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There must be this belief among TV producers that so long as you throw a celebrity at a place, all will be well, and you don’t have to come up with any new ideas, which could prove tiring.
(I once had a new idea in 1976 or thereabouts; it was exhausting and I swore, never again.) So this week we had Nadiya in America, and Gordon, Gino and Fred in Lapland, and Bob and Paul fishing the rivers around Middlesbrough – and we don’t know where Joanna Lumley is, which is a worry.
Don’t we always know where Joanna Lumley is, usually? Should we ask? Should someone knock on her door? To find out if she’s OK?
Updated: Dec 15 2020, 3:00 ET
YOU probably thought the year had done its worst and 2021 would be better, didn’t you?
I certainly did, until 9pm last Wednesday, when Gemma Collins suddenly reappeared with the deceptively optimistic news that: “My theatre tour has been postponed” before she hit us with the sucker punch.
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“So I might do it naked now. Dita Von Teese, eat your heart out.”
Yeah, chew on that, luv. Eater Von Teese is coming to a venue near you.
One of the many disturbing images and possibilities thrown up by Gemma Collins: Diva For Christmas.
An offshoot of the Diva Forever strand, which I thought ITVBe had abandoned, at the start of November, in a Crete donkey sanctuary, where they’d left Gemma to subsist on a diet of raw carrots and humility.
This Yorkshire holiday cottage is a star of the show in the Christmas episode of Gone Fishing yorkshirepost.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yorkshirepost.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“Education was the simplest of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe collection and possibly the most effective. McQueen evoked the look and feel of 1970s Britain with smoking headmasters and Roobarb on TV at teatime wonderfully. An eloquent and beautifully performed end to the anthology.”
“This capper to an extraordinary run of work is the definition of a small axe, making its point with a tidy economy and focused just on a single oak-felling at hand. I was often reminded of Alan Clarke’s work for television, with its rambunctious bleakness, its wicked black humour.”
“The last of McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, inspired by his own childhood, was a deeply affecting look at the way the school system was rigged against black children like him. The film was quietly devastating in its depiction of the shame and helplessness Kingsley felt as he realised he’d been marked out as a failure.”
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Has there ever been a comedy straight man in a double act who found a new partner and switched role to become the funny guy? Bob Mortimer has done just that and I’m struggling to think of a precedent.
If you don’t know what the straight man’s role is, think of Ernie Wise’s face as Eric Morecambe slaps him round the chops. Ernie’s job was much more than setting up the laughs. He was the backbone of every routine . . . the maypole around which his brilliant pal cavorted.
That was Bob’s job, when he was one half of Reeves and Mortimer. He played the adoring acolyte, awe-struck by the confidence of Vic Reeves, in a partnership that took them through stand-up comedy, panel games and sitcoms.