JUST before David Potts was crowned Celebrity Big Brother winner 2024, Fern Britton offered this sincere toast in honour of her fellow ITV finalists.
“To five of the most gracious, talented men I’ve ever known.”
The least remarkable thing about that sentence being, there were only four of them, David, Louis Walsh, Colson Smith and Nikita Kuzmin.
Who the so-called fifth man was, I cannot say, but it definitely wasn’t Kate Middleton’s uncle Gary Goldsmith who’d been erased from the face of ITV’s earth just a couple of weeks after he was welcomed with great fanfare and a question from AJ Odudu: “Do you think Kate will be watching?”
It’s unlikely, AJ, given recent developments, but it begged the question what the hell would ITV have done if Gary had still been in that house on Friday, after her cancer announcement?
Moral high horse
The humiliation would’ve been global for a network who wouldn’t have deserved an ounce of pity given Gary was paid £100,000 to cause The Princess of Wales as much discomfort as possible.
READ MORE TV NEWS
Both ITV and CBB should realise, then, they got luckier than either of them merited when the gormless oaf was evicted after just five days.
Because, to gauge the level of squirming mortification involved here, all viewers needed to do was switch over to Channel 4 at 10pm to see the panic-stricken face of The Last Leg host Adam Hills, who was clinging on to his moral high horse, for dear life, as he began the live show by saying: “It’s been a strange day for all of us.
“We watched together as a production team, at six o’clock, and it’s fair to say a lot of the people in the room were really emotional.
“Obviously, our thoughts go out to the princess and her family.”
Most read in News TV
Yeah, obviously, though it was a slightly different approach a week earlier when internet speculation about Kate was frenzied and the show began with Adam Hills, sitting beside a book “Photoshop For Dummies”, saying: “I’ve never seen our office WhatsApp group as excited as it was this week by this story.”
It didn’t end there, naturally.
Hills, who fondly imagines himself to be a really edgy comedian, ostentatiously put his MBE in a safe before “trying to crack the case of the missing princess”, as if he was conducting a crime investigation.
On and on this schtick laboured, for 16 witless minutes, until guest Rob Beckett sniggered: “It’s a countdown to Easter now, isn’t it, heh heh.”
“Yeah,” chuckled Hills, “They’re gonna roll back a big rock.”
The “joke” here being, I think, that Kate Middleton was going to rise from the dead.
At the time of broadcast, of course, The Last Leg didn’t know the severity of the situation (we’ve all done it).
The thing that really irks me about Adam Hills, though, is that he always assumes he has the moral high ground, so he tried to qualify these comments by saying, “They were digs at the Palace PR, not Kate.”
[The Last Leg] is incapable of thinking outside of that woke echo chamber, which is a recipe for failure and disaster
Ally Ross
A dubious claim that could not have missed the point more spectacularly as the real target of any decent satire should’ve been the internet crazies who probably form a sizeable chunk of TLL’s audience and were spreading all the vile rumours The Last Leg’s material was now helping to feed.
A thought I’m sure that never occurred to anyone in C4 production as, like every feeble, left-of-centre comedy, The Last Leg has a fixed set of bad guys, The Tories, Brexit, Donald Trump and the Royal Family, and is incapable of thinking outside of that woke echo chamber, which is a recipe for failure and disaster.
In my wildest fantasies I’d like to think they’d dwell on an irony here.
If a tabloid newspaper had been stoking the Kate flames as enthusiastically and stupidly as they did, before last Friday’s announcement, The Last Leg, Channel 4, BBC, anti-Press groups and all the little parasites at The Guardian who enable them, would be trying to have us shut down right now.
But I’m not expecting two miracles in a week, ’cos all I’ve ever really wanted The Last Leg to do is make good on the extraordinary thought Adam Hills finally had, after 29 series, midway through Friday’s cringefest.
“Maybe that’s our job tonight. To try and put a smile on your face.”
Yeah, whenever you’re ready . . .
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In words, what A goes before hunter in the term for a person who collects the signatures of celebrities?”
Paul Burrell: “Aspic.”
Romesh: “In language, which two-word term is both the name of a colourful disc-shaped sweet filled with sherbet and a phrase sometimes used for a UFO?”
Laura Jackson: “Hamburg.”
Romesh: “In geography, the major river in France that flows through the city of Paris before emptying into the English channel has what name?”
Shabaz Ali: “The Nile.”
Romesh: “In geography, the Black Forest is a mountainous region in which European country?”
Josie d’Arby: “Britain.”
Random TV irritations
E4’s Josh Must Win putting a convincing case for the most patronising TV show ever made.
ITV’s Passenger trying so hard to be an arthouse version of Happy Valley it hurts.
The illiterate Good Morning Britain caption writer who told us Alan Titchmarsh’s trousers have been: “SENSORED.”
And Celebrity Big Brother host AJ Odudu summoning up the spirit of an old Glasgow Empire heckle, about Mike and Bernie Winters, when she told winner David Potts: “Your twin brother Matthew’s here.”
“Aw, Christ. There’s two of them.”
BEEB A STUPID ENEMY
BBC2’S Monday night masterpiece Ukraine: Enemy In The Woods represented the very best and worst of the Beeb.
I say best because the director, Jamie Roberts, realised there was no need for any commentary, he just HAD to let Ukraine’s Berlingo Special Battalion film and tell their own extraordinary story.
A unit of 99 men, led by a hero called Vovan, were defending a railway line on the Eastern Front against thousands of Russians, whose bodies were piling up in the Kupyansk forest.
Censorship here could’ve softened the impact of the film.
But it treated us like adults, sparing us no detail, from the casual taunting of the Russians, over a walkie-talkie, “Faggots, get in touch”, to the shocking end of men like “Cuckoo”, who died in front of our very eyes.
Against the most astonishing odds, though, we learned “Vovan and his men held the forest”, so you would have thought the BBC’s political enforcers might cut them some slack.
But no, the cult’s called “woke” for a reason.
Self-righteous stupidity never sleeps, so before the show even started a continuity announcer was warning viewers and by extension admonishing the Ukrainians for using “discriminatory language”, as they fought for their very lives.
The BBC isn’t alone in always missing the point, of course.
This blinkered PC madness has infected every major institution in the country, including the Ministry of Defence.
Only God can help Britain now if it ever faces a force more savage than the Sevastopol Sea Cadets.
GREAT Celebrity Big Brother lies and delusions of the month.
Louis Walsh: “Honestly, I think you’re great, Colson.”
Louis Walsh: “Honestly, I was hoping I’d be first out.”
And Louis Walsh: “I think Zeze is the future of broadcasting.”
Honestly?
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is drag act and self-styled comedian Reuben Kaye, who defined the words “Pointless Celebrities” on Saturday, and Steph McGovern.
Sent in by Cheese Wombat, Stoke.
Great sporting insights
GREAT Sporting Insights. Steve Bower: “Brazil have never lost four internationals in a row. They last did 23 years ago.”
Mike Dean: “It was exactly the same challenge as yesterday’s, but not as severe.”
And Clinton Morrison: “I’m amazed Ben White doesn’t want to play for his country because playing for England is a great opportunity to play for your country.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV GOLD
BBC2’s landmark documentary Ukraine: Enemy In The Woods.
The return of C4’s funny, sad and brilliant Night Coppers.
A vintage home-shopping channel task on The Apprentice.
Larry David being taught LA parking etiquette via Curb Your Enthusiasm: “There are two people in the valet world, sir.
“Handers and tossers. And you’re a tosser.”
Ant and Dec’s “turbo till” hidden camera Takeaway stunt and the name caption which accompanied the choice of this week’s Win The Adverts contestant and stopped the show in its tracks: “Grace Wankiewicz.”
OVER on BBC1’s Celebration Kitchen Live, there wasn’t a flicker of self-recognition from Nish Kumar, so I suppose it’s left to someone else to supply the necessary after he told host Matt Tebbutt: “My family’s from Kerala and how to put it tactfully, we’re not what you’d call fun Indians.”
No crap, Columbo.
FERNE McCann: My Family And Me, her agent: “I feel there’s a cameo role in a Hollywood movie waiting for you.”
And you can find the petition to make Weekend At Bernie’s III on change.org.
WINNING Combination, Tuesday, Omid Djalili: “What is visible from Earth every 76 years?”
Bzzzz.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
A white couple on the adverts?
FILTH Corner, England v Brazil, Jill Scott: “The thing I love most about Ezri Konsa are his long balls.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/feed/
Michael Shersby
