Did we like it?
Of course not. The vital question that needs to be answered is, is it worse than That Anthony Cotton Show? The answer: no, surprisingly it isn’t. It is tedious, safe, twee and mindless but Cotton is much more rotten.
What was good about it?
• The brassy musical stabs.
What was bad about it?
We sampled three episodes and catalogued these hideous TV moments.
• The spangly titles and the unimaginative set (potted bushes, old ladies’ knick knacks, fake arches etc).
• Titchmarsh’s grating bonhomie.
• Titchmarsh, Nick Ferrari and Anne Widdecombe indulging in a right-wing rants, with views as flabby as their frames, as they ‘analysed’ cold-off-the-press items in the day’s newspapers. The EU passport had them spluttering (Her Maj’s message is being dropped by those evil, sick Brussels bastards). Asbos had an outraged Titchmarsh declaring: “I think 90 per cent of the population want to go back to a clip round the ear.” (The audience applauded and probably wet themselves). After an obese kid was rounded on, Titchmarsh had the gall to warn: “We don’t know all the facts, we don’t know the background” – even though that hadn’t stopped them trotting out Daily Mailish bile beforehand.
• Cooking with Rick Stein and some “friendly looking fish”. Titchmarsh moronically asked: “Were there surprises that you didn’t expect to find?”
• An interview with Jason Isaacs that was steered towards his Harry Potter appearance as much as possible. Somehow, he managed to maintain a smile and some dignity as he dealt with the inane questions.
• More windbaggery with the awful Anne and Nick about the Madeleine McCann case.
• An interview with Ben Fogle, who shares Titchmarsh’s wetness and blandness. Featured some banter about nudity and prattling about the environment.
• The presentation of an Alan Titchmarsh National Treasure award (ugly perspex slab) to the hearing dogs organisation.
• Yawn-worthy discussion of contemporary garden design with Diarmuid Gavin.
• Pam Ayres and Nina Myskow pontificating on size zero models. Featured Ayres breaking out into some of her dreadful ‘poetry’.
• Ayres then appeared as a guest in her own right for a chat with Titchmarsh that seemed like we’d been transported back to a 1950s drawing room.
• Darryn Lyons, that fat hen who takes pictures of Jade Goody etc, joining Nina Myskow and Titchmarsh to discuss tabloid newspapers.
• Titchmarsh’s Joan Hickson impression during a chat with Stephen Mangan which plugged ITV’s Marple.
• Darryn Lyons and Jane Moore being boring about the Sex Pistols and then joining moon-faced Howard Jones to be even more boring about LiveAid.
• Titchmarsh behaving like a kid on Christmas day when he got a personalised rugby short from a not-even-as-good-as-G4 quartet called Blake after they’d bored us stiff with Swing Low.
• An item on the “staggering £2billion” cider industry littered with stupid jokes.
• A chummy chat with Charlie Dimmock in a Ground Force reunion. (Yes, water features figured highly)
• “Ta da”
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