Elizabeth Arrghh!

Well, she survived another week and, as predicted, Elizabeth gets closer and closer to the ‘final 5’ who endure the interview from hell in the penultimate episode. She will, of course, breeze through this in the same manner that she has passed every other task, getting it mostly wrong when the camera is pointing at her, but executing Nobel prize-winning business skills at all other times. This we know because how else would she have ever passed the audition, let alone survived until week eight.

Ever since week two, when she was charged with the task of measuring the wall of a hotel room and confidently declared it to be 3 centimetres high, she has blundered her way through each task in the manner of Tommy Cooper sawing a woman in half, somehow getting to the end of the performance with hardly a drop of blood spilt and reputation and integrity just about intact.

In Wednesday’s episode, Elizabeth hi-jacked the task completely, casting herself in the role of comic-lead in a motor car advert completely dreamed up by herself. It’s hard to tell if her colleagues are now completely spellbound by her or if they are simply standing back in the sure and certain hope that she will self-destruct before them. I’m sure that, if she does, it will be on Claude Littner’s watch and will culminate in a hostage situation with Elizabeth holed-up in the board room, gun at Claude’s temple and demanding a helicopter.

Either way, James, this week’s losing project manager, stood blinking up at her and nodding in agreement as she outlined her plot for the ad.

“I’m a stressed-out mother trying to get my kids to school, I leave my handbag on top of the car and when I drive off it falls into the road.”

“It’s funny’” she added, reassuringly.

 James tried to speak, but no words came out.

Needless to say, the rest of the programme simply followed the team’s implosion. Their opposition may as well have just produced a campaign that involved them standing around pointing at their allocated vehicle and shouting ‘Car, Car, Car, Car’ for two minutes, they’d have still won. They tried their best to even it up by responding in the affirmative to criticism levelled at them by the industry experts to whom they were pitching.

“You’re right,,” said Creative Director, Anisa, “some of the feedback said they thought we were selling a bicycle.”

This is a mixed message of some extreme magnitude when you are trying to convey the benefits of a new car. Charles would never have stood for it, “We intentionally portrayed the car as a bike in order to give the customer and enhanced experience when they took it for a test drive.’ He would have said.

It didn’t matter, they may as well have advertised blancmange, the judges would have still preferred their output over Elizabeth’s clowning effort. Which, actually, may have worked had the car been named a ‘Pillock’ and backed by a digital campaign that offered something like, “The car for the big lumbering sod in your life.” But no, they billed it as the ideal ‘family car’ and called it an Xpando, with the accent on the ‘X’.    

Back in the boardroom, Lord Sugar started to make up his own rules. James, still confused twixt arse and elbow, decided that Sarjan and Joanna were the two candidates who deserved a further grilling by His Lordship.

“What about her?” said the Lord, pointing furiously at Elizabeth who was putting her hat and coat on and trying to exit the boardroom via the broom cupboard. With an air of ‘it’s my ball and we’ll put the goal posts wherever I say’, Elizabeth was told to wait outside with the others while Sugar was hosed down with cold water and had his dials re-set from ‘apoplectic’ to ‘mildly irritated’.

Having taken it upon himself to drag Elizabeth back in, he then proceeded to sack the only member of the team who’d simply stuck to his task and tried to apply a reasonable amount of polish to the Elizabeth-sized turd that had been presented to him. Sarjan left amid some confusion and one could only assume that, if he was gone, all four were going to be boarding a taxi for home. But dear Lizzie had weaved her magic spell again and Lord Sug relented. He must have looked at her baleful expression and realised that even he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of her. She’s priceless, and unless she kills herself clattering down the stairs one morning to answer the phone, he’s going to have to work with her. If she doesn’t win this series, she’ll probably just keep turning up uninvited next year until he gives her 250 grand.

Back at the house, as the ground beneath them started to shake, carefree expressions turned to grim resignation as the remaining candidates realised, long before she appeared at the door, that Elizabeth had been reprieved.

             

Why is Lord Sugar so bitter?

Lord’s, it turns out, are not the eccentric, aloof and aristocratic breed that they used to be. Privileged, maybe. Wealthy, yes. But disconnected from reality? No. Certainly not the one’s featured last week on Meet the Lords, BBC 7pm. It turns out that around a third of the Lords are, in fact, Ladies and that, far from being born into the role because one of their ancestors stormed some castle in Northumberland, most of them have reached the position through some level of merit. Indeed, the 92 hereditary peers in the ‘Unelected Second House’ must actually now be elected and can only put themselves forward when one of their predecessors dies (which is rare) or retires, which is even rarer.

The House of Lords, however, is starting to burst at the seams as those who have attained a life peerage ‘on merit’, which can mean many things, from performing important work on behalf of the community, to donating a vast sum of money to a Prime Ministerial cause at just the right moment, grow ever in number. Fortunately, one of the few times when nearly all the ermine-clad luminaries show up on the same day is when her Maj. The Q comes down for the day and delivers a speech about austerity whilst wearing a hat made of priceless jewels. Among the audience on this day was, of course, TV’s favourite Lords, Alan, The Lord of Sugar and Karen, Baroness Brady of Edmonton. You can only surmise that the reason Claude Littner has not yet been granted a peerage is because Lord Claude of The Apprentice Board would just be too obvious.

It would have been nice to see Prince Philip point at them and ask them what the bleedin’ ‘ell they had contributed to the smooth running of the country over the last 12 months, but he just sat there wondering who had won the 2.30 at Sandown and said very little.

After the ceremony, Lord S and Baroness B quickly threw off their robes and hurtled across London to the Apprentice board room where a dozen young business people sat waiting to be grilled on their part in the latest fiasco that passes as a basis for a job interview. This week’s task was all about picking the pockets of unsuspecting tourists while several of your accomplices distracted them. This was no easy task, given that there was a camera crew following their every move and part of the game was that their victims could ask for their money back afterwards. However, the teams set about their mission with all the enthusiasm of a Dalmatian chasing a stick.

You can generally tell who’s going to be kicked out at the end of the show by the way the edit focuses on one or two central characters early in the show. This week, Sarah Jayne stepped forward to take on the Project Manager’s role declaring that she “needed to prove herself”. Several colleagues stepped gratefully aside and began construct a makeshift gallows. Charles was assigned the job of preparing her for execution and dutifully obliged. Charged with escorting a party of tourists around the sights of Bruges, the team proceeded to march them in a vast circle around the canal looking for a 12^th century hospital that may or may not have existed. When they returned to the very spot at which they had commenced, Charles announced that this was exactly what he had intended to do. Charles is a management consultant and so this course of action made perfect sense to him. Take the client on a journey that leads nowhere and then assure them that they had been in the right place all the time. That’ll be 300 quid and hour, thanks. Sarah Jayne gingerly felt her neck, from which she knew she would soon be suspended.

The other group were making great strides. By which I mean that Elizabeth was marching them apace toward a chocolate shop. Her frustration was that the tour could not proceed more quickly and, in the absence of a Saturn 5 rocket or the large hadron collider to propel them around the city, she put them all on Segway’s and urged them forward.

Elizabeth will win this. She may have all the sexual allure of Olive from On the Buses but she gets things done and getting things done is exactly what Lord Sugar needs. Anybody working for a partnership of Lord S and Elizabeth will be left in no doubt as to their role in the business and that role will be to listen, absorb and act upon the information they are given. She has been portrayed as the fool from episode one, as the Bessie Bunter in a Barbie-doll parade, but she will make it to the finish line and stand there going ‘Gosh! How wonderfully unexpected’ and win our hearts.

It was left to Lord Sugar to carry out the final coup de grace. Emerging into the board room from behind that opaque door, looking for all the world like he’s just endured a particularly difficult bowel evacuation, he listens wearily to the unfolding tales of woe from the previous couple of days. Karen and Claude sit either side of him and recount the misery of having to shadow these bozo’s over the last 48 hours and the trio allow themselves only a brief smile when his Lordship utters his obligatory put-down at the expense of one of the candidates along the lines of ‘Belgium? More like bell end if you ask me.’ Remarkably, Charles survives the board room, he sits looking like the first attempt at Thomas The Tank Engine’s CGI and promises to do better next time. Sarah Jayne leaves and we hear a single pistol shot.

The moral of the story is that Lords are superior people who hardly ever make mistakes and all you can do is sit there and await their verdict upon you. Next week is all about ‘negotiation’ and the apprentices try to negotiate a revolving door.       

Trust Me – It Couldn’t Happen

Well, that was fun wasn’t it?

In the end Cath decided that, whilst being a Doctor was far harder than she imagined, it paid the bills and enabled her to live in one of those homes that, in the 60’s, used to house about 17 different families but are now occupied by the kind of yoga practising couple who drink coffee by the thimble-full and make their own pasta.

It had a few other drawbacks too, like having to change your identity from a disgraced Nurse Hardacre into a rather revered Doctor Sutton, but that’s not a problem these days. It used to be far harder before the internet of course. In those days, in order to prove your qualifications, you used to have to go all the trouble of pointing to a framed diploma on the wall of your surgery, these days you simply replace every online image of the person you are pretending to be with a picture of yourself.

Just a few years ago, for example, I played left back for a Scottish first division football team by convincing the players and management that I was Nigel Winterburn, the ex-Arsenal and England defender turned part-time TV pundit. “Seems to check out ok” said the physio as I passed my medical and handing me back my expertly forged Nectar card. I drew a reasonable weekly wage – not Premiership money, obvs – until I ruptured my spleen taking a throw on, at which point I withdrew from football altogether, carefully remembering to restore Google back to where it was before I started.

 Cath often reflected upon the predicament that got her into the pickle in which she now found herself as she stared into the gaping wound of another trauma victim that had been presented to her by the expectant ambulance crew. Had she not bemoaned the falling standards of NHS doctors who, she felt, cared less about patients welfare and more about the model of Nespresso machine that they were now able to afford, she would still be nursing away in Sheffield with the sort of bossy-boots attitude for which those nurses who wear the darker blue uniform are rightly known. She had been good at the “Hattie Jacques” frown and could change a dressing with her left hand whilst inserting a particularly stubborn catheter with the right. Unfortunately, she had been abrupt with the wrong junior Doctor and had been made to hand in her badge and gun by a senior administrator who looked as if she was trying to swallow a wasp-infested lemon.

It took circumstances and a fair degree of ‘bottle’ to place herself in Edinburgh with a stolen CV, a forged passport and an application for the vacant Doctor’s post in the busy A & E department of the West Lothian Trust. In the overworked Dr Brigitte Raynes (Sharon Small) she had found a willing employer who was so impressed with her CV that she completely forgot to check out her LinkedIn profile. “You’re too good for us” she stated, handing her a contract and wheeling in a casualty, “when was the last time you replaced a kidney?”

So Cath, now Ali, bumbled through the first three episodes, applying bandages, re-starting hearts and amputating the odd limb, while her colleagues, apart from raising the occasional eyebrow when they caught her referring to ‘Resuscitation For Dummies’, complemented her on her skill, bedside manner and willingness to empty bedpans. Not one, however, asked to connect with her on Facebook.

The tangled web of deception was bound to unravel. When estranged father of her daughter, Karl (Blake Harrison, sounding nothing like Neil from the Inbetweeners), turned up unexpectedly there was the distinct sound of a bag being vacated by a cat. Of all the missed opportunities in the world, the one that I find the most frustrating is why, when Karl realised that Cath (Jodie Whittaker) was masquerading under a false identity, did they not give him the line “Doctor WHO?”

Perhaps the writers felt that this would take a little of the realism away from the piece. Too late I’m afraid, for, while Trust Me made for a fine, edge of the seat drama, filled as it was with plenty of moral dilemmas and moments of genuine tension, it did not pay much heed to realism. After Karl is struck down by a car following a fist fight with her new boyfriend, he is briefly left alone and comatose with the very Doctor that his ex-missus was now shacked up with. Whilst everyone was looking the other way, poor old Karl croaked. “I don’t know what happened” says Dr Brenner, still standing on the oxygen line, ‘he’s just gone all blue and dead’.

‘Oh, well,’ says Cath, ‘much as I’ll never trust you again, I’ll change my name back to Doctor Sutton and carry on working here. Put him in the incinerator for me would you?’

Promotional interviews and general ‘blurb’ before the start of this series suggested that this sort of thing goes on more than we would like to imagine and I don’t doubt that some dodgy diplomas and suspicious certificates have enabled some unscrupulous gits to practice medicine when they shouldn’t even be allowed near Elastoplast but, come on. It’s hard enough to get paid by the NHS for supplying something they actually asked for, let alone carving out a career as a medic in A & E on production of someone else’s CV and a stethoscope.         

Murder In The Dark

It appears to be fashionable at the moment for crime dramas to show the police at their most inept’. Fallibility is inherent in all of us and the British police are far from immune, however, there really has been a glut of dopey sods masquerading as highly trained officers of the law on telly lately. One look at something like ’24 Hours in Police Custody’ should reveal how careful they have to be before issuing so much as a parking ticket these days, let alone charging someone with murder simply because the suspect, like all killers, has been seen wearing shoes.  

‘Broken’ (BBC 1) finished a couple of weeks ago and, apart from a stunning performance by Sean Bean – which I can never resist pronouncing, Seen Bawn – featured a scene where armed police shot dead a blinded, manic depressive, teenager in front of his mother and then got all cover-y up about it. We live in dangerous times but, I’m sure we’re not yet a the stage where a SWAT team is dispatched to a residential home simply because some teenager has got all uppity at his mum for not getting his local priest to come and see him.

‘Fearless’ (ITV 1) is currently following vodka-swilling, chain-smoking, pacifist lawyer Emma Banville (Helen McCrory) running rings around both the CIA and the CID, revealing that they have framed the world’s unluckiest school caretaker for murder who, after enduring 15 years of false imprisonment, is then released from prison and into the path of an oncoming lorry, no doubt waved through by some hapless traffic cop. The series concludes this week with Banville delivering a presentation to senior officers from both sides of the Atlantic whilst indicating Power Point slides and repeating the words ‘Arse’ and ‘Elbow’.   

‘In The Dark’ (BBC 1) continues the theme as Detective Helen Weeks, played by the curiously named MyAnna Buring, stumbles upon an old friend whose partner is prime suspect in a double murder investigation. Despite the flimsiest of evidence and with complete disregard for the sensitive nature of the crimes (involving the abduction of teenage girls), the Police seem content to release enough information about the suspect to allow the world’s media to crawl over his home and family in a way usually reserved for Texan serial killers. You would feel that some due diligence, when writing and researching this type of investigation, would surely have revealed that things aren’t done this way. Presumably someone, somewhere, simply decreed that realism doesn’t make good telly. Well get knotted I say, we’ve got soap operas to feed our blandness, there must be room in a four hour drama to paint some light and shade into a character battling the shame of her lover facing child abduction charges without having to simply show her door-stepped by media hacks shouting questions at her and blinding her with camera flashbulbs from the 1940’s.      

Helen has returned to her northern roots for some R & R following a trauma at work. Luckily, her work is also her hobby and her work colleague is also her hubby so Mr & Mrs Weeks proceed to conduct their own investigation into a murder that is already being investigated. It’s a bit like Hart to Hart but with cheaper jewellery and one fewer Butler. Anyway, they find that the all-too-hasty arrest and charging of the suspected murderer is down to cocky, up from the smoke, Detective Tim Cornish who turns out to be an ex-colleague of Helen’s partner, Paul. This little coincidence, combined with Helen’s intimate friendship with the suspect’s other half, Emma, gives the pair of maverick coppers unprecedented access to both sides of the story and the fact that DC Weeks accompanies Emma as she is interviewed by fellow officers doesn’t strike anyone as compromising at all.

Having blagged her way through the crime scene tape by flashing her Oyster card at yet another numbskull uniformed copper, Helen then casually discusses the scene of crime photos with the man from forensics. You know he’s from forensics because he wears white overalls and rubber gloves and he can eat sandwiches while he’s weighing someone’s liver. Finding it strange that a body can remain undetected in an area popular with dog walkers until it has decomposed to the extent it has (‘maggoty’ says the bloke from forensics, tucking into his humus), Helen deduces that the victim must have been moved there post-mortem. Tim Cornish doesn’t agree. He thinks the corpse rotted away by the side of the road because the local population are dead thick and he’s not interested in her theories because he’s just bought a new ‘whistle’ for the trial. She has other theories involving DNA samples and doesn’t like being called emotional by fellow officers when she’s telling them how to do their jobs so she’s making a bit of nuisance of herself to be honest. Fortunately, the pair have another ally in the shape of Super Hans from Peep Show (Matt King). He is also a forensic guy and is in London, eating jellied-eels whilst removing a spleen, but tells them he’ll be on the next train to Yorkshire.

She is then struck by an awful truth.

If she’s the central character in a current crime drama, should she be having ‘flashbacks’?

Seen Bawn in ‘Broken’ had them, the Vodka woman in ‘Fearless’ has them and, if they do actually re-make Hart to Hart (and why the bleeding hell not?) Max, the Butler, would probably have them and they’d be about that day he didn’t ‘pick up’ after Freeway.

So Helen duly has the flashbacks. They will continue through the 4-part series, like a recurring nightmare with the terrifying climax drawing slightly closer each night, until the back story is revealed which will, somehow, resolve her present turmoil.

Probably.

Who knows?

The only thing that’s certain is that some flat-footed plod will cock something right up before the end of the next episode.           

The Island. Is Bear a God?

Last week, Stephen Fry got into a deal of bother by stating in an interview that he though God, if he existed, was ‘an utter maniac’. Gay Byrne, the doyen of Irish television interviewers, sat back and braced himself for the inevitable thunderbolt, which didn’t come immediately but followed shortly afterwards in the form of a threatened charge of blasphemy. Blasphemy, as an offence, is right up there with Witchcraft when it comes to the likelihood of charges being pressed so perhaps Mr Fry ‘s lawyers are not wasting too much time preparing their defence at the moment. However, the outburst did at least rekindle the flames of a philosophical argument that goes back to around 270BC and known as Epicurus’ Riddle.

If God is all powerful and all loving, why does he allow evil to exist in the world?  

Now, I try not to look for answers to ancient philosophical conundrums because, a) searching for answers simply leads to ever more complex questions and, b) I can’t really deal effectively with the options offered by household recycling centres without getting a migraine. However, recently, Monday nights have seen me channelling my inner philosopher as I stare at the chaos that is Channel 4’s ‘The Island’ and ask, ‘If Bear Grylls is so intent on finding out if a group of ordinary human beings can survive on a deserted beach for 6 weeks, why did he give them Jane and Phil to deal with?’

Bear seems like a nice guy. He appears intermittently throughout the programme hovering, God-like, above the carnage ensuing below, and warns us of the perils his subjects are about to endure. ‘When you’re at your lowest’ he says, ‘that’s when to use your inner strength to visualise better times ahead.’ Meanwhile, on the island, rain falls, stair-rod straight, onto and into the meagre shelter built by the hapless castaways who stand around their dwindling fire and bemoan that they have eaten the last of their miserable rations. Phil Coates, the fifty-something cameraman from Yorkshire, has the idea that, if he monopolises the camp fire, the warmth will last longer because there are fewer bodies to heat. To this end, he selflessly warms his own toes whilst denying ex-police officer Jane to do the same to her frozen fingers.

As day breaks and the rain relents for a few hours, there is perhaps time to take stock of the ransacked camp, rebuild shelter and rations and allocate a few tasks to the fittest and most agile of the islanders. Not a chance. For Jane, the new day offers her the chance for revenge and the opportunity to turn the rest of group against Phil whose stock has been pretty low anyway since, in the name of freedom and equality, he decided to parade his naked torso up and down the beach in full view of the younger ladies. His assertion that the likes of Kaggy and Jordan had spent most of the previous two episodes revealing pert breasts and firm bottoms only served to reinforce the groups argument that Phil was simply acting like a dirty old flasher and would he please ‘put it away’. Jane, therefore, instigated a kangaroo court based upon Phil’s unwillingness, and inability, to become a valuable member of a cohesive team and called for a vote to decide his future participation. Most of the team were in agreement that Phil was a pain the arse but, not all were convinced that a ‘big brother’ style vote-off was exactly in the spirit of Bear’s Island. Thus, in a sort-of ‘referendum’, the likes of which has rarely been seen or experienced in recent times anywhere I can think of, the island population was asked to cast a vote of ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ to decide Phil’s phate. Would there be any lasting repercussions if, for instance, the ‘Leave’ vote won but there had been no actual plan of how life on the island would continue afterwards? Would this be the end of Phil’s phame and phortune? Who would actually operate the camera in the event of a Phexit? And would that word eventually catch on?

I shouldn’t have worried, Phil was duly kicked out and life was, if anything, better without him.

Until, of course, the next tropical storm.

Bear, still in the role of supreme being, cautioned against frivolous afternoons in the sun when there was work to be done. ‘The weather can change in an instant.’ He said, and then puffed out his cheeks and blew upon the ocean. Waves reached tidal proportions and clouds darkened as if Phil himself had coloured their mood.

This one was a biggie. As they stood shin-high in dirty rain water the islanders basically caved and called for the rescue team. Why did Bear make this happen? Why kill what he had created? Was it part of a grand plan? Bear, answer me!

But Bear didn’t answer. Because Bear had no answer. He hadn’t made it rain any more than he could stop it raining. If he had built the islanders a shelter it would never have leaked, but he left it to them to build a shelter that leaked in the hope that they will build a better one next time. Bear could catch them a crocodile, kill it and cook it if he wanted, but this wouldn’t teach them to feed themselves. Bear couldn’t be their saviour, they needed to find their own.

By the time the rescue boat arrived, some 48 hours later, a hero had emerged in the unlikely shape of Aron. This mild-mannered paramedic from Surrey, looking for all the world like a terrapin without his shell, single-handedly talked the group into going through with the rest of the task and not abandoning their temporary world in the middle of the Pacific. He did it, not for money, not for fame and not for attention, he did it because he could not live with himself if he gave up when he knew he could carry on. Jane, of course, moaned her Geordie ex-police force moan, and briefly organised another uprising, but she only had fellow fifty-something Karen on her side and, as she is about as much use as a stocking full of wet sand, the coup didn’t last very long and they were soon back begging for fish, which Aron duly supplied without requiring a show of hands.

Bear, meanwhile, sat back on Mount Olympus with a  satisfied grin on his face. He had made Aron in his own image and the grand plan could continue.

Share the Love

No coincidence, I feel, that “Peter Kay’s Car Share” and “Our Friend Victoria” shared the peak viewing 9 till 10 slot on Tuesdays. Arguably, Kay has already attained the ‘National Treasure’ and ‘Comedy Legend’ epithets already applied to Ms Wood and, though he would, presumably, wish to delay the addition of ‘fondly remembered’ for a few years yet he is, I’m sure, aware of the similarities people draw between these two comedy writers. Although, it’s true, a direct line can be drawn connecting both artists to the Godfather of gentle northern humour, Alan Bennett, this should not detract from their talent to extract absurdity from everyday phrases or situations. Yes, they use the mould cast by Bennett to construct outwardly unremarkable characters who create humour by virtue of being unaware that they are doing or saying anything remotely funny, but they take the art-form to new levels.

Not for Kay is the distant sound of a brass band playing the ‘Hovis’ advert, it’s the ‘Forever FM Drivetime Show’ and his ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’ CD with a mixture of school disco hits and adverts for a local Dry Cleaners.  It is in the very ‘ordinariness’ of the characters that Kay extracts the most humour. His character, John Redmond, lives alone, dines alone and sleeps alone. His work, as a middle manager in a supermarket chain, forces him to briefly emerge from his shell and interact with his colleagues but he is soon back in the cocoon of his Fiat 500L and heading home to enjoy his own space. Forced by company policy to volunteer for a ‘car share’ scheme, he meets Kayleigh Kitson (Sian Gibson), a more junior staff member but, we find, very much a kindred spirit who manages to stir something in the recesses of John’s veiled ego and bring out the personality in him with a series of music quiz questions, half-forgotten pop songs from the 80’s and stories about eccentric family members. Conversations, reminiscences and office gossip fill the journeys to and from work. Deadpan, bitter-sweet accounts of failed relationships and family dramas are interspersed with musical fantasies recounting simpler times when John and Kayleigh had youth, love and S-Club7.

If romances can sometimes be described as ‘whirlwind’, Car Share is a love story moving at the pace of a glacier. Each layer inevitably peeled away from the veneer of their personalities reveal a new challenge for the couple. When Kayleigh says ‘petrol’, John can’t help correcting it to ‘diesel’, when Kayleigh talks about her “lady time” John winces at the intimacy and the passage of their relationship to another level is delayed by a further 50,000 years. When John reveals that he likes crinkle-cut chips and hanging baskets, you can sense Kayleigh making a mental note to put any romantic intentions back in their box. When, however, ‘One Step Further’ is played on the car radio, you sense that love is bound to blossom one day as they are instantaneously taken back to 1982. The genius of Kay’s writing enables you to instinctively know that this song has not been chosen because it’s just a catchy tune, a quick Google search reveals this was the UK Eurovision entry when the contest was held in Harrogate, of all places, and an image of a 16 year-old John and Kayleigh moving in different orbits whilst staring at the same moon is created without so much as a line written.

That ‘Car Share’ precedes the tribute to Vicky Wood is wholly correct. Peter Kay as warm-up man for one of comedy’s most respected and lamented  icons seems fitting and appropriate. Two people who walk you across the tightrope between real life and fantasy, love and friendship and laughter and tears, ready to push you one way or the other but to never let you fall.          

‘Car Share’ is on BBC1 Tuesday at 9pm               

This review also appears on  https://tellysgonewrong.blogspot.co.uk/

Facebook Goes crazy

I follow a Facebook site called Seventies Time Machine. They often post nostalgic photographs of a more innocent age where buses had conductors, trains had guards and TV personalities had just about anyone they wanted

The other day they posted an image of the 70’s TV show ‘Mind Your Language’ and posed the question, ‘Was this innocent comedy or politically incorrect rubbish?’

I was 17 when this was first broadcast and I thought then, as I do now, that it was poorly written, even more poorly acted and used lazy racial stereotyping for limited comedy effect. When I was 17, nearly everyone I knew agreed with me but, when I clicked through to the comments section of the FB posting I was shocked to find out who I now represented.

Marilyn Dawson It was very innocent . A time when we all 'took the mick' out of every nationality and we didn't take offence at all , the pc brigade need to take a humour pill :-D

So, I now appear to be part of the “PC brigade”. I have, apparently now lost my sense of humour and need to have it restored by a sinister sounding ‘pill’. Did we really ‘take the mick’ out of every nationality? And, if we did, could we say that nobody took offence? My recollection is that those on the receiving end of the mickey taking never really had a voice. However, John, here might give it some perspective,

John Edwards Good natured fun. We made jokes about our differences but nowadays the marxists go ballistic over what they think are racial stereotypes.

Ohh, the bloody Marxists, is it? Hang on, the entire show is based upon racial stereotypes, that’s the one joke. it’s not something that anyone is inventing for the purpose of going ballistic.

Betty Eisner It was not racist at all. It was innocent comedy 'normal' people saw it just as that. All of these politically correct people are not 'normal' and they cause all of the problems and create racism which is not there.

So we have Betty’s interpretation of ‘Normal’. Normal people saw it as innocent comedy and not racist at all. The trouble is, Betty thinks that racial stereotyping is something that should be tolerated by people and if you don’t think like Betty you’re not ‘normal’. I think it’s called a self-perpetuating argument.

Shaun Hopkinson What the PC brigade fail to understand, is that this was actually taking the mick out of English as much as it was the rest of the nationalities. In fact I'd say it was showing stupid we Brits actually are. I loved it as a kid.

Ah, thanks Shaun. Being part of the PC Brigade, I failed to spot that it was self-parody and that it was, in fact, ‘we Brits’ that were being portrayed as stupid. I missed the joke.

What I need is some clarity…

Sue Taylor Those were the days when we all had a sense of humour and didn't take ourselves too seriously. It actually taught tolerance by highlighting our differences yet all really being the same inside.

Sue has poured some much needed common sense onto the choppy waters of this argument and reminded us that there was a moral message behind the humour. But, wait, she goes on..

Unfortunately the government has too much power.

The government? What have they got to do with it?

Richard, who presumably won’t be offended if I point out that he writes like some of the MYL characters speak, adds…something.

Richard Leslie Nutting Brilliant, people of today are just to sensitive people you'll get over it. thats the problem in todays society alway worried about hurting someones feelings the things just laugh it off you will get over it.

Richard has thrown his hat in the ring here with some force. I think the underlying message is that we will get over it. The problem, according to him, in today’s society, is that we are always worried about hurting someone’s feelings. That, essentially, if we stopped worrying about hurting anyone’s feelings and became less sensitive, we would, perhaps produce another Mind Your Language which we would all, ultimately, get over.

Mandy has something to say,

Mandy Stack It was funny and it was ours!

The possessive pronoun in perfect context. It was ‘ours!’ It belonged to ‘Us!’ Any idea who ‘We!’ were? Anybody, presumably, who knows Mandy.

Paul Davis-Cooke Most people were racist at the time, in a general way. It was simply commonplace. My Father always complained about there being too many of 'them' but was polite and friendly to any non white person he met. He would have been surprised and upset to be thought racist. I'm not condoning it but it's just the way things were.

Here comes Paul with the argument racism was commonplace at the time, in a ‘general’ sense. That’s ‘generally’ not ‘specifically’ racist. Most people, that’s MOST people at the time, were racist. Take his father, for instance, who always complained about there being too many non-white people in the world but who, himself, would have been upset if he had been labelled a racist.

Stephen Richard Cockram It was a great comedy,it was not made with prolifically correctness in mind ,but who cared,so wind your neck you idiots ,like comedy because it makes you laugh nothing more !!!!

Sorry, Stephen, I overlooked the fact that it was not meant to be prolifically correct and will wind in my neck. I should, in future, ‘like comedy’ because it makes me laugh. But what if it doesn’t? What if it is badly constructed shite? Should I still like it?

Keith Price Life is being destroyed by the PC brigade & cultural marxists ...

This was, in fact, the last thing Keith ever typed.

Sonia’s reasoning behind ‘Mind Your Language’ being unfunny to the PC Brigade and Marxists is that, nowadays, “parents don’t let their kids do anything” and schools “only teach them how to pass exams”. This is also the reason they “commit suicide” when they get “out there on their own”.

Sonia Jayne Luff Todays world is very different but who's fault is it when parents don't let their kids do anything and wrap them up in cotton wool. Schools only teach them how to pass exams and nothing about the outside world and real life. The PC brigade don't want you to upset anyone .No wonder they commit suicide when they get out there on their own.

Meanwhile, Ian observes,

Ian Spence Nothing wrong with the language 
It's the clowns of today's generation snowflake that can't handle it 
Them who can't see past a screen and see and be exposed to the outside world and have no back bone and go and cry when something is said

I must admit that I do in fact, due to a lack of backbone, have a tendency to cry when something is said. If only I could see beyond that screen.

Paul Jackman we can not judge as different eras,but MOST of the 'comedy' nowadays is banal such as 'jokes' about cancer etc which the 70's /80's never would have countenanced Also do not remember one swear word from the older sitcoms. .

Paul begins by admitting that we CANNOT judge different era’s before going on to judge the present era which, he says, is mostly comedy about cancer (eh?). His observation that he doesn’t remember one swear word from the older sitcoms is an indication that, perhaps there were members of the PC Brigade infiltrating television at the time and rejecting any bad language.

Leighton Derrick Great programme! Should be more like it on tv today. Stuff the pc brigade!

Leighton!

Gary Izard The PC brigade killed our comedy on TV.

Gary!

Paul Carter Made me laugh at the time! And it made the actors money to! To many people telling us why to say and watch!!

Look, we in the PC Brigade will never tell you why to say, nor will we dictate why to watch, nor shall we tell you why to think.

I don’t believe this next person’s name is Andrew Optional…

Andrew Optional It was a funny comedy in its time but sadly todays society is just too eager to claim discrimination and compensation

Excuse me, I just have to deal with Vivien, who looks as if she is about to burst into tears.

Vivien Phillips It was fun. Now we can't have fun anymore we have to be offended instead!

We can, Vivien, we can have fun. Look how much fun I am having. I’m not offended, even though I appear to fit your image of a member of the PC Brigade, I appear to be having more fun than the rest of you put together. You’re all obsessed by the fact that there is an organisation somewhere trying to prevent enjoyment. Mind Your Language wasn’t banned or outlawed, it just stopped being funny, if it ever was.

Oh, and

Sonia Jayne Luff When we had a sense of humour. Shame the young of today and the PC brigade don't know what that is.

I think you will find that there are still some young people who share your sense of humour and are more than capable of mocking those who have a language, culture or religion different from your own.

The Look of Morons

Every now and then, a television programme comes along that questions your morals and  challenges your accepted approach to life and society. A programme that confronts the values and conventions that you have long recognised as normative principles and beliefs, holds up a mirror to your convictions and forces you to ask yourself if your personal ethos can ever be fundamentally ‘right’.

That programme is Harry Hill’s Alien Fun Capsule.

Meanwhile, on Channel 4, there’s a pile of poo called Three Wives One Husband, and it’s all about loonies.

Probably the funniest show in the West End at the moment, ‘The Book of Mormon’ satirises, not only the Mormon faith but, by and large, any religion that blindly follows rulebook that compels it’s followers to adopt a belief system that places them in denial of any progressive human development, causing them to be set apart from society due to a dogmatic set of principles that give them a baseless and, largely, illusory perception of how best to live in this world whilst preparing for a journey to another place after death. What ‘Mormon’ does, however, is allow people of faith to laugh at the concept of a strange and oppressive dogma, whilst maintaining, from their point of view that, ‘it’s not actually like that, but it’s funny that some people think it is.’

What ‘Three Wives One Husband’ does, on the other hand, is get right up close to the creed and say, ‘this is what it’s actually like, run for your life!’

In it we meet Enoch Foster, husband to Catrina and Lilian and father to their 16 children. They live in a remote fundamentalist Mormon community called Rockland Ranch in Utah set up about 35 years ago and accept polygamy as legitimate method of populating the community with as many new members as the available number of wombs will feasibly allow. Indeed, Enoch, who prides himself on his fertility, stamina, athleticism and ability to remember names, has recently started courting a 25-year old Nanny (which is probably the only occupation available to unattached females in Utah) called Lydia Rose. He sees her as the ideal addition to the Foster clan based upon her experience with children, her full set of white teeth and her firm yet supple body which could, in all probability, squeeze out another seven or eight new Fosters before she’s 45. You can tell he likes her, because he’s already blasted a hole in the rock face where he will build her own dwelling. I haven’t seen this much romance since Fred and Wilma got together. The courtship involves plenty of family time with him, the children and, more especially, the existing Mrs Foster’s with whom she spends a lot of time smiling, holding hands and being told how wonderful she is. Actually, it’s mainly Catrina who does Lydia Rose’s ego-massaging being, as she is, the oldest of the harem and the one who is the most battle-weary from all the Enoch-action. Wife number 2, Lilian, was more in need of attention as she had recently given birth to their latest addition, a girl called either Listerine or Amphetamine (I couldn’t hear above noise in the delivery room caused by nine of the other children, first wife Catrina and Lydia Rose, who Enoch had invited along on a date). Lilian smiled bravely as she spoke of the threat she perceived Lydia Rose presented to her own personal Enoch-time. She had good reason to feel this way as, just over the garden fence, live the Morrison’s.

Abel Morrison seems a personable chap. As a postal worker he leaves the community every morning to work in the real world but returns at night to Rockland where his training as a mailman enables him to remember at which of his three residences he last delivered. Although he exceeds Enoch’s wife collection to the tune of one, he trails him in in terms of fruitfulness by about five. I say ‘about five’ because it’s difficult to pin down the exact number of sprogs in the Foster household, research has yielded answers between 13 and 17 but all agree that Abe’s head count of Junior Morrison’s number a paltry 11. However, third wife Marina is about to produce number 12 so they may, one day, catch up with the Fosters. Unless, of course, Enoch knocks-up his nanny.

Marina, however, is not exactly blooming. Heavy with child, she seems less than ecstatic to receive Abe’s rotational visit. He’s popped in for a quick cuddle before going out on date-night with Mrs. Morrison #1, Susie, whom he describes a ‘sassy’. Marina feels about as sassy as a hippopotamus with haemorrhoids as she stands with stomach distended, boobs aching and a look in her eyes that suggests that she didn’t sign up for this when she took the well-worn track down the aisle into Abe’s arms. She tries to voice her insecurities to Abe but she couldn’t really have picked a worse time because their table is booked for seven-thirty and sassy Susie is outside smiling sweetly. Poor Abe, he’s enough on his plate with the impending Christmas rush that will inevitably put the Utah postal service under immense pressure, without his third wife getting all hormonal because she’s 8 months pregnant and baby-sitting his 11 other kids while he takes his second wife out for a romantic meal for two before spending the night in her bed. Still, broads, huh? Whadaya gotta do?  

In the end, it’s hard to know where you actually stand with all this. Although the polygamy sounds intrinsically wrong, it’s not the only thing that this community is about. They teach love and equality and respect for religion and each other’s views and opinions, the trouble being that love appears to be expressed in a spectacularly irreligious fashion and equality often means equal quantity, rather than equal quality. The first episode ended with Enoch left in limbo by Lydia Rose who was taking time out to decide if she could handle the challenges that come with being a third wife. One look over the garden fence at Marina Morrison may have told her all she needed to know.

Episode two will be shown on Thursday.

This review also appears on  https://tellysgonewrong.blogspot.co.uk/

Howay our Vera, man.

Imagine being a writer facing a production company and pitching a new series to them. It must be nerve racking as you say, ‘Well…it’s about a detective.’ The simultaneous eye-rolling must make you feel as if you’re watching some old zombie film. ‘Wait, wait. Not an ORDINARY detective, this one has a bit of a gimmick.’ Now you’ve got them interested. You then go on to explain that the main character wears a beret and smokes cannabis; or drives an impossibly old car; or is a conjoined twin; or exists only in the imagination of a recently beached dolphin, anything, in fact, to give the tired old format a bit of a twist.

‘Are they in any way ‘maverick’?’ you are asked.

‘Yes. They have their own way of doing things.’

‘Great,’ they say, ‘put six scripts in the post and I’ll get straight on to ITV1 and tell them to stop worrying about their 8pm Sunday slot.’

Vera (ITV Sunday 8pm) has none of the above gimmicks, but she does have a quirky hat and a raincoat that she wears at all times and the series is lent an element of novelty by featuring a ‘National Treasure’ actress who operates in a reasonably picturesque, and largely under exposed part of the country. Stephen Fry tried it a few years ago in Norfolk with ‘Kingdom’ but found that trying to make a cross between P G Wodehouse and Rumpole of the Bailey whilst giving all his friends some work during their summer holidays in Burnham Market didn’t make for great television. (Didn’t stop ITV lapping it up for a couple of years, but that’s advertising revenue for you.)

The main advantage of setting a crime drama on the rugged coastline of Northumberland is that it gives the characters a lot of opportunity to stare out at the sea. And Vera does a hell of a lot of staring out at the sea. She gazes wistfully, she contemplates thoughtfully and she watches reflectively as waves crash off the rocks and batter the shoreline with relentless force. As she stares she is, no doubt, wondering if her career with the Northumberland & City Police is necessarily going in the right direction. No matter where she goes, up and down this picturesque but often brutal county, there is murder and conspiracy at every turn. You’d think she would be looking to settle down a bit now. There are no end of bowls clubs, W.I. meetings and art classes being run for elderly spinsters in the north-east. Surely, Vera doesn’t want to be uncovering one cadaver after another, week in week out, and then spending the next few days hearing the tissue of lies that the unfortunate deceased’s family and friends have woven in order to give themselves a water tight alibi, does she? The sea, however, simply keeps crashing against the shore and offers no immediate answer so Vera blinks, shakes her head, and gets on with today’s business in hand, namely, explaining the suspicious death of Gemma Wyatt, apparently washed up on the rocks of a remote and inaccessible island just off the coast.

Brenda Blethyn gives one of those solid ‘I’m going to be a National Treasure if I live much longer so you may as well sit down and watch’ performances as DCI Vera Stanhope, a slightly dishevelled lady who rarely finds time to change her clothing during an episode and approaches every murder investigation sensitively yet slightly detached, as if she’s officiating at the funeral of her grandson’s pet rabbit. She heads up a team of detectives with Geordie accents ranging from the authentic to the barely credible, with one or two bordering on extras from Citizen Khan. Her modus operandi is to question witnesses as if she’s making those matter-of-fact, yet slightly intrusive observations that the check-out lady makes when she spots a new brand of fabric conditioner in your shopping. Thus she gathers information that the rest of the Northumberland & City Police force regard as irrelevant but which, you can be certain, will eventually lead to a trail of clues that will enable her to eliminate everybody but the murderer.

Vera’s latest interrogations reveal a web of intrigue around the visitors and inhabitants of the small, wild-life island of Ternstone, the Galapagos of the North-East, as one suspect after the other presents her with a motive and an opportunity to have done the deadly deed. Turns out that nearly everyone has done something that they would rather not tell anybody about so Vera inadvertently solves half a dozen other mysteries before she lands upon the solution to the main puzzle, which she inevitably does whilst staring wistfully seawards, eating fish and chips out of the paper.

As in all the best and hammiest cop dramas, she ends up with the perpetrator nicely seated before her as she reveals exactly why and how the murder was carried out. There are a few details on which she is slightly sketchy but the killer helpfully fills in these blanks for her. I’m sure if Vera had said, ‘tell you what, pet, would you mind slipping these handcuffs on and driving yourself down to the station?’ the murderer would have done so, pausing only to sign a written confession.

There’s another three of these two-hour mysteries to come which will, no doubt, lead us into another series of “Midsomer Murders” or “Morse circa 1964” or “Inspector ‘Del Boy’ Frost”. None of them are much good, but they’re all about two million times better than Murder in Paradise. 

Irreplaceable

Well, that was…something.

I glanced at my watch at five to ten on Tuesday night, approximately 55 minutes into the final hour of ‘The Replacement’, and found myself wondering how the hell they were going to tie up the tangled mess of loose ends that was lying around all over the place in the remaining five minutes. The answer was, very quickly indeed.

It seemed for a while that Paula (Vicky McClure) had not only won the psychological battle she had waged with her erstwhile superior, Ellen (Morven Christie), but also the physical struggle as she drugged and imprisoned her after stealing her child. Paula had successfully networked her way into just about every aspect of Ellen’s life but her story was now beginning to unravel as she was exposed as being a little unhinged. In fairness, in real life, most co-workers would have taken one look at those eyes and made a mental note of where the company baseball bat was kept, so why David, her boss and Ian, Ellen’s psychiatrist husband, afforded her so much credibility is beyond me. The fact that they’re both men, allied to the amount of shapely leg on show at all times, explained their blindness to all things ‘loopy’ on the Paula front I suppose. They should have taken a harder look at her husband Kieran (Navin Chowdhry), who permanently wore the expression of a recently neutered bloodhound, if they wanted an insight into day-to-day living with Ms Reece, he looked about as content as the cellmate who had just trodden on ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser’s airfix model but despite, or maybe because of this, he seemed unwilling to share Ellen’s suspicions that his wife was capable of murder. Sustained crockery smashing? Yes. Murder? No. Well, not on a Tuesday.

The last half an hour suddenly started to get a little congested with plot twists. Ian’s Mum, Ellen’s mother-in-law (keep up), who had been a somewhat peripheral and hostile figure until now, suddenly professed to be all over Paula’s neurosis and offered to use her psychiatric powers to drive a stake through her heart as she slept in her coffin. David did a swift about-turn on his professional opinion of Paula’s credibility after he noticed that she failed to cast a shadow, and Kieran simply ran away as fast as he could, throwing his wedding ring over his shoulder and screaming that she could keep the house and the car.   

So, with about eight minutes of the series left, the beleaguered Ellen still had to wake from a drug induced coma, smash her way out of a locked car, locate her kidnapped child and convince the authorities that her recent restraining order was all an administrative cock-up. Blimey, throw in a bomb tied to the engine of a speeding school bus with no brakes and you might give her something to worry about. Those RIBA exams must have been a doddle.

As expected, all roads led back to the building that Ellen had originally designed and the Benny Hill chase sequence ended up back in the most suspicious library outside a Cluedo box. The real pity about this series was that, as good and as watchable as it was, as well written and well acted as it was, as gripping and as tense as it was, it ended with a uniformed policeman slapping handcuffs on the villain at the scene of the crime in as tired and as clichéd a conclusion as any two-bob cop drama could produce.

It wasn’t quite the end. We still had to have a little montage of Ellen, fully bonded with her immaculately behaved child, judging the final of the world ‘humble-pie’ eating contest as one character after another paraded before her with huge gobfulls of the stuff, offering her jobs and complimenting her on her maternal genius. Only Ian, her now estranged spouse, got the bum’s rush as he was politely told to ‘do one’ at the door. Serves him right, too. After all, if he’s going to take the word of a goggle-eyed, power dressing, vampiress over that of the devoted, if emotionally charged, mother of his firstborn, he isn’t much of a husband, and much less of a highly paid shrink. 

Office Relations

'The Replacement' weirded its way onto our screens a couple of weeks ago, with an ordinary, everyday tale of jealousy and murder in the world of Glasgow’s urban architectural landscape. We’re two episodes in (out of three) and I think it’s best you jump on i-player to get up to speed before next Tuesday or you’ll hear about the climax from that bloke at work who talks too loud.

Basically, high-flying architect, Ellen, has fallen pregnant just after securing her firm a multi-million pound contract and has to hire a competent interim to take on the project whilst she is experiencing the delights of motherhood, a role for which she realises she has less enthusiasm for than she initially hoped. Paula, played by Vicky McClure, who looks like a CGI version of Emma Thompson circa 1993, proves an able replacement and is soon fully enmeshed, not only in the job role, but most of what Ellen had formerly considered her private life. McClure creates a genuinely menacing character and must surely be the scariest interim employee since that week Hannibal Lecter ran the HR Department. 

Ellen (Morven Christie) must then deal with the equivalent of that uncomfortable feeling that you get when somebody inadvertently spits on your face when they’re talking to you. You keep smiling and nodding in agreement as if nothing’s happened, when all the time you just want to shove your head into the nearest bowl of Dettol. Paula continues to invade her space, both physically and metaphorically, driving Ellen closer and closer to a state of neurosis as she battles against her natural hormones as well as a social circle that becomes increasingly inclusive of the very person who is causing her anxiety.

Following the apparent suicide of another work colleague, Ellen trails her suspect to various locations, doggedly determined to show us how remarkably easy it is to park in Glasgow at any time of day or night. She takes it upon herself to investigate her replacement’s involvement in the circumstances surrounding the death and so begins a trail of events that lead to a tension-filled confrontation between the two central characters. She’s a brave woman given that Paula appears to have the potential to emit laser beams from her eyes and I fully expect the final episode to commence with the charred remains of Ellen, still holding a wine glass, smoldering away in the chair opposite.

The Replacement is well written and well acted in the mould of a surprising number of recent BBC dramas and, barring any unexpectedly dumb-ass plot twists, should prove gripping viewing next week. 

Jump Off

“You must be gutted.” Said Davina to Bradley – sorry – SIR Bradley Wiggins as he explained that a non-weight bearing bone in one of his legs had suffered a minor stable fracture.

“Well, it’s only The Jump.” Said Sir Brad, keeping it very much in mind that he was currently enjoying the sort of complimentary all-inclusive winter break that most of us would have to sell a kidney to experience.

Davina’s earpiece exploded with the sound of voices from the control room shouting various instructions and directions. This coupled with the oompah band and the yodelling must have made her feel as if she had just put her head inside a spin drier full of cutlery and, for a split second, she simply stood with one eye half closed and looked as if she needed a Nurofen. Consummate professional that she is, Davina just laughed that Davina laugh, you know, the one that’s too loud and goes on too long and she puts her face right up against the camera and looks as if blood’s going to start coming out of her eyes. “Ha-ha-haaaa! Whaddaya mean, ‘it’s only The Jump’?” Silence fell.

Bradley clarified, possibly at gunpoint, that whilst he had had the best time of his life, life, let’s face it, goes on and he would wish the other contenders well in the rest of the show and he would love the chance to do it again. Someone, somewhere put the safety catch back on the Walther PPK and the oompah band started up again. Trouble is, the bloody yodelling recommenced and the cow bells started ringing and everybody put their false smiles back on and pretended to be having a right-old apres-skiing good laugh. The only  thing that was missing was Stacey Solomon. Ah, there she is.

Honestly, what is the point of this programme? Unlike the BBC, ITV can cover the cost of anything by selling advertising during their shows so, largely, they can do whatever they like and pay whomsoever they wish to go anywhere they fancy. But, as I tried to explain to my Alsatian the other evening for reasons far too unpalatable to go into here, just because you CAN do something, it doesn’t mean you HAVE to. I mean, I’d like to bet that if, for instance, you paid them enough hard cash, you could get any of the stars of Gogglebox to stand in a bucket full of scrambled egg while Chris Akabusi sang ‘Wondering Star’ whilst dressed as Lobster. I could make this happen. And if I couldn’t Richard Osman probably could and he’d sell it to Endemol Television. But, come on, WHY?

The Jump is typical of the sort of show that programme makers THINK we want to see. It’s a format that, they imagine, simply cannot fail. If it doesn’t remind you of your recent skiing holiday then it fills you with anticipation about your impending skiing holiday and if you’re not having a skiing holiday it will comfort you as you aspire to a skiing holiday and, if you don’t ‘do’ skiing holidays then you can look at celebrities from Made in Chelsea eating and drinking with Olympians, and ex rugby internationals throwing snowballs at glamour models, and soap stars and former footballers having some ‘bantz’, and Davina ‘bantzing’ away with everyone in earshot, which actually means everyone in the north western hemisphere, and if this doesn’t appeal there’s always Stacey Sodding Solomon, what more do you want? Eh?!

I can’t work out if The Jump was actually pitched to ITV executives by several graduates as a new concept in entertainment, in which case they were simply shown the door at which point one of them blurted out ‘Davina’s agreed to do it’ and contracts were signed. Or weather Davina’s agent just turned up one day and told the production company that his client had a 6 week skiing holiday every year and needed something to do on the Sundays so they’d better adapt some old celebrity talent show format. Either way it’s clear that the assumption is that, as long as Ms McCall is involved you can pretty much televise a celebrity knitting competition and viewers will tune-in in their droves. In fact, give it a fortnight and there they’ll be; Binky Felsted, Gemma Collins, Alan Shearer and Geoff Boycott all going clickety-clack with their knitting needles as Stacey Solomon uncorks vintage Krug and chucks Faberge eggs into the sea.

It’ll be called The Jumper.

Probably.      

Marigold Gits

When the BBC sends out its yearly e-mail to all households asking ‘What would you prefer to see us blow your licence fee on this year?’ it’s surprising how many people answer, ‘Put it toward a free holiday for a minor celebrity.’

The BBC, eager to please, say ‘OK’ and immediately book an all expenses trip to India for six has-been celebs for whom work has all but dried up due to their advancing years. While they’re at it, they might as well film the whole experience in the hope of recouping some of the outlay by selling the show to the Indian tourist board as ‘The Real Marigold Hotel’. The result is a strange voyeuristic experience in which we find out that getting old is everything we imagined and feared it would be, and so, to an extent is India. The question is; is the aging process made more bearable if your surroundings resemble a particularly pleasant summer’s day near the Norfolk Broads in 1954, with a cost of living to match? The answer, initially at least, appeared to be ‘yes’ as long as you could put up with 1950’s technology and the prospect of shitting your entire body weight out of yourself within a fortnight.

The first culture shock the viewer had to cope with was how old Paul Nicholas had become. It wasn’t until he flashed his cheeky smile that you realised that this was, in fact, 1970’s Jesus Christ Superstar who was, somewhat bizarrely, reincarnated as 1980’s Vince from Just Good Friends. He still had the chirpy cockney-ness of Vince but had lost some of the superstar-ness of Jesus and, as he shuffled from shop to shop asking the various vendors if they sold underpants, you couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. Had he soiled himself? Was he being followed around by that familiar ‘grandad’ smell? None of these in fact, he was simply doing the thing that all blokes who travel without their wives do, blaming her for ‘not packing enough underwear’. The text message that followed soon after confirmed there were some half-dozen pairs in his suitcase but he chose to disregard this and continue to barter for another 8 pairs of ‘Playboy’ briefs for 8 quid the lot.

 Meanwhile, the TV crew were busy trying to decide which of the OAP’s they were going to make the most annoying.

Sheila Ferguson was prime suspect as she strode from room to room to see who she would be able to evict in order to get a veranda. Being American gave her a head start in the viewer irritation league and, by the time she had found Bill Oddie and convinced him to swap, she was way ahead in the ‘old woman I’d like to punch’ stakes. Bill himself ambled about in his sandals, habitually whispering for fear of scaring a nearby mistle thrush (or whatever) and with his head permanently angled toward the upper branches of a tree. He didn’t mind giving Sheila his balcony, as long as he didn’t have to speak to her at any point.

The Indian experience was not exactly set up in such a way that tested the resolve of the senior celebs. The series is, ostensibly, to test whether people who lived through 1960’s and 70’s Britain could feasibly exist in the sub-continent without suddenly going, ‘Eurrrgh’ and running away. Paul Nicholas stopped the taxi and made an heroic excursion to a public lavatory within minutes of disembarking the flight and emerged unscathed and mettle fully tested. Other than that, Group Yoga seemed the most dangerous of pursuits so far as Amada Barrie was overcome with vertigo by the third day and had to be taken to hospital where a doctor simply put her head between her knees and told her to swallow. You’d think Miriam Stoppard could have done this but I suppose she has retired and should no more be expected to be a doctor than Rusty Lee would be expected to cook dinner.

But, hang on, Rusty Lee then put an apron on and went into the kitchen to cook dinner.

The actual hotel cook looked a little non-plussed as he was instructed to chop vegetables for Ms Lee but dutifully peeled potato’s and sliced ginger. He had held the post of head chef for the last 40 years and didn’t want to be sacked now.

Poor old Lionel Blair was the least at ease of all as he condemned the place as a shanty town and professed to be missing his wife before he had even unpacked. He was just acclimatising to the whole experience when a local football coach and fellow octogenarian, ambushed by the film crew to provide some comic relief pointed out that Lionel ‘had a fat tummy!’ You know that moment at a dinner party where you say something disparaging about the McCann’s, only to find out that most of the rest of the guests have had children abducted by strangers whilst on holiday? No? Well the 80 year-old Indian football coach does. By the time the evening meal was being served Lionel was explaining that his stomach is distended following treatment for prostate cancer, and revealing that it is causing him much mental and physical distress. “It’s not funny!” he told Dennis Taylor, who wasn’t laughing, simply trying to change the subject. By the next day, Lionel had sought the services of a local homeopathic Doctor who assured him that rubbing Marmite (that’s what it looked like) on his pot belly would lead to a significant reduction in size over the next few weeks. Lionel exclaimed that this miracle worker was going to do something that English doctors had said was impossible – everyone knew that this quack was simply telling him what he wanted to hear but, that evening, by the time Lionel was performing a tap routine for the neighbours, you were sort of praying that the marmite was doing its job.