewsGush: Delboy’s Dad

Having already tainted his copybook with The Green Green Grass, John Sullivan – writer of Only Fools and Horses – is now touting the possibility of a prequel to his finest work.

According to Digital Spy, Nicholas Lyndhurst will play a gangster in the show, which will detail the exploits of Del and Rodneys’ father, Freddy Robdal. All Lyndhurst and Sullivan need is the green light, then they’re off, apparently.

“Nick and I are both on board the train, if you like, waiting to arrive at the station.”

Other programmes that have inspired prequels include Casualty, Last of the Summer Wine and Eastenders.

They were all rubbish.

Maybe Sullivan should stop meddling with the past so we can enjoy the repeated image of Delboy, in the 80s, falling through the bar and Trigger making a face.

Because that’s what we like.

NewsGush: TOTP Unlikely To Return

A sad day(?) as the BBC confirm they won’t be reanimating the twitching, half-rotten corpse of their once-flagship music half hour, Top Of The Pops.

Do you miss TOTP?

The BBC seem to have noticed the affection the public hold the anachronism in and take every opportunity to milk that nostalgic twing. The Comic Relief Does Top Of The Pops resurrection was a self-indulgent outing, spoiled by those flailing smarm-mistresses, Winkleman and McCall, dancing like uninvited, pissed spinsters.

“It’s got a mythical status… but I don’t think we should get hung up on that one programme.

“We are a long way from [BBC1 controller] Jay Hunt recommissioning Top of the Pops in its old-school form on BBC One,” said Andy Parfitt.

“The days are gone when we can make a programme and just put it out there,” he added.

The Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve programmes attracted around four million viewers.

Personally, I don’t miss it.

Maybe the thirteen year old me would like to see it return, but as I’m a thirty year old with a broadband connection, I’m happy looking at music videos on Youtube (while we’re still allowed to ) rather than watching a band – hungover and miming – going through the motions on TOTP as some confused teenagers make an effort to look interested on the floor in front of them.

There’s not really a place for Top Of The Pops on TV any more unless it ups its game a little and takes itself a little bit more seriously – but that would be at the expense of the pop-fluff that made TOTP what it was.

Clearly, the future for the disposable music show is online. A TOTP website is the only way forward – hosted by Jimmy Saville and DLT, forever trapped in the matrix of the interweb.

NewsGush: Secret Millionaire’s Ratings Explosion

Last night I watched a middle-aged scrap-yard worker called Gary, who sported a lovely grey mullet, as he exposed himself to a heroin addict, a young man with leukemia and two ancient war veterans.

Stop right there!

He wasn’t exposing his genitals, you dirty sod! He was exposing his emotions!

And the public appear to love it. Apparently, last night’s audience for Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire grew by 800,000 viewers on last week’s.

You lot can’t get enough of this misplaced altruism! You love the sight of someone with a huge amount of independent wealth giving a sliver of it away in public, enjoying the positive PR and washing their hands of past sins in exchange for a week of  mindless generosity.

It’s like Noel’s Christmas Presents without the Christmas. 

The thing that gets me about this moronic show is that, now we’re a few series deep, surely when an ailing charity get a call from Channel 4 saying someone wants to look around and spend some time with them they’re going to have heard word that it’s probably one of these television millionaires. Won’t that destroy the whole point of the worst part of the programme – the cheque handover money-shot?

Can’t we just get the cheque thing out of the way early on and have an actual money-shot at the end? Imagine those two in the above picture in such a tryst! The viewing figures would properly explode. Explosions all round.

Cue: Snow Patrol and tears.

NewsGush: BAFTA for Brown?

So, Dot Cotton (or June Brown, if you’re one of those fools who thinks Eastenders is real) has been nominated for a BAFTA. Which is exciting.

Isn’t it?

Well – it’s nice Dot’s got some recognition, but generally I think we’ve decided that awards ceremonies are overlong, boring slag sessions in which those with no talent heap more praise on egos already tottering with adulation-overload.

Here are the main categories, and the nominees.

Best actor
Stephen Dillane – The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall (Channel 4)
Jason Isaacs – The Curse of Steptoe (BBC Four)
Ken Stott – Hancock and Joan (BBC Four)
Ben Whishaw – Criminal Justice (BBC One)

Best actress
June Brown – EastEnders (BBC One)
Anna Maxwell Martin – Poppy Shakespeare (Channel 4)
Maxine Peake – Hancock and Joan (BBC Four)
Andrea Riseborough – Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley (BBC Four)

Best entertainment performance
Stephen Fry – QI (BBC Two)
Harry Hill – Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV1)
Anthony McPartlin & Declan Donnelly – I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (ITV1)
Jonathan Ross – Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (BBC One)

Best comedy performance
Rob Brydon – Gavin and Stacey (BBC Three)
Sharon Horgan – Pulling (BBC Three)
David Mitchell – Peep Show (Channel 4)
Claire Skinner – Outnumbered (BBC One)

Best single drama
Einstein and Eddington (BBC Two)
Hancock and Joan (BBC Four)
The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall (Channel 4)
White Girl (BBC Two)

Best drama serial
Criminal Justice (BBC One)
Dead Set (Channel 4)
The Devil’s Whore (Channel 4)
House of Saddam (BBC Two)

Best drama series
Doctor Who (BBC One)
Shameless (Channel 4)
Spooks (BBC One)
Wallander (BBC One)

Best continuing drama
The Bill (ITV1)
Casualty (BBC One)
EastEnders (BBC One)
Emmerdale (ITV1)

Best factual series
Amazon with Bruce Parry (BBC Two)
Blood Sweat and T-Shirts (BBC Three)
The Family (Channel 4)
Ross Kemp in Afghanistan (Sky One)

Best entertainment programme
The Friday/Sunday Night Project (Channel 4)
Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV1)
QI (BBC One)
The X Factor (ITV1)

Best situation comedy
The Inbetweeners (Channel 4)
The IT Crowd (Channel 4)
Outnumbered (BBC One)
Peep Show (Channel 4)

Best comedy programme
Harry and Paul (BBC One)
The Peter Serafinowicz Show (BBC Two)
Star Stories (Channel 4)
That Mitchell and Webb Look (BBC Two)

Best single documentary
A Boy Called Alex (Channel 4)
Chosen (Channel 4)
The Fallen (BBC Two)
Thriller in Manila (More 4)

Best feature
The Apprentice (BBC One)
Celebrity MasterChef (BBC One)
The Choir: Boys Don’t Sing (BBC Two)
Top Gear (BBC Two)

Best international show
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (More 4)
Dexter (ITV1)
Mad Men (BBC Four)
The Wire (FX)

Best specialist factual
Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery (BBC Four)
Life in Cold Blood (BBC One)
Lost Land of the Jaguar (BBC One)
Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press: The Machine That Made Us (BBC Four)

Best current affairs
Saving Africa’s Witch Children – Dispatches (Channel 4)
Mum Loves Drugs, Not Me – Dispatches (Channel 4)
Omagh: What the Police Were Never Told – Panorama (BBC One)
Ross Kemp: A Kenya Special (Sky One)

Best news coverage
Channel 4 News (Channel 4)
News at Ten – Chinese Earthquake (ITV1)
Sky News – Canoe Man (Sky News)
Sky News – Mumbai (Sky News)

Best sport
Cheltenham Gold Cup – Denman v Kauto Star (Channel 4)
ITV1 F1: Brazilian Grand Prix (ITV1)
Olympics 2008 (BBC One)
Wimbledon – The Men’s Final (BBC One)

Best interactivity
Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie (BBC Three)
Embarrassing Bodies Online (Channel 4)
Merlin (BBC One)
Olympics 2008 (BBC One)

Are there any of those who you think, rather than being praised, should be pulled from the airwaves? Are there any on the list who drive you to exhibit psychopathic fury?

Shall we have our own awards ceremony?

One’s already started on Twitter, called The #Twaftas. How about The WWMAFTAs, 2009?

NewsGush: Dancing On Ice Expires

So, Dancing On Ice drew to a close over the weekend.

I, for one, am proud to announce that I wasn’t one of the 10.8 million people who tuned in – and what’s more, I successfully managed to avoid seeing the entire series. This has been possible thanks to complex planning and a meticulous approach to avoiding ITV unless absolutely necessary.

Apparently Ray Quinn – the small mutant who didn’t win X Factor one year – won it. So well done to small, mutant boy-child, Ray Quinn.

10.8 million is an enormous amount of people. Were you one of them?

NewGush: Mitchell’s Corporate Moan

Click here.

A quite amusing video of David Mitchell slagging off Dragons’ Den, The Weakest Link and Come Dine With Me with aplomb.

I wonder how much he’s getting paid for these ‘Soap Box’ clips? Perhaps he could reserve his next rant for comedians who waste material on promoting cleaning products?

I suppose we’ve all got to make our dollar somehow.

NewsGush: Paxman vs Sugar

VS

In a fight to the death – who would your money be on?

I’d back Paxman – he’s got the height, the steely gaze and the mental dexterity to bring the bearded Sugar to his little knees.

What’s more, this isn’t just some fantasy I’ve baked up to distract you from your work – this is the real deal! Paxman and Sugar have seen the sorts of showdown rappers have in the pages of hip hop magazines and in their cleverly constructed rhymes, and they’ve decided, despite their advancing years, to have a slice of the diss pie.

According to Digital Spy, Paxman started this battle when talking to the Radio Times.

Paxman reportedly said that the show was full of “know-alls” with “nothing to say”.

Sugar saw the opportunity to hit back.

Sir Alan said: “That’s the pot talking to the kettle, isn’t it? I mean, he’s the most unpleasant person going.

“I’d like to get into a debate, without him having a day to think up questions to make people seem awkward. I’d like to see how clever he is then.”

He added: “Jeremy Paxman has never interviewed me. I’ve never met him. But I’d like to be thrown in a room with him to debate something someone throws at us rather than him having a crib sheet hiding under the table.

“In my opinion that is cheating, honestly.”

That’s fighting talk, Mister!

I mean, ‘Sir’.

Sorry Sir Alan.