HOW bad is a TV show when interval act Ben Elton sings and dances to the music of Queen, dressed as a hippy and it’s still only about the fifth worst thing you’ve seen that night?
And it wouldn’t even make the top 50 worst things of the series?
Ben Elton sang and danced to the music of Queen while dressed as a hippy
BGT had a singular brilliant moment in the shape of likeable Norwegian comedian Viggo Venn
It’s exactly as bad as Britain’s Got Talent, where auditions rumbled on for two months, dishing out eight golden buzzers in the process, but producing only one truly brilliant moment in the shape of likeable Norwegian comedian Viggo Venn, who transformed episode two simply by stripping and dancing around in a high-vis vest.
I’ll get back to Viggo in a minute.
We’re at the live semi-finals stage now, though, on ITV where they could really do with a spectacular distraction from the ongoing disaster at This Morning.
It looked like all of the network’s dreams were beginning to come true as well, on Monday night, when Ant took a tumble during the opening dance number, “farting and wetting himself” at the same time, just like the good old days at Jonny Ringo’s bar at Newcastle’s Bigg Market.
Almost immediately afterwards, the broadcast also went down as Amanda Holden was offering her thoughts on the United 2 Dance group and I started to believe the glorious jeopardy of live television might just save BGT from its own worst instincts.
A naive idea, for one very obvious reason.
So bad are most of this year’s acts, I would consider paying an annual retainer to 95 per cent of them just so long as they signed a legally binding document promising never to perform on TV again.
Feel free to take issue, obviously, but near the top of my pay-off list would be: The child singers, the adult singers, the bloke who flossed his nasal passages with a Black & Decker (Andrew Stanton), the singing magician who told Amanda Holden “I want you to clear your mind” (of what?), and Japanese conceptual fartist Ichikawa Koikuchi who had his arse pointed directly at Bruno Tonioli, but then drew a blank on account of the fact he hadn’t eaten “for four days”.
A dreadful sin of omission because, if there’s anyone that needs sulphurising, it’s Bruno, who’ll do anything OTT to try to hog the limelight but nothing so simple as learning the damn rules and artists’ names.
You may think I’m being a bit harsh with that hit list, of course, but I actually believe it’s just the tip of the iceberg on BGT, where the worst offenders are the sob stories; sick-notes; Travis George who’s “been through some rough times”, like every single person on the planet; and the ever-expanding army of woke performers.
The absolute worst of this last category being the ukulele-playing schoolteacher Abi Carter-Simpson, with her “progressive” fairytales and the Unity performance group who’ve got every conceivable modern day “victim” within their ranks but no actual act beyond a vague bit of wafting around.
Both could name their own price in return for an eternal silence.
Yet, given how readily this virtue-signalling is indulged, I don’t actually blame the performers for heading down the right-on route.
The real blame here lies fairly and squarely with ITV, which has embraced wokery to a demented level, and Britain’s Got Talent, who’ve adopted it nearly as enthusiastically — possibly in the belief it’ll make the show look inclusive, nurturing, kind and all the rest of that self-defeating bollocks.
If Simon Cowell wants to see what a bad idea “pretending to be nice” really is, then he need only look at what’s currently happening to This Morning, where Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby got away with it for 14 years before the truth caught up with them.
On BGT, though, it wouldn’t last nearly that long because viewers already know it’s a deeply cynical, money-making exercise which recruits acts like Enzo Weyne and Toy Toy Toy from the global Talent franchise and manipulates viewers to vote a certain way via the running order.
At its best, however, BGT can still also deliver funny, spontaneous, joyful moments and left-field performers like Viggo Venn who I didn’t think would have a second triumph in him, after his triumph at the auditions.
How wrong I was.
’Cos on Tuesday night, he had the entire theatre swinging high-vis vests in the air chanting “VI-GGO, VI-GGO, VI-GGO” and for three happy minutes I was back in love with Britain’s Got Talent and all its wonderful, life-affirming possibilities.
Then Ben Elton sang.
Game over.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
TIPPING Point, Ben Shephard: “The ‘Hockey- roos’ is the nickname of the national women’s field hockey team of which Antipodean country?”
Robert: “Africa.”
Ben Shephard: “At the Uefa Euro 2020 tournament Harry Maguire, Phil Foden and Marcus Rashford were all selected for which national team?”
Tina: “Cricket.”
The Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In swimming, which stroke shares its name with a winged insect?”
Danny Miller: “Breast.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “A blue plaque dedicated to which member of Queen is in Feltham, London?”
Colin: “Prince Philip.”
“. . . Freddie Mercury.”
Random TV irritations
THE poor overworked sap playing the trombone on The Great Sex Experiment’s soundtrack.
The cheerful curly-haired tw*t singing “Mondays are working for me” in a well-known recruitment company’s advert.
Television’s neediest woman, Carol Vorderman, desperately chasing applause on Have I Got News For You.
And Ian Hislop, who’s now so lost in his own bias he had a dig at MP Oliver Dowden, on Friday, for going to a public school, despite the fact the Deputy Prime Minister went to his local comp and the Private Eye editor attended Ardingly College, where they charge £26,000 a year and still end up with insufferable little hypocrites like Ian Hislop.
A lack of soul succs
THE Roy family swore itself into oblivion on the final episode of Sky Atlantic’s Succession, an intermittently brilliant show with a sublime cast and one towering character in Brian Cox’s master creation, Logan Roy.
But that was the problem, for me.
Brian Cox is a lead character in the Sky Atlantic show Succession
Driven by his obvious hatred of wealth, writer Jesse Armstrong turned Shiv, Kendall, Roman and all the others into clones who, I’m convinced, could’ve swapped scripts without anyone noticing.
Britain’s chin-stroking community still loved their rat-a-rat dialogue and foul-mouthed spasms of genius, of course, because telling people “I don’t watch television, but I absolutely LOVE Succession” was another coded, middle-class way of saying: “I’m much smarter than you.”
The longer the show went on, though, the more Succession’s basic lack of soul became as evident as its lack of a plot, beyond yet another hostile takeover.
It meant, by the start of series four, I cared not a toss about any of them and found nothing that happened in the final episode half as diverting as the “poodunnit?” bombshell dropped by Lady Caroline Collingwood at the children’s ill-fated Caribbean summit, which will have got every newspaper sub-editor staring thoughtfully at the ceiling.
“We can fill up on brekkie at that horrible place where someone from Pink Floyd did a poo in the swimming pool.”
So, do I hear any advance on a “Stink Floyd” headline with a headshot of the bass player captioned: “Muddy . . . Waters”?
Liar, Liar
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the month.
Britain’s Got Talent, Simon Cowell: “I’ll be honest with you . . .” Laura Whitmore’s Breakfast Show, Rosie Jones: “As you can see, that’s the brilliant comedian and dear friend Nish Kumar.”
And The Big Celebrity Detox, Martin Roberts: “I don’t suffer fools gladly.”
Words Martin spoke shortly before he had a coffee enema, engaged in spanking therapy and drank his own p**s on primetime television.
Mouth full of consonants
TALKING of lies, on Monday’s Springwatch in North Wales, host Gillian Burke said: “One invertebrate is found nowhere else in the country but on the slopes of Yr Wyddfa, which some people know as Mount Snowdon.”
By which Gillian actually meant “everyone knows as Mount Snowdon” but 5,000 professional offence-seekers signed a petition so the BBC’s invertebrates forgot the most basic point of their own bloody name and forced millions of us to go with a mouthful of consonants.
I’m happy to set the record straight.
Load of bull
AND on Monday’s This Morning, Gyles Brandreth wearing a novelty bulldog jumper, fixed Dermot O’Leary with an intense grin and said: “We are very happy to be here. This is a happy place to work.
“I enjoy coming here and have done since I began coming here. It’s nice to be here. You’re happy to be here?
Gyles Brandreth on This Morning said: ‘We are very happy to be here. This is a happy place to work.’
“We’re happy people in a happy place.”
So that wasn’t really bloody sinister and entirely unconvincing at all, was it?
Great sporting insights
CLINTON Morrison: “At the end of the day, you finish where, at the end of the season, you finish.”
Robbie Savage: “We’ll soon find out if the selection was the right one or the correct one.”
Adam Virgo: “Getting out of the National League is as difficult as getting out of the Championship. It’s the single hardest thing to do in football.”
TV gold
SKY Sports’ beautiful and moving tribute to the incomparable and irreplaceable Jeff Stelling.
Netflix’s Antwerp-based Jewish drama Rough Diamonds.
Norwegian comedian Viggo Venn taking Britain’s Got Talent by storm for the second time at his live semi-final.
And BBC2’s brilliant, binge-worthy Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland which, from episode two onwards, really brings out the best in the dark, funny and unbreakable people of Belfast, like record shop owner Terri Hooley, who says: “What did I do during the Troubles?
“I drank, I did drugs, I partied a lot and didn’t kill anyone.”
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Dr Lori Beth, the sexpert from Open House: The Great Sex Experiment, and Ronald McDonald.
Sent in by Fred Godfrey, of Peckham, South East London.
Ally Ross lookalike – Sexpert Dr Lori and Ronald McDonald
Lookalike of the week wins a copy of Never Will I Die, by the inspirational Toby Gutteridge.
Sail of the century
INCIDENTALLY, if Jane McDonald is replacing him as host of The Soap Awards, is Channel 5 morally obliged to go Cruising With Phillip Schofield?
