Al Murray’s Multiple Personality Disorder, ITV1

What was good about it?
We love the pub landlord, and this was Al’s big chance to spread his wings. There’s enough here to suggest that, if refined, it could be a very funny show, but about half sketches missed the mark; and some of those that did find the target were often heavily derivative (mostly a less macabre version of The League of Gentlemen).

What was good about it?
• The barely disguised disgust of the PC PCs, in which a police force is handcuffed to ‘political correctness’*. “Come out with your hands up,” barks Murray menacingly, before meekly adding “if that’s at all possible.”
• The Ray Winstone as Ghandi was as predictable as any of the hundreds of inappropriate casting sketches we’ve seen before, but the pool-balls-in-a-sock Scum reference made us snigger.
• The funniest were the two local radio DJs whose conversation was locked into a whirlpool of asinine adverts, featuring plugs for the local pub (where Murray’s character had met a new lover), ‘loans for you’, and the hurriedly mumbled “terms and conditions apply” at the end.
• The Geordie who pretends to be gay so he can watch his female friends undress. We’ve seen this so many times before, but Murray’s charm made it amusing.
• Barrington Blowtorch, the gentleman thief. Essentially, Terry-Thomas with quite funny lines. This is one of the sketches we admired rather than laughed at, but it does have potential.
•*Sadly, Al appears to have adopted the Daily Mail’s definition of ‘political correctness’. Whereby the Mail groups acts of sheer liberalist lunacy with the genuine altruism of political correctness that seeks to rid the nation of bigotry and prejudice (which is why the Daily Mail is so vindictive in its campaign to ridicule it). The consequence is that being ‘PC’ becomes uncool, and stories warped by right-wing hacks about asylum seekers being given rooms in Buckingham Palace are slotted next to tales of religious fanatics moping because they can’t burn homosexuals at the stake any more.

What was bad about it?
• Mr Taylor the embarrassing dad, who likes to talk to his daughter about her sex life in front of her boyfriend.
• The baby in the boardroom, we couldn’t see the point.
• The father with two kids who mocked the joy of his mate, who had just become a father to only one child.
• The pilot who informs his passengers about his sex change. This reminded us of the superior League of Gentlemen character Barbara.
• The grotesquely camp Nazi officer Schull, which reminded us of Herr Lipp from League of Gentleman, and early Julian Clary, not to mention the (probably Allied propaganda) stories about how Hermann Goering of the Luftwaffe had a penchant for ladies’ clothes. But most of all it was redolent of a less subtle Lt Gruber from ’Allo ’Allo, and when something is less subtle than ’Allo ’Allo, you really have to worry.

Piers Morgan’s Life Stories: Sharon Osbourne, ITV1

Did we like it?
Piers Morgan lacks the inquisitorial skills and Sharon Osbourne is utterly bereft of cultural significance, therefore casting this indulgent, cosseted chinwag to be more akin to a corporate chinwag an insurance salesmen’s conference.

What was good about it?
• Aimee Osbourne, Sharon’s eldest daughter offered the most precious insights into her mother’s behaviour, but was far too often cut off once she had delivered a bite-sized quote.

What was bad about it?
• Morgan’s biggest flaw is that he is incapable of expressing anything close to sincerity – mankind is far close to orbiting the planets of Alpha Centauri than Piers is to feeling a rush of compassion cascade through his veins, or for empathy to punch through his eyes in the form of tears.
• Perhaps it’s because he spent much of his career working for media organs that are hewn for readers to satisfy their bestial impulses while leaving their reason and rationality far, far away. Or he may have got an odium booster from his time spent sitting next to that one-woman plague of intolerance Amanda Platell, one of the few people in the British media as unpleasant as Morgan.
• Whatever the cause, he conducts interviews with the same bashful gaucheness as a bloated lorry driver shopping for his wife’s tampons in the supermarket. Every question is more of a prompt for an anecdote so wizened and oft told it’s sprouted a wispy beard and has started to call all its seven children Montague.
• Every time Morgan speaks he just pulls a string stained with the yellow bile of Sharon’s already publicised dislike of Danni Minogue from her chattering maw. He appears incapable of spontaneity, answering her rants either with a nervous laugh or blankly trying to remember what’s next on his resolute list of questions. It’s the same technique malicious parents use to impress their friends when they give their offspring a slice of lemon, and laugh as their little face curdles.
• There’s never a sense that Piers is asking after Tomas de Torquemada’s job as chief inquisitor as even the ‘difficult’ questions were little more than rehashes of episodes in Sharon’s life that she has repeated over and over again (largely because of her fame by association). He even asks that mos6t trite of queries more commonly seen in magazines deposited in hospital waiting room as they are so cerebrally toxic even landfill sites won’t have them: “What would you like your epitaph so say?” It’s only a wonder he didn’t ask her favourite colour.
• Even his revelation that Rebecca Loos is his second cousin was performed with the aching wooden theatrics of an infant school play. First he baited her into insulting her before ‘hitting’ her with the surprise. But it’s not really a revelation, everyone has at least one second cousin who is famous; ours for example, invented the space plane (a far worthier contribution than Osbourne, Morgan, or indeed Loos, can muster).
• Piers’ teeth are so white they would have had their own vote in Apartheid-era South Africa.
• After Sharon recounted the time Ozzy tried to strangle her, it struck as that, for an attempted murderer, he’s escaped the usual flurry of public wrath. His ‘excuse’ was that he was blotto on drink and drugs, and implicitly excused all responsibility for his actions. This is, in short, bollocks. Anyone who consumes mind bending substances assumes culpability for all their actions the moment said substance enters their mouth – while Ozzy may have been off his head on drugs, there was some point in the past when he made a conscious decision to indulge, and from that point he is answerable for all his misdemeanours.
• She also has this annoying verbal tic – perhaps born of nobody believing a word she says – in which she has to overstress points, “I never, ever, ever did that…”, or “I’ve got to be totally truthful…”. Why bother with such extraneous affirmation unless we’re supposed to imagine everything else she said has been half-truths or lies?
• But Sharon is an unworthy subject for interview because she hasn’t contributed one atom to the cultural richness of the country. Her skill, and it is a formidable skill, is in facilitating the talents of others, most notably Ozzy, to ensure they make the most money. It’s seems almost irrelevant that Ozzy’s best musical moments came in the early 70s, as his greatest fame and fortune arrived when she marketed him as a bumbling rock musician with a dysfunctional family.
• And if interviewing one businesswoman wasn’t bad enough, next week there’s another rotten apple from the corporate tree – it’s Richard Branson.
• “I know how the press work!” crowed Sharon on the subject of her ‘feud’ with Danni Minogue. She claimed that the antipathy was genuine, and was in no way false. Perhaps we believe her, but even before this dispute each Wednesday or Thursday, there’s always some ‘gossip’ ‘leaked’ from X-Factor to drum excitement for the coming week, and a common theme of these ‘leaks’ is jealousy and spite between two women.

FM, ITV2

Did we like it?
This sitcom set in a radio station playing indie music from a Brick Lane HQ isn't brilliant. It's on ITV2 so it doesn't have to be. But it's a lot better than most recent BBC3 comedy output and we'll definitely be watching again.

What was good about it?
• Chris O'Dowd is as good here as the loveable loser as he is in The IT Crowd. His plotline as Lindsay Carol involved pretending to be hip enough to do some superstar DJing with mixes, scratches and all that handwaving stuff ("I'm about taking the vinyl bull by its 12-inch horns and wrestling it into a funky, beat-mixed submission","I'm the Right Honourable Lord Mixalot... it's like a disease... I've got mixamatosis", "I was scratching so much it was like I had disco lice"). His efforts to be cool went as embarrassingly catastrophically wrong as we knew it would, but he still made it funny when his ripped-off prerecorded mix CD broke down and he had to resort to seguing from So Macho into Never Gonna Give You Up.
• Good acting, too, by Kevin Bishop and Nina Sosanya. Bishop plays Dom Cox, a boyband member-turned-Skin FM DJ with a troublesome sex drive ( “I was too drunk to get it up, so I just ­fingered her… with my knob.") He has the chance to make some money by sanctioning the use of 2s Up's biggest hit Spread Your Love in a butter commercial.
Sosanya plays Jane the producer with an unsatisfactory love life ("I'm rock'n'roll and he's pie") who suddenly finds her boyfriend attractive when she discovers his mother is Marianne Faithfull, who makes a non-speaking cameo appearance.
• Writers Ian Curtis and Oliver Lansley seem to be inventive and they can certainly churn out the gags, most of which we found funny.
• Justin Hawkins looked wonderfully glam and the Guillemots bashed out a good tune in their guest appearances.

What was bad about it?
• The stereotypical depiction of black youngsters – not helped by OT Fagbenle's dreadul overacting.

The TV Week – 7-13 March 2009

Saturday
10.20am Album Chart Show Special – Kelly Clarkson Channel 4
11.20am Album Chart Show Special – Lady Gaga Channel 4
8.00pm Photography Night BBC4 – Featuring Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Boy who Never Grew Up, James Ravilious: A World in Photographs, The Photographer, his Wife, her Lover, Robert Capa: In Love and War, The Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith and The Thirties in Colour.
8.00pm Timewatch: The Real Bonnie and Clyde BBC2
9.00pm The Satanic Verses Affair BBC2 – Documentary about the order to kill novelist Salman Rushdie.

Sunday
6.00pm Childrens Champions Awards 2009 Sky1 – Hosted by Shane Richie and Emma Bunton at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London.
8.00pm The Listener FX – Canadian supernatural drama series starring Craig Olejnik as Toby Logan, a 24-year-old paramedic who can read people's thoughts and solves crimes. With Ennis Esmer as Osman Bey.
9.00pm Jet Li Biography
9.00pm Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps – Comic Relief Special BBC3 – A sitcom special featuring the casts of Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, Coming Of Age and Grown Ups.
9.00pm The Maharajas' Car: The Story of Rolls-Royce in India BBC4
10.30pm Comic Relief Naughty Bits BBC3 – Sarah Millican presents memorable antics from the fundraising shows.
11.00pm Dirty Sexy Money E4 – Series two of the US drama starring Peter Krause as a lawyer.

• Guest list
• Franz Ferdinand on Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway ITV1, Saturday
• Katie Price on Piers Morgan Life Stories ITV1, Sunday
• Cleopatra Pop Goes the Band, LivingTV, Monday
• Songbook The Feeling Sky Arts, Thursday
• Greg Kinnear and Ruth Jones on The Graham Norton Show BBC2, Thursday
• The Wombats, The Script and Friendly Fires on The Album Chart Show Channel 4, Thursday

Monday
1.00pm Tim Gunn's Guide To Style Sky1 – Fashion advice from Project Runway star Tim Gunn.
6.30pm Priceless Antiques Roadshow BBC2 – A 15-part series featuring classic finds from the series, presented by Fiona Bruce.
6.30pm Monkey Life Five – Series about Dorset's Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre.
8.00pm The Gadget Show Five – Return of the consumer technology show presented by Jason Bradbury, Suzi Perry, Jon Bentley and Ortis Deley.
8.00pm Railway Walks BBC2 – Terrestrial airing of the BBC4 series in which Julia Bradbury walks along old railway tracks.
9.00pm Katie Price: Life Stories Uncut ITV2
10.35pm Undercover Princes BBC1 – Terrestrial airing of the BBC reality seriesin which three bachelor princes from around the world come to the UK to find true love.
11.00pm Toyboize Dave – Five-part series of five-minute shorts, orginally aired on ther internet, about a child pop band attempting a comeback. Mde by the sketch group Navelgazing, which includes The Office stars Ewen MacIntosh and Jamie Deeks. Ricky Gervais helped write the show’s theme song I Like You Girl.
11.35pm Celebrity Lives Sharia Style BBC1

Tuesday
9.00pm My Strike BBC4 – Documentary exploring the experience of going on strike with contributors including Lord Tebbit, Greg Dyke, Eddie Shah and Peter Snow.
9.00pm Deborah 13: Servant of God BBC3
10.30pm Horne And Corden BBC3 – Six-part comedy sketch show written by and starring Mathew Horne and James Corden. Characters include Xander, a foul-mouthed but well meaning man; Tim Goodall, a gay TV journalist; magicians Jonny and Lee; and Superman and Spiderman. Directed by Kathy Burke.

Wednesday
9.00pm Jade: Bride To Be LivingTV
9.00pm Baroque! - From St Peter's to St Paul's BBC4 – Three-part series in which art critic Waldemar Januszczak explores the Baroque tradition of art.

Thursday
7.30pm Countrywise ITV1 – A 36-part series about about Britain's heritage, landscapes and people, presented by Paul Heiney.
8.00pm Jade's Wedding LivingTV – Coverage of Jade Goody's wedding to Jack Tweed as the reality TV star deals with terminal cancer.
8.00pm The Big Red Nose Climb BBC1 – Coverage of the fundraising event in which celebrities – Alesha Dixon, Ben Shephard, Cheryl Cole, Chris Moyles, Denise Van Outen, Fearne Cotton, Gary Barlow, Kimberley Walsh and Ronan Keating – climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
8.00pm Dancing With The Stars Watch – Series eight of the US talent show.
9.00pm Comic Relief Does The Apprentice BBC1 – Sir Alan Sugar sets a challenge for 10 celebrities – Michelle Mone, Patsy Palmer, Fiona Phillips, Carol Vorderman, Ruby Wax, Alan Carr, Jack Dee, Gerald Ratner, Jonathan Ross and Gok Wan – to raise money for Comic Relief.
9.00pm Richard Wilson Learns to Drive BBC4
9.30pm The History of the Future: Cars BBC4 – With Phill Jupitus.
10.30pm I've Never Seen Star Wars BBC4 – Series hosted by Marcus Brigstocke in which celebrities are invited to try five new cultural experiences, beginning with Clive Anderson.

Friday
7.00pm/10.35pm Comic Relief – Funny For Money BBC1 – The fundraising evening, hosted by David Tennant, Davina McCall, Fern Britton, Claudia Winkleman, Jonathan Ross, Alan Carr and Graham Norton. Features the Little Britain pair, Ricky Gervais, Sarah Jane Adventures featuring Ronnie Corbett, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, French And Saunders, James Corden and Mathew Horne, the Outnumbered family, Davina McCall, Lenny Henry, Paul O'Grady, Ant & Dec, the conclusion of Comic Relief Does The Apprentice, highlights of Let's Dance For Comic Relief, Armstrong & Miller collaborating with Mitchell And Webb, and music from Take That, Franz Ferdinand, The Saturdays and Rob Brydon & Ruth Jones.
7.35pm Unreported World Channel 4 – Return of the foreign affairs series, beginiing with a report on violence in the Congo.
8.00pm The Plant Addicts BBC2 – Series in which Carol Klein discusses her passion for plants.
9.00pm Do it Yourself: The Story of Rough Trade BBC4 – Documentary about the record shop and record company. Followed by Rough Trade at the BBC featurinbg music by the Smiths, Robert Wyatt, Violent Femmes, Pulp and Antony and the Johnsons.
10.00pm Top Of The Pops Comic Relief Special BBC2 –. Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates present live music from Oasis, U2 and Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones.

• Subject list
• Panorama Immigration - Time for an Amnesty? BBC1, Monday
• Cutting Edge Addicted to Surrogacy. Channel 4, Monday
• Storyville The Children's Ward. BBC4, Monday
• Horizon How to Survive a Disaster BBC2, Tuesday
• True Stories Irene Taylor Brodsky follows her deaf parents as they undergo risky surgery. More4, Tuesday
• The Culture Show The Fleet Foxes, Russian constructivist art, John Cooper Clarke. BBC2, Tuesday
• Nature's Great Events The Great Flood BBC1, Wednesday

Pop Goes The Band, LivingTV

Did we like it?
This is Bands Reunited juxtaposed with Ten Years Younger, as 80s pop duo Dollar try and roll back the years for a reunion gig. Enlisting the help of a stylist, a personal trainer, and a plastic surgeon, they’re hoping to get somewhere near their peak. For the first 40 minutes or so, this was approaching car-crash tv, as we were treated to the sight of the monstrous ego that is David van Day in his pants, his face battered and bruised after surgery and making off-colour remarks to his surgeon. Curiously though, by the end of the programme as they took to the stage for the one-off gig, we actually felt some warmth towards David, and especially the long-suffering Thereze Bazar.

What was good about it?
• Thereze came across as a sweet, if somewhat idealistic woman – coming off the back of a divorce, she thought this whole exercise could bring some ‘closure’ to her life.
• The final gig (though lip-synced in front of no more than 50 people) showed both of them looking pretty good. David had lost about a stone, and Thereze was looking far less gaunt and more toned than at the beginning of the show.

What was bad about it?
• It took us pretty much the whole programme to warm to Van Day. With an ego the size of Brighton, making jokes about jackboots to his German plastic surgeon (the cut-away to the look on the nurse’s face was priceless) and his confession that he’d drink a bottle of wine in a night (before starting on the beer) he came across as a hopeless case.
• Bizarrely, the show had ripped off the warehouse setting and music of Dragons Den when the two of them were paraded in front of the panel of “helpers” that would be re-styling them. And stylist Hannah Standling came across as particularly vacuous when she came out with some rubbish about “going on a journey of rocknrollness!” Eh?
• The plastic surgery bits made for particularly painful viewing, as David’s face looked like someone had set about him with a baseball bat. And poor old Thereze, going down the “non-invasive” route of botox injections, ended up with a huge bruise that looked like half a handlebar moustache.
• Where are these types of show going to end? In 30 years time will we be watching the Sugababes undergoing a sex-change? Enough already.

Law & Order: UK, ITV1

Did we like it?
Apart from the iconic two-note musical sting between scenes and the glossy opening titles, this failed to replicate the formula that has made Law & Order the longest-running police drama on American television.

What was good about it?
• The only members of the ensemble cast who delieverd what was needed were the youngsters Jamie Bamber as DS Matt Devlin and Freema Agyeman as young prosecutor/junior detective Alesha Phillip.
• Patrick Malahide managed to be thoughoughly horrible as a defence lawyer. “Silence is your friend,” he reminded his thuggish client.
• The iconic two-note musical sting.

What was bad about it?
• Delivering lines that seem to have come from a random-cliché-generator (with its exposition setting on maximum) was never going to be easy, but we were disappointed by the performances of Bradley Walsh (didn't come close to pulling off the hardened cop act even in a raincoat), Harriet Walter (borrowed her awful accent from EastEnders) and Ben Daniels (yet another horribly smooth TV prosecutor). Bill Paterson didn;t have enough airtime for us to decide either way on his portrayal of the CPS director (although he didn;t seem to match the 'formidable' billing given to him by ITV's publicity department).
• The plot about a baby kiled by gases from a tampered-with heating system was very humdrum for a series opener. The average storyline in The Bill is more interesting.
• The action was supposed to be set in King's Cross but only one scene was actually filmed there.

Superagents, BBC2

Did we like it?
The sturdy, entertaining Apprentice format is applied to a search for a junior sports agent and it works pretty well.

What was good about it?
• It shares the best traits of The Apprentice. There's the severe-looking boss (Mel Goldberg) and his eyes and ears (Tahli Grobbelaar, daughter of controversial keeper Bruce, and Fitzroy Simpson, a footballing journeyman in his day). There's the to-camera pieces where the six contestants make themselves seem ridiculous when attempting to big themselves up. And there are the ego clashes between the rivals as they all seek to impress.
• Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher set a good challenge – and almost managed coherence in his explanation of the task. The six hopefuls had to spot the best players from the club's youth academy.
• There's one really hateful candidate (a pantomime villain is another essential ingredient). He's Ashley who wants to be an agent so he can afford "flashy clothes and haircuts - all the nice things in life".

What was bad about it?
• The usual hyperbole ("the glamorous and cutthroat world of sports management", "six contenders being pushed to their limits") thrusting forth from programmes like this.
• Tahli and Mel seem a bit too earnest. They're only getting bumper pay packets and column inches for their clients; not saving the world.

Britain’s Best Drives, BBC4

Did we like it?
Richard Wilson is a hilarious guide to Britain's byways.

What was good about it?
• The wood-panelled Morris Traveller Wilson drove around North Yorkshire from Scarborough (“As British as sausage and mash or Winston Churchill”) to Whitby (“Goth capital of the world”) via the “quintessential British countryside”of Dalby Forest. Probably the loveliest car of all time.
• Wilson is very warm (with only one Victor Meldrew-ish snipe at the bathers on Scarborough beach who “liked to enjoy their food”). Watching him watching a recreation of a navel battle in a Scarborough theme park and making gentle asides to the camera was hilarious. And his openminded encounter with a group of Whitby's Goth population was a lesson in how TV travellers should deal with strange cultures. The Goth-Whitby connection goes back to the days of Bram Stoker; nowadays they remain in the town because it is quiet and trouble-free.
• The jaunty music and the rather stiff readings from old motoring guides
• The man on the pilgrimage to Goathland, the village that is Aidensfield in ITV’s Heartbeat, who still came year after year even though he didn't like the series anymore.

What was bad about it?
• We fear for the Morris Traveller's gearbox. Wilson, who only drives automatic cars, had to learn quickly how to master manual as he crunched his way through the countryside. Eventually, he was forced to give up trying to manouevre the vehicle up a steep Whitby incline. Fortunately, one of the Goths was adept at hill starts. “You never know when a mohican-haired vintage car enthusiast will come in handy," said a grateful Wilson.

Michael Smith's Drivetime, BBC 4

Did we like it?
Writer Michael Smith brings his lyrical analysis as to how the car has shaped Britain and its cities. What was unusual about this was Smith is a non-driver, so relied on friends and members of the public to ferry him around. This opening episode focussed on how London had expanded since the advent of the motor car. A bit half-baked, some evocative quotes from Smith got lost in the general mess of the programme. We don’t think we’ll be tuning in for the rest of the series.

What was good about it?
• We’d always assumed that the centre of London (or at least, the centre in terms of measuring road distances) was Charing Cross. More accurately, it’s actually the statue of Charles I in Trafalgar Square – about 100 yards away.
• Rather than typical “drivetime” music, the use of classical and ambient pieces made for a refreshing and relaxing change.
• Having a non-petrolhead and camera averse (we don’t think he addressed the camera once) presenter worked – in a weird sort of way. As did the interviews with the sort of people who the cameras would normally studiously avoid – the gentleman who walks passports and visas between the embassies or Nicole Kidman’s seventh cousin – a white van man from County Durham!
• We enjoyed Smith jumping on the 242 bus, just to see where it would take him. The vast majority of us use buses to get somewhere. This was just enjoying the journey for the journey’s sake, “I realised I could lose myself in a top-deck reverie all day, and all for £1 there and £1 back.”

What was bad about it?
• Smith’s voice sounded exactly like that of an old work colleague of the custard.tv. Unfortunately, we’d harboured murderous fantasies about said colleague, so that tended to intrude on some of his longer monologues.
• It was all a bit ‘unplanned’. And while that served as a pleasing metaphor for how roads had developed in the UK, it did feel somewhat unsatisfactory.
• Whilst Smith came up with some pleasing lyrical imagery – “grim, Orwellian hospitals”, there was also the occasional diversion into pretension - “the perpetual present tense of drivetime”.

The Brits, ITV1

Did we like it?
With the revelation that most kids don’t pay for music, the record industry has adjusted its sights, and now devotes itself to satisfying the sterile imaginations of the human equivalent of whales washed up on beaches, casually scavenged by seagulls – everything musical about this ceremony was dead from the shrill, amorphous mass of teenblubber assembled to act as a dumb endorsement, to ‘the tables’ a group of 50something men who exhibited all the mobility and life of a column of Vlad the Impaler’s stakes, to the musicians who, by choice or edict, make music suited to the reception of an executive’s third marriage on the lawn of some Caribbean paradise witnessed by the cadaverous eyes of his peers.

What was good about it?
• James Corden and Mathew Horne made about as good a job as possible. The problem they faced was the teenblubber wanted to see Take That and Coldplay, and weren’t interested in comedians, while ‘the tables’ were a subhuman assemblage of cigar smoke, avarice, paunches and obsolescence, and far more interested in the colour of their shoes than music.
• The Ting Tings and Estelle at least tried to do something new, but it was hardly PJ Harvey and Bjork.

What was bad about it?
• Earlier today, we listened to U2’s Unforgettable Fire, a magnificent song full of awe and wonder. At the Brits, with all the grace of a bully hanging a gobbet of snot over a weaker boy like an ignorant mimicry of the Sword of Damocles, they played their appalling new single Get Your Boots. It sounds as if someone has passed Sonic Youth’s Dirty Boots through a Chinese Whispers bowel of Pete Waterman, Jeremy Clarkson and Louis Walsh, and this is result.
• If it wasn’t for the continued excellence of bands such as Radiohead and Nick Cave, we would aver a need for a Logan’s Run-type age limit on making music.
• And speaking of Radiohead, Katy Perry, and her miserable use of ‘deviant’ sexuality to tingle the sensibilities of the conservative morass, now has won more Brit Awards than one of the best bands of the past 20 years. This doesn’t particularly annoy as Radiohead don’t require the assent of the Brits, but it more reflects how jettisoned from music the Brits are – happy to dish out awards for what people play in their cars rather than what people play in their bedrooms.
• The Fearne Cotton vacuous adjective tally: “The heavenly Coldplay”; “The wonderful Coldplay”; “The gorgeous Girls Aloud”. Each time dragging the word outside by its greasy hair from the cell where it has been incarcerated before slitting its throat with a knife forged from the comments of YouTube users.
• “At least 22p of each call goes to charity!” – and the rest lines the pockets of ITV and the BPI, pampering with all the moral absolution of huntsmen who claim “the fox doesn’t suffer”. This was the ‘phone vote’ to ensure that a pre-packaged monstrosity like Girls Aloud could win an award, and persist with the facade of youth. Girls Aloud might be in their 20s, but the when they sing it’s like listening to a wicked grandmother all wrinkles, ice and spite, and made worse by the putrid collusion with broad-sheet music hacks who pander to this factory produce to champion the media obsession with all these worthless parasites and their collaboration with the “everything is good” populist dogma.
• “The Duffy v Adele head to head” – more evidence that young women in the media spotlight must be pitted against each other like snarling bulldogs.
• Watching Coldplay is like observing a child in from the 17th century who has broken a leg in infancy and can never quite run the same. There’s enthusiasm and a will to achieve, but it’s crippled by the mediocrity.
• Jamie Cullum still has the weirdest hair in the music industry, it appears as though he’s pillaged a muddy World War One battlefield for sods of grass and then stapled them to his head.
• The focus on the old was best exemplified by the award for Best Male. Already astonishingly weak, it was further enfeebled by the fact that all of the nominees were past their musical peak – Paul Weller’s in The Jam, Ian Brown’s in the Stone Roses, Will Young before he was usurped by more product placement, The Streets between albums one and two, and James Morrison before he first picked up a guitar.
• The announcement that Jamies Oliver and Cullum have “literally taken this nation by storm”. Has the nation been swept by blizzards howling discordantly with an overwrought jazzy mania, or do the winds taste of slightly past-their-sell-by-date Sainsbury’s produce?
• “The Brits are renowned for outrageous antics” – not since people who could think for themselves were banned. And when the Arctic Monkeys got a bit cheeky last year they were suppressed by the lawmakers who decree that everything and everyone is great.
• Duffy, Kings of Leon and Elbow are too average/quite good to either get angry or enthusiastic about.
• The Pet Shop Boys played a medley of some of their best songs – It’s A Sin, Suburbia, What Have I Done To Deserve This – but it felt more like an epitaph than a celebration. Not an epitaph to brilliant music, as that will endure for as long as people scorn txtspk, but more a Fall into the netherworlds of culture away from the mainstream that Top of the Pops for so long allowed it to trickle. It’s ironic that such a derided ostensible anachronism as TOTP has since revealed its crucial link in the chain. Now all that’s left are talentless shows parading turbid slush, people dancing to braindead ballads, or normal people trying to remember lyrics to songs they should have forgotten.

Hello, Goodbye, Sky1

Did we like it?
Former X-Factor presenter tries to make people cry in airports to attract viewers, and therefore advertising revenue, by communicating in such sensual, animalistic argots as to make wolves look civilised.

What was good about it?
• We’re sorry to say that there is a hypnotic, dread fascination with this digital vulgarism – each time host Kate Thornton appears you wonder what semantic stratagem she will employ to make her target cry.
• For a couple spending some time apart she asked, “Is it love?”, causing the woman to cry. “Are you sad to see your brother go?” for a South African man returning home. Each time trying to nudge the victim into an emotional vortex, to make them starkly consider what they’re losing, or, in the case of arrivals, what they’re getting back. It#s perhaps the ultimate consequence of reality TV in that it excises all the time-consuming getting to know you spiel and cuts straight to ready made sorrow.
• The people waiting in the airport either to depart or for someone to arrive were all perfectly decent people, and we felt bad on their behalf that they were being exploited in this manner for such a cheap TV show that simply sought to make people cry to communicate with the viewer at the basest, most instinctive level.

What was bad about it?
• It’s apparent that the show was devised by first calculating when people are at their weakest emotionally without it being obscene, say at a roadcrash, and the research has found that airports was the winner.
• The conceit is introduced through one of those bland truisms that are so obvious they aren’t worthy of note, or a TV programme, and then tries to instigate your interest in it. “At an airport you see people saying hello and goodbye; true moments of joy, tears, sorrow and laughter!” The observation is accurate enough but it’s something everyone goes through, and is therefore unremarkable.
• Of course, Kate just doesn’t approach each of her targets have been scrutinised by the production team beforehand to establish that they both have a story tinged with a tragedy or loss they are trying to overcome, and, more importantly, that they are likely to cry.
• Although the illusion is that Kate simply goes up to people for the first time, and, quite by chance, they or the person they’re greeting has either just suffered from a serious illness or they are grieving a loved one who died recently.
• This is where it becomes uncomfortable as there’s no Surprise, Surprise trip of a lifetime to soften the grotesque sentimentality, for those departing it’s a case of: ‘How are you?’ ‘Tell us your sob story’ ‘Can I make you cry?’ ‘Oh look, here’s the person you’re waiting for, now go and greet them in slow motion to the music of something they sing in X-Factor week six’.