“We’ve got Carol Vorderman in here tonight!”

He’s no stranger to inheriting other people’s quiz shows, having stepped into the dapper shoes of Michael Miles for the 1990s revival of Take Your Pick. But does Des O’Connor have enough sartorial know-how to slip into the capricious cloak of Richard Whiteley, especially after his titular namesake found it impossible to wear such a garment for a little over 12 months? Read more

“I’m like a fucking rottweiler”

Yes, all right. Hands up. I’ve been at the Channel 4 preview discs again. This time, it was the first three episodes of the new series of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. It kicks off tonight on C4. And indeed, kicks off is as good a phrase as any, as Gordon is in reliably acerbic form. Read more

Private investment

Thankfully, no-one in the office noticed I was blubbing silently. Read more

Countdown

By the look on Des’ face, you’d have thought someone had died. But no, it was just Countdown‘s 24th birthday, and as usual our man was doing his best to grace the occasion with a crisply-executed ill-suited response. Read more

Man to Man with Dean Learner

You wake up screaming and drenched in sweat. No, darling, don’t worry, go back to sleep. It’s all right … it wasn’t really you who commissioned Man to Man With Dean Learner. Read more

Your Money or Your Wife

Despite claims by some that Britain has become a nanny state, what we are in fact living under is a dominatrix dictatorship. Read more

Hitler’s Holocaust

As Megadeth once sagely observed, “Peace sells… but who’s buying?” Read more

Myra

“Minority Report star slams ‘luxury’ accommodation for paedophiles in jail”. That’ll be in your evening papers tonight, and the tabloids tomorrow.  Read more

Hollyoaks

Once upon a time this was the best soap on television. Once upon a time it was the only programme of its kind to successfully mix improbability and wit and come up with endlessly entertaining drama. Read more

C4? Or seen it all B4?

So, I’m back from the C4 autumn season launch, and I’m kind of not sure what the big story should be … if anything. I suppose the fact Dispatches are running a two-part plug for David Blunkett’s forthcoming memoirs has to take top billing. Other than that, there’s a new Footballers’ Wives with fucking-style drama in the shape of Goldplated, which Kevin Lygo (forever looking like a prep school bully-magnet) describes as “Dallas with depth”. A show so constructed to be a Radio Times “guilty pleasure” you can almost hear Alison Graham’s fingers twitching. Read more

Big Brother

“Eazamanna!” This was the Big Brother with the most weeks, the most housemates, the most twists, the most innovations, the most outside influences, the most late arrivals, the most eviction escapes by one person – and the most telegraphed winner since the first week. Read more

Property Ladder

There are few more costly ways of making money than property development. Hundreds of thousands, are needed to be a professional developer just for the raw materials and the building. Read more

Big Brother

Dreams can come true. Imogen is out of the Big Brother house at last, and by some idiotic quirk Nikki’s found her way back in. I’m disgusted, but only on principle. Read more

Count down south

The power and possibly the ego of Des Lynam seems to have surfaced, and as of next year his only current television show, Countdown, is relocating from its Leeds studios to “somewhere near the M25″ because he is apparently fed up of having to travel up to Yorkshire for a week once a month to record the programme. This 400 mile taxing routine seems to be all too much for poor Des according to certain newspapers. Read more

Big Brother

It’s been an atrocious week for Mikey, and his sudden, grievous demise and eviction sums up the ruthlessness of Big Brother. After 10 weeks of relatively effortless surfing of the wave, his fall into the drink was quick and spectacular. Read more

Big Brother

Big Brother is a daring old stick, it has to be said. A programme which exists purely for being live and unpredictable, and still it chucks innovations our way without any cast-iron proof that they would work. Read more

Big Brother

Cruelty is something Big Brother likes to administer on its housemates if there is a danger of the series becoming a little too unremarkable in mid-run. Read more

Big Brother

I’m not a betting man. This isn’t down to any inbred principle (unless my mother is reading this) but more down to a lack of knowledge. Read more

“You are allowed to cheer, y’know!”

There shouldn’t be anything about Big Brother which should surprise us any more, really. In carefully tracking as much of it as I can for the weekly OTT reviews, the one thing that has irked me is the seeming lack of desire on behalf of the show’s paymasters to allow evicted housemates any benefit of doubt. Read more

Big Brother

So, goodbye to Lea. Numerous nomenclatures have been thrown at her in her seven silicone-enhanced weeks in the Big Brother house, but the description of her by housemates as the First Lady of Big Brother is the most befitting. And the most flattering. Read more

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