Celebrity 2004

‘FOR those of you who can’t get enough of Jonathan Ross’ film reviewing technique and presentation style there is a chance to watch the man carry on where he left of in the small hours of today.

‘I’d like to thank Sean Penn for making this all possible’

You can see highlights of last night’s Oscars on BBC1 at 10:55 tonight.

For the other 99% of us who still bemoan the fact that Barry Norman’s informed take on film has been banished to the B picture that is satellite telly, this is the first opportunity to see who won what at the Oscars.

But just like you don’t want to see all of Ross – who has replaced film with the world “celebrity” – you don’t want to see the entire Oscar ceremony.

Unless you are related to a top sound editor or give a jot who did the best make up last year, the event has dips and highs.

The apogee must be the Best Actress In A Leading Role Oscar. Halle Berry gushed like Niagara and Gwynwth Paltrow emoted like a friend of Princess Diana.

But with Ross around, it all seems in keeping with the theme of self-promotion.’

Posted: 1st, March 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Dream Homes

‘WHEN Bill Cosby hung up his jumper for the last time, we thought we’d seen the end of the Cosby Show.

The antithesis of reality TV

The cast went on to bigger and better things (although apart form Lisa Bonet’s brief film career and romance with Lenny Kravitz, none of these things seem to have involved acting).

But it was a winning format. And since TV loves a winning formula, there’s a new variant on the Cosby theme today on BBC2. It’s called My Wife And Kids.

The family in this at times syrupy-sweet concoction are African-American (as with the Cosbys) and live in the suburbs of Connecticut (the Cosbys lived in the suburbs of New York).

They are also pretty well off professionals (Bill Cosby was a doctor), and live in the ideal American home of much wood, massive space and absolute clinical newness.

They are called the Kyles. The Cosbys were called the Cosbys. And those are the key differences in a show that is for all intents and purposes the Cosby Show Mark II.’

Posted: 27th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

We Could Eat Heroes

‘RICK Stein is like someone’s trendy dad. Or rather, he is like someone’s dad who is tying hard to be trendy.

‘No, I think cod is whiter than haddock…’

You can imagine being a young boy in Rick’s care – and do call him Rick – being taken out with what Rick calls the “gang” to talk about girls and life today.

You’d come to realise that Rick’s trick for getting the ladies into the sack must be to bore the pants off them. It’s a skill he’s been trying to educate us in for too long now.

Although, take care because Rick might just as easily bore them and you to death, and that is not good at all, unless you are a German cannibal.

But tonight Rick takes things down a notch when he talks about the dumping of monkfish on the Cornish coast.

As part of his syrupy-entitled Rick Stein’s Food Heroes, Rick also shows us how much he enjoys eating prawns.

Prawns are one of Rick’s hero foods, although they are less likely to save you than they are to make you feel queasy.

As such, they are not a bit unlike Rick, only more pink…’

Posted: 26th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Those Who Can Do…

‘CLARE Short: discuss. Use graphs and diagrams wherever possible.

‘Do as I say and not as I do’

That would a make good geography GCSE question. Students would be given flags with a picture of Short on and asked to stick them into places on the globe where the charmless one has worked good deeds.

Of course, it would be a trick question because Short’s record as the face of this country’s overseas development was as pathetic as her failure to step down from the Cabinet as promised the moment a British gun was fired in anger in Saddam’s Iraq.

But Short did resign – eventually – and ever since that happy day has been touting herself around like a minor celeb.

Tonight we get to see Short teaching geography at a inner-city school. She’s there for a week and the good news is that she managed to find her way to the school and back again.

Knowing where you are is a good thing when it some to geography. Knowing where you are going is another thing entirely. And where Short is off to is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps a very small line in a history book, just under Robin Cook…’

Posted: 25th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Do The Hustle

‘IF I had a penny for every film or TV show based around a bunch of guys and gals getting together for one more job – the big one! – I’d have at least a pound.

The mockney Ocean’s 11

Make that £1.01, as tonight Hustle, the BBC’s new show from the makers of Spooks, slinks onto the screen.

To begin with the plot. The leader of a gang of grifters, Mickey “Brick” Stone, has just been released from the clinker. He sets about rounding up the old faces for one last job.

And, as with Spooks, the faces are attractive in a non-threatening way and the clothes are sharp.

Then there’s Robert Vaughan, he of the Man From U.N.C.L.E, now old enough to be that Old Codger From GRANDPA, but still not to old to steal a considerable amount of limelight from his younger peers.’

Posted: 24th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Sky’ s The Limit

‘FOR all the huff and puff about Rupert Murdoch’s ambitions to take over the role of Britain’s biggest broadcaster from the BBC, his Sky TV channels still pour out an unrelenting stream of sport and American-made shows.

How could this have been allowed to happen?

You’d suppose that if Sky had genuine ambitions to be the No. 1 broadcaster it would set about making some decent programmes.

A look at the BBC’s tired schedules – EastEnders, more EastEnders, panel gameshows and DIY makeovers – suggests that Sky’s challenge to be better than the Beeb is not exactly Herculean.

Sky News shows that Sky has the powers to be up there with the best of them. The channel is informative, entertaining and well produced – it is everything the Beeb’s News 24 is not.

But the elements that make Sky News a success are missing from elsewhere in the Sky portfolio.

Tonight, Sky One – the would-be BBC 1 – has a slew of Star Trek Episodes surrounding two homemade shows: Britain’s Hardest and Mile High.

Mile High is the comedy show set a mile above ground level, where the air is rich is nitrous oxide – we can think of no other reason why anyone is laughing.

And Britain’s Hardest is just terrible.

If Sky want to beat the Beeb, it has to try harder. Any broadcaster that employs Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen deserves to be ground into so much dust…’

Posted: 23rd, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Afternoon Delights

‘TONIGHT’S episode of Friends is the one where Ross plays a spineless wonder.

The one where we don’t laugh

Joey acts like an unconvincing actor, Rachel flicks her hair, Phoebe says something to suggest the network’s drugs policy is not all it should be, Chandler fears he’s a homosexual and Monica cleans.

Ooops! Our mistake, that was every other week’s show. Tonight’s instalment is very different because Ross is also chinless.

The advice for anyone wishing to see something funny is to watch Paramount, the cable channel, at 1:30 each weekday afternoon.

This is the Seinfeld half hour, and it is everything that Friends is not: it is funny.

It is funny in the way that things are funny in everyday life. It is the show that is famously about nothing.

Friends is the show about nothingness.’

Posted: 20th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Vice Of An Angel

‘THE idea that we need an hour of prime-time TV to discover The Real Charlotte Church is absurd –anyone who has picked up a tabloid newspaper over the past year will have read far more than they need about the teenager with the so-called voice of an angel.

Charlotte’s talent is in the jeans

But the Channel 4 slot that once gave us a programme entitled Liz Hurley’s Brains is not exactly the place to go for serious documentary.

Instead, in tonight’s Fallen Angel expect nothing more than a recap of what from the outside looks like a typical teenager’s life – smoking, drinking, going out with “unsuitable” boys – lived in untypical circumstances.

The excuse for the programme is that Charlotte turns 18 on Sunday and, as has been well documented, she will then have access to the many millions of pounds she has earned through her singing.

How much do we reckon she can blow on booze and fags?’

Posted: 19th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment (1)

We Love Lucy

‘CONSIDERING the degree of sensitivity needed to be good actor, it’s surprising to learn that Gary Lucy is planning to polish his star in Hollywood.

FORE!!!

It appears that the star of Footballers’ Wives (he plays club captain Kyle Pascoe) is the last one realise that it’s the very woodeness of his acting that must have landed him the part.

They say that one of the hardest things an actor has to do is to walk normally. Lucy moves as if a large golf club has been passed though the arms of his silk shirt while another has been placed squarely up his backside.

He is bad actor playing a bad actor playing a good footballer going bad.

And in among all this goodness and badness is a large dollop of ugly, notably from the show’s new signings, Amber and Conrad Gates.

Who this blond footballer, the captain of England, and his parasitical vain wife are based on escapes us utterly. If you know, please write in and let us on in the secret.

And then tell Lucy, who appears to be the last one to know everything.’

Posted: 18th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Flat Pop

‘THE Brit Awards have been pretty tame affairs over the past couple of years – no Jarvis Cocker climbing on stage with Michael Jackson to bare his arse and no Chumbawamba throwing water over John Prescott.

‘This one’s for you, Gary Barlow’

Hell, even the Superbowl can manage an almost bare breast – a feat that the Spice Girls were probably the last to achieve over here.

But if controversy has died down, then the quality of the acts on show has surely improved, even if a lot of them are from the other side of the Atlantic.

This evening sees Beyonce teaming up with Outkast, Missy Elliot taking the stage with Alicia Keys and Gwen Stefani and both the Black Eyes Peas and 50 Cent in attendance.

It is The Darkness and Dido who are expected to be the evening’s big winners, however – and Duran Duran will get an award for Outstanding Contribution To Music.

All that and the certainty that Robbie Williams won’t win anything this year should have you tuning into ITV at 8pm – and you might even get to hear the odd naughty word if you listen closely enough.’

Posted: 17th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Second Chances

‘TV can give celebrities a new lease of life when their original career has petered out.Tonight, we’ve got Suggs on Salvage Squad (Channel 4 8pm), seeing if he and his team can repair a 1950s Massey Harris 780 combine harvester.

Suggs is known to an entire generation as the nutty boy leader of Madness, the ska band who sang about Baggy Trousers and sailing across the sea to see Uncle Sam.

How times change: now Suggs wears overalls and Uncle Sam comes to see us on a high-speed jet – sometimes with bombs attached to it.

Meanwhile, on BBC2 at the same time, Terry Jones is leading us through his Medieval Lives. This week the former Monty Pythoner is investigating the role of monks in the Middle Ages.

This is history as “tremendous good fun”. Terry, a comedian by repute, tells us about something most of us find dull, so making it less dull and entertaining.

To some degree Jones succeeds. Indeed, Suggs makes a decent fist of passing himself off as a man with a working knowledge of the mechanics of farm machinery.

But you still can’t help pining for the real experts. What did happen to the Open University-type boffins who used to pop up on BBC2 in the early hours?’

Posted: 16th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

The Naftas

‘YOU may have to wait until next Tuesday to find out whose boob will accidentally pop out when Justin Timberlake climbs on stage at the Brit Awards, although the clever money is on it being one of Cat Deeley’s kittens.

‘I’d like to thank Tony, Cherie, the factory in Germany that makes people like me, Ibrahim al-Marashi…’

But if you can’t wait that long for your next awards show – and let’s face it, it is something of a disgrace that there isn’t a single gong being handed out this weekend – then you’ll have to make do with the Channel 4 Political Awards 2004 tonight.

There are six finalists this year for the award for having the greatest influence on British politics in 2003 – Tony Blair, Robin Cook, George Galloway, David Kelly, Benjamin Zephaniah and Dave Chick

Intelligence sources suggest that Mr Cook was originally down to take the award, but under pressure from Downing Street his name has been amended to read Mr Blair.

We point out that Lord Hutton has investigated these rumours and agrees wholeheartedly with Leo Blair that it is all Channel 4’s fault for not using indelible ink.’

Posted: 13th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Jack Is Back

‘AFTER seeing how celebs coped in an untypical 24-hour period, it’s now our turn to spend another day with Jack Bauer.

Jack door

Once again, the hero in the employ of some secretive counter-terrorism organisation in Los Angeles has just 24 hours in which to save swathes of human kind from a grisly end.

Oh, and to rescue his daughter, the essentially blonde Kim, who is once more in peril.

Tonight, we rejoin Jack three years after he last saved the day.

To reveal the plot would be to spoil the suspense that builds from the moment when audiences first hear Jack’s rasping voice.

But one key moment that shocked what remains an archly conservative American audience has the show’s black American President David Palmer kissing his white girlfriend.

Contrary to what many Americans might think, Jack has no need to save either or them. He needs his energies to save the rest of us.’

Posted: 12th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Wives And Wherefore

‘LOVERS of trash TV have never had it so good – no sooner has I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! finished than a third series of Footballers’ Wives (a programme firmly in the ‘so bad, it’s good’ category) starts.

Giving a new meaning to ‘team strip’

Anyway, tonight’s episode starts off with the funeral of the unlamented Jason Turner, but it is less than 10 minutes before the first naked bum hoves into view and after that it’s petty well back to where the last series left off.

Psycho Tanya Turner, the late Jason’s wife, sets her sights on Earl’s Park’s new signing, England captain Conrad Gates, but she’s more than met her match in the shape of Conrad’s bitchy wife Amber.

Otherwise it’s just a blur of weddings, threesomes, glamorous parties in mock-Georgian mansions, a dog curry served up by Triads and Marcos from El Dorado.

This is what Dream Team would have been like if it was written by the people who have us Sunset Beach.’

Posted: 11th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Queen Of The Jungle

‘ARCHBISHOP Ant N Dec: “Sirs and Jordans, I here present unto you Queen Kerry I (and please let her be the last); your undoubted Queen: wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?”

Kerry’s face is set to earn her a fortune

The People signify their willingness and joy, by loud and repeated acclamations, all with one voice crying out: “God save queen Kerry! (And God hep the rest of us).”

Archbishop Ant N Dec: “Madam, is Your Majesty willing to take the Oath?”

Queen Kerry: “Hurry up before I crap meself.”

Archbishop Ant N Dec: “Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bob’s Fat Burgers And Kebabs, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan and Spearmint Rhino, and of your Possessions and other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs?”

Queen: “I love me kids.”

Archbishop Ant N Dec: “Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?”

Queen Kerry: “One of them’s called Molly…”

Archbishop Ant N Dec: “Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel according to Westlife?”

Queen Kerry: “I’m mad, me. Let’s get pissed.”

Finis.’

Posted: 10th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Spinning For Jennie

‘AND then there were three. Jennie Bond continues to defy the British public by refusing to be voted out in favour of a younger, better known and better looking celebrity and surviving until tonight’s final.

Good Queen Jennie

But the continued presence of lovelorn Peter Andre is perhaps even more staggering – how many more times do we need to hear him whine: “I really liked her, Jen. I don’t think she realised how much I really liked her.”

Kerry McPadding will, of course, win the show tonight – unless Jennie’s mum can sort out a second mortgage in time to allow her to hit the phones with the same gusto as she has shown up to now.

Let us just hope that is not a cue for the former Atomic Kitten to attempt a comeback as a TV presenter – anyone who ever saw her performance on Elimidate will shudder at the thought.

And, as Linda Barker is still contractually obliged to appear in 60% of all adverts appearing on British TV, that doesn’t leave much room for Our Kerry in that game either.

Come on Jennie!’

Posted: 9th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

The Name’s Bond

‘JENNY Bond’s mum’s phone bill must by now have overtaken the GDP of a small Central American republic as her daughter’s continued survival in the jungle continues to amaze.

Viewers voted to see the back of Alex

Alex Best was booted out last night, leaving the former BBC royal correspondent as one of only five contestants still left. Kerry McPudding has taken over from Lord Brockett as favourite to win.

Best, whose one claim to fame was her marriage to a man whose claim to fame is that he used to be a very good footballer and is now just a very bad drunk, said the main problem in the camp was boredom.

One suspects that that will be less of a problem for the remaining five now that the former air stewardess has left.

Ben Affleck coined the phrase “conversational smorgasbord” the other day; with Best, it is like arriving at the conversational breakfast buffet at 10.05am to find that everything has just been cleared away.

Come on, Jenny Bond!’

Posted: 7th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

A Rotten Sport

‘JOHN Lydon’s walk from the I’m A Celebrity jungle was not in the mould of Captain Oates.

‘I’m so petty, you’re so petty…’

Whereas the good captain was a selfless type who acted for the better good of the greater number, Lydon is a self-aggrandising, self-serving celeb.

Oates walked into oblivion; Lydon wandered back to meet Ant and Dec, and then onto the Palazzo Versace hotel for drinks and nibbles.

What Lydon should have done to ensure his named lived on in the TV firmament was to have strode manfully into the jungle’s deeper reaches.

And he should have done it at night, when no-one was looking.

Indeed, if only Danniella Westbrook, another of the show’s walkers, had also wandered into the undergrowth, Johnny could have set up a new breed with his very own Jane.

Generation Zed, as the newest Australian tribe would have been known, would have had enormous inflatable chests and communicated in snarls and sing-song, sarcy voices.

David Attenborough could have filmed an entire series on them.

But it was not to be. Which is a shame. Although we do hope that Jordan and Peter Andre can take up the baton and run deep into the jungle with it.

Oh, and if they can take McPadding with them as a source of fuel, so much the wiser…’

Posted: 6th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Gone Rotten

‘JOHN Lydon (as Johnny Rotten now likes to be known) has apparently apologised for saying two words that the tabloids could only represent with the aid of several asterisks.

Jenny Bond without her make-up on

ITV producers said the former Sex Pistol “is extremely sorry and expresses his regret at having used such language”. Yeah, right.

It is no accident that the third series of I’m A Celebrity has got the highest viewing figures of the three series so far – Jordan is there to provide the soft porn (and hopefully a bit of sex), while Lydon is there for the controversy.

What the likes of Diane Modahl and Jenny Bond are there for is something of a mystery, except of course to give viewers someone to kick out in the first few rounds of voting.

However, Bond seems to be holding on by the skin of the lipstick on her teeth as last night it was Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock’s turn for the chop.

‘I’ve not been myself,” the corpulent ex-footballer explained. “I’m normally bubbly and the funny man. You just can’t be yourself in there because you’re so drained and tired.’

And, with that, British TV was deprived of one of its great comedians, to be followed soon after by Lydon, who knows a thing or two about headline grabbing and duly stormed off set. Jenny Bond was installed as the new favourite. Not…’

Posted: 5th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Buy, Buy

‘WITH all the property shows on TV, it was odd that we never got to actually see an estate agent at work.

‘Think less rising damp, think more your own water feature’

When they did appear, all they did was offer their price (Property Ladder) or accept or decline a bid on behalf of their vendor (Location, Location, Location).

We began to realise that estate agents were TV’s last great taboo. Lesbianism, incest and snuff movies could wait – we wanted to see a real live estate agent on camera.

And then we got to see a whole load of them. And as is it with suddenly being given in large quantities what you were once denied, you quickly get sick.

Property People has made us feel a little queasy. The BBC2 show that follows life at a busy London estate agents satiated our thirst for a glimpse at those who buy and sell in the opening credits.

The offer on the table is that estate agents never appear on our screens again.

Like dry rot and rising damp, we suspect they are out there, but we don’t want to come face to face with them again unless we really have to.’

Posted: 4th, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

The Big Read

‘IT was a shame to see Mike Read follow Sian Lloyd and become the first person to be voted out of the I’m A Celebrity… camp this year, if only because he has the finest example of man breasts seen on television outside a crowd shot at a Newcastle United home match.

Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ

ITV producers might have scrabbled around last night to produce a montage of Mike’s greatest moments in the Aussie jungle, but they must have been relieved that it wasn’t Diane Modahl.

Carole Hersee, the girl on the late – and much lamented – BBC Test Card, boasts more interesting footage than Diane…and the shock on the athlete’s face when she learned that she was not one of the two in danger of eviction must have been repeated in living rooms up and down the country.

Meanwhile, Lord Brocket has firmly established himself in the nation’s heart as the lecher’s lecher, taking great delight in washing down a semi-naked Alex Best after her Bushtucker Trial.

If this is what he’s like without Viagra, we’d hate to see him with…’

Posted: 3rd, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Advance Insania Fair

‘NOT everyone who makes it onto I’m A Celebrity… goes on to bigger and better things.

Available for pantomime

Indeed, the jungle clearing often resembles a culling field, a place where the lamest, most tired acts in celebritydom are picked off by a sniping public. We commend to your attention Darren Day.

But now in a rare moment of gentleness, we appeal for clemency. Peter Andre is just too easy a target for the bullet. There is no sport. Spare him.

To date, the Aussie warbler has admitted to needing singing lessons, told us that there is no ‘I’ in team, invented the word “insania” (he even worked it into a song), performed with all the self-awareness of a Pop Idol wannabe and frotted Jordan like a frustrated Japanese businessman passing through a school bus.

He must be spared.

Harry Hill is right: Peter needs to be rejected by Jordan so he can feel a rare pain and so go on to write some great love songs. They would, would they not, be pure dynamite.

So spare him. And if you must throw someone on the charcoals, let it be Kerry McPudding. Do it for us. Do it for Bryan. Do it for music!’

Posted: 2nd, February 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Not Much Of A Climax

‘GREAT! Sex And The City’s back on our screens tonight. Carrie, Samantha, the Ginger One and Miss Prissy. We can hardly wait. No, not for 10 o’clock tonight when the first of the last series starts but for six weeks hence when the programme finishes. For ever.

The face that launched a thousand vibrators

There are some TV moments that are guaranteed to do to the audience what a set of fingernails scraped down a blackboard could do to a classroom of kids.

And one of them is the toe-curling lead-up to that moment in every episode that leads up to Carrie typing into her computer nauseating questions like “Is being married the new single?” and “Is sex like solitude – better enjoyed on your own?”

Whatever life there was in any of the characters it has long since been extinguished – these days, they are preening, whining caricatures whose sole purpose seems to be to market the latest fashion trends to impressionable viewers.

Tonight, Samantha has lots of sex (yawn) and Carrie has not as much sex with Petrovsky (yawn). Roll on the post-Sex And The City era.’

Posted: 30th, January 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Just Kerry

‘DAY two and still no sign of Darren Day in the I’m A Celebrity jungle.

‘I’ll thcream and I’ll thcream until I’m thick’

We do however have a full view of Kerry McPudding, the lumpen Scouse bird who was up for her Bushtucker challenge.

From a haul of ten possible meals, she scooped two. And this was doubly bad since in the lead-up to her test, she fell ill.

Well, that’s what a few of the camp dwellers believed as Kerry hunched over and made noises like a tuneless coffee machine.

We know better. We know is that Kerry is on the Violet Elizabeth Bott diet and must scream and scream enough to throw up at last once every day.

The hidden benefit of this is that Kerry is making us feel nauseous. We estimate that if the talentless one stays the full two weeks, the nation will have lost two thousands tons of fat.

And it’s all thanks to Kerry.

She is a game girl is this Kerry – although what game is not immediately obvious. What about stick in the mud or pin the tail on the donkey?’

Posted: 29th, January 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment

Vital Signs Good

‘BY all accounts, E4 has started slipping down the ratings charts in the United States – a result, one can only imagine, of viewer familiarity rather than falling standards because the medical drama still hits all the buttons that Casualty and Holby City just don’t reach.

Unlucky in love

In fact, the new series (now showing, confusingly, on E4 on Thursdays and Sundays and Channel 4 tonight) is as good, if not better, than it’s ever been.

Tonight, Abby gets a Dear John letter from Carter, who has decided to stay on in the Congo after his trip to rescue Luka. On the relationship front, Jing-Mei gives Pratt the flick after finding out that she doesn’t figure in his long-terms plans.

But things turn out better for Corday, who puts her grief for Dr Green well and truly behind her as she gets down and dirty in the back of a car with a particularly dishy (and cocky) heart surgeon.

Meanwhile, newcomer Neela does her best to kill a new medical student and Romano is as angry as ever.’

Posted: 28th, January 2004 | In: Celebrities | Comment