Grace Dent's new tv column

Well I loved her BB blog, and now she's got a weekly column about all things telly related, especially RTV. :) Pretty funny! :D

http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/tvod

This week's column should be posted up very soon, a bit from last week's though...

"With the marathon that was Big Brother 7 finally over, I'm exhausted, vaguely unhinged, but in dire need of fresh "normal everyday folk" to pass judgement on. Thankfully ITV's The X Factor kicked off its audition rounds this week in London and Manchester.

Ah, Manchester, so much to answer for. By 11am pretty much anyone who'd normally be troubling the CCTV operators at the Arndale Centre had turned up in the X Factor queue, wearing snug spandex leotards, eating balti pasties and waiting to do Earth Song by Michael Jackson."

:D :D :D

Great news. Grace Dent's BB7 columns are legendary.

:)

Another excellent column, just posted up! :D

The Princess and the Pee
Posted on FRI 8 SEPTEMBER, 2:00PM

Princess Nikki

It's a wet Wednesday in Folkestone and a tiny-framed woman in a stained Eskimo-hood jacket lies on the bed in a depressing, bird-crap splattered "budget" hotel room. Curled in the foetal position, sobbing hot tears onto rough antique sheets, "Princess" Nikki Grahame is extremely agitated.

Bewildered, lonely, exhausted, angry, abusive: that familiar feeling of Nikki's emotions running amuck over virtually nothing takes hold again. Nikki lies on her side and roars like a wounded beast.

Quickly, a male E4 producer arrives and tries to talk Nikki back down to earth. "I don't understand what's so wrong, Nikki? Why are you so upset?" the producer says, as if one can apply logic here.

She's Nikki Grahame, the girl who'd cry quite literally over spilt milk. Or a chilly draft, or a speckle on her fruit, or being asked to play tennis, or not being able to turn on an MP3 player.

At 24, Nikki's celebrity "hook" is that she's like a three-year-old girl. When life doesn't go Nikki's way, her face can crumple into deep, breathless, demented sobs in a millisecond.

While most three-year-old girls grow out of the tantrum stage, Nikki is the Peter Pan of petulance; eternally trapped, but now with her own E4 spin-off series - for the time being it's all worked out rather well.

"I f***ing hate this! I hate this! I haaaaaate this!" Nikki roars, shouting her dainty oesophagus into ribbons. The footage of this emotional breakdown will be cut and spliced with a comedy Toni Basil title track and quirky animations, then served up on E4 as light entertainment. I've not felt so grubby laughing at '"lovable eccentrics" since I watched that woman who lived in a house full of cat poo on How Clean Is Your House?

With a bit of thought, Princess Nikki could have been trashily brilliant. Just like Paris Hilton's The Simple Life, it might have been fun to watch Nikki take a normal job over the space of a week or two, develop unlikely friendships, cope with the daily 9-5. Yet with Nikki's diary jam-packed with nightclub PAs and interviews about her famous boyfriend, E4 clearly needed to act extra quickly for maximum results.

Shoved out on a fishing trawler for four hours in the rocky-watered English Channel, surrounded by dying fish, crabs, blood and guts, then forced to urinate in a bucket as there is no loo, weirdly enough Nikki wasn't very jolly at all; even if the crew taping her pitiful wailing were over the moon.

Job done, Nikki was then dispatched to a chip shop, cleaning out congealed fat for a gorgon of a woman called Esther who was meaner than Simon Cowell and twice as masculine. For some bizarre reason, Esther was determined to keep Nikki without drinking water (which is well documented as one of Nikki's biggest phobias.)

One good thing that came from Princess Nikki was that when Nikki stood beside Esther, who controlled the pickled egg, whelks and battered sausage output of Folkestone as if she was in charge of the war cabinet, Nikki looked comparatively well balanced.

And although I always retched at Nikki during BB7, I came away from her E4 show feeling more than a twinge of empathy. If they'd made me drop my jeans and wee in a bucket on a bumpy trawler before an audience of sniggering, smelly fisherman, I'd make a sound like a three-minute nuclear warning, too.

Brainteaser phone-in of the week

Charlotte Church comes from?

a) Kazakhstan B) Romania c) Wales

Calls cost £1. Courtesy of The Richard and Judy Show.

Mercury Prize Live

"We are incredibly lucky this evening to have an actual interview with The Arctic Monkeys!" panted Jools Holland, compere of The 2006 Mercury Music Prize (Tuesday, BBC4). On the VT, Mercury-nominated Monkeys' frontman Alex Turner was shown backstage at Reading, being probed by Steve Lamacq about his relentless good fortune: the tours, the hits, the awards, the rabid fans.

"Aye, it were awgood, like," mumbles Alex in a non-committal way, his bottom lip perpetually on the brink of a jut. During his reign as Britain's Jammiest Boy, Alex's face has never been a millisecond short of deep umbrage. I put it down to his youth.

He could be picking up three NME awards or knocking back Kate Moss's phone number, he'd still be wearing the dry, enduring face I used to reserve, aged 16, for a lovely Sunday drive with my parents to view Auntie Joan's "ship in a bottle" collection.

"I want you to know that I'm humouring you," Alex's face always seems to suggest, "But all the while I am secretly mocking you in the DVD director's commentary inside my head."

Back at the Dorchester, Jools Holland, resplendent in Uncle Munster's green velour smoking jacket, introduces performances by several of the 12 acts short listed for the Mercury prize; arguably the UK music industry's most slavered-over trophy.

I love the annual BBC4 coverage; from the comfort of your sofa, you really can experience all the tension, agony and macho willy-waving of a real music awards ceremony without the dire hassle of shinning through the toilet windows or frottaging a drum roadie from The Roaring Squirrels in the grubby hope of a spare aftershow laminate.

TV OD's top three Mercury 2006 moments were:

Electropop five-piece Hot Chip - resembling a minibus of demented drama supply teachers, led by a rejuvenated Timmy Mallet.

Richard Hawley - who sounds like the bloke who sings The Littlest Hobo theme tune and looks like a sexy version of Reg Varney from On the Buses. He's very good. Jools Holland admits that he has a cheeky £100 bet on him. "Call 999!" Alex Turner later quips as he collects the main award, "Richard Hawley's been robbed."

Thom Yorke - spooking the audience during the intro to his performance of Analyse, by suddenly fixing them with a hard milk-curdling stare, which dissolved into a small, disgusted snigger. "It gets you down/It gets you down/There's no spark/No light in the dark," chanted Thom beautifully, as BBC4 viewers pondered getting into their baths and hugging a plugged-in toaster.

The Arctic Monkeys won, in case you didn't notice. They were apoplectic with joy. The drummer smiled and everything.

The X Factor audition tactic of the week:

Tina, 18, wants stardom from the bottom of her heart:

Simon: "So Tina, tell me your story. Why are you here?"
Tina: "Well, I've got a heart condition, you see. But I discharged myself from hospital to come to the auditions."
Simon: (horrified stare)
Sharon: "Why did you do that?"
Tina: "Cos I want it so much! I'm going to sing Killing Me Softly…"
Simon: "Oh, god, no."
Tina: "What? What's up? Have you heard it already today?"

Can't wait for:

The Towers of London coming to Bravo, 26 October 10:30pm. Real-life Spinal Tap, taking rock dumbness to new mesmerising levels in this ten-part rock 'n' roll fly-on-the-wall series. One louder than your average reality rubbish. Absolutely brilliant - for all the wrong reasons. More action in the first five minutes than in two seasons of MTV's Meet the Barkers.

You Are What You Eat

"Och, this is revolting!" crows diet-velocorapter Gillian McKeith, staring at the box of poo like it's, well, a box of poo. "This is worst the poo I've ever smelled!" shrieks the angry bag of bones, sloshing about the contents. "Poos should not smell like that! Or loooook like that either! They should look like sausages and curl out in the shape of a letter S and…"

I'll spare you the detail, but Gillian has very firm ideas about the perfect excretion. The Saunders family stare guiltily at their bad bum work as Gillian rants and gags. Personally, I'd be more worried if poo popped out smelling of nothing, but, hey, enough about poo, it's time to move on. And by series four, I wish Gillian would, too.

Nevertheless, there's something brilliantly watchable about You Are What You Eat (Wednesdays, Channel 4). I love the limitless fury of McKeith as she goose-steps around supermarkets and rifles through kitchen cupboards, greeting double chocolate mini-muffins like anthrax and replacing chocolate buttons with sugar snap peas.

"Mmm! Sugar snap peas! They're so sweet! Delicious! Just as good as chocolate!" she loves to cry, as if repeating the utter falsehood makes it any less risible. I hope the film crew take it in turns to crouch in the downstairs airing cupboard sharing contraband jelly babies, just out of spite.

I love Gillian's trestle table of shame, filled with jam roly-poly, pork pies and pains au chocolat, which the victims always sob in front of and repent their sins, while at home I secretly fancy a large slice of that Battenburg cake washed down with a nice glass of supermarket pop and vodka. "Nooo! Have a spoonful of this beetroot and flax-seed stew with natural yoghurt, then we'll go and do some squat thrusts around the park in Aertex gym knickers! It'll be fun!" Gillian says. Why does no-one ever slap her?

I love the bizarre ritual of filming the victim in a one-piece neon swimming costume looking almost suicidal, which always finishes with a cellulite close-up.

And if there are kids in the family, I love how they're always sent to school with a lunchbox rattling full of macadamia nuts and granola wrapped in chinese leaves sprinkled with cinnamon. Perish the thought you give the kids a wholemeal roll with lean meat and an apple; no let's send little Johnny to school with a lunch so bizarre that news spreads around the yard that mum is actually a giant mutant squirrel.

Despite all the daftness, as a short, sharp shock You Are What You Eat certainly does the trick. The message is clear: sugar and processed food is bad, fruit and veg is good. Four series on, Gillian McKeith is still coming up with the goods. Sadly, it doesn't stop the trestle table of shame looking bloody delicious. Even if one vanilla slice will mean your poo comes out in a letter Q and smells of purest Satan.

Paxman moment of the week (from University Challenge):

"Which Roman emperor oversaw the completion of the Colosseum and was responsible for introducing fighting between women and dwarves? No? The answer is Domitian… He should really have been in charge of the ITV daytime schedule, shouldn't he?"

Surprisingly brilliant:

Intervention: We're Coming to Get You, (Thursday, Channel 4). This must have been lifeline TV for thousands of families with drug addicts in their midst. After eight years of heroin abuse, the families of 27-year-olds Richard and Anna took drastic measures, performing an "intervention" - the addicts are lured to a hotel, confronted about their demons, then "kidnapped" and taken to rehab.

While Intervention used many of the snappy TV techniques of a standard reality show, it was beautifully powerful and never tackily voyeuristic. In the closing scenes, watching the cleaner, sharper and happier Richard and Anna would have planted hope in even the most desperate parent's heart. Excellent telly.

Surprisingly rubbish:

The Charlotte Church Show (Fridays, Channel 4). Lovely Charlotte is so charismatic, pretty and witty, plus a fantastic singer, she could certainly front her own show. Just not this bloody show. One where the main joke is that she's a Welsh fishwife that shouts "w***er" and "b******s" every three minutes like BB7 Jayne Kitt's younger, dirtier sister. Grim.

Surprisingly brainwashing:

The Beginner's Guide to Ron L Hubbard, (Monday, Channel 4). Should I be worried that I began the hour sniggering at the Scientology trainees in beige anoraks modelling playdough, but quickly began to see some sanity amongst the mess? Presenter comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli felt the same: "It's funny how we can't accept aliens, but we can accept angels and demons," he muses finally, "Because surely aliens would make more sense." No more, please, I'll need an intervention.

Psychic TV

Next week I'll be watching, among other things:

The All Star Talent Show, Fridays, 8.30pm, Five. Talent show for Zelebrities fronted by national treasure Julian Clary. Did you know Malandra Burrows, who was once on Emmerdale, can eat fire!? Do you want to see Carol Thatcher doing a flapper girl routine? Of course you do. Myleene Klass is a judge. Because, like, she's an expert on talent.

Entourage, Tuesdays, 10:00pm, ITV2. They're all with Vince Chase. Are you?

A New Life: Risking it All, Tuesdays, 8:00pm, Channel 4. Gemma and her mum are sinking £1 million into a boutique hotel in Dorset. Obviously, they have no hotel experience, but they like staying in them and are familiar with a trouser press, so that's as good as, isn't it?

Extras, Thursdays, 9:00pm, BBC2. Series 2 - this time with David Bowie, Daniel Radcliffe, Chris Martin, Ronnie Corbett, Sir Ian McKellen and Cheggers.

http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/tvod/

And this week's offering: :D

The Hottest Act in Town
Posted on FRI 15 SEPTEMBER, 1:15PM

The All Star Talent Show

'If this isn't the pinnacle of my career,' says Julian Clary extra-dryly on Five's fabulous new All Star Talent Show (Fridays), "then I don't know what is."

On stage Mallandra Burrows (Kathy in Emmerdale five years ago) is ramming fire into her gob dressed in red PVC floozy-boots and snug hot pants.

Next up, Steadman from Five Star is ballet-dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy in tights that leave nothing to the imagination, followed by Carol Thatcher doing a flapper girl routine that just looks like she's still in the jungle batting away poisonous gnats. Allegedly, Carol has taken intensive dance lessons for a week. She's learned precisely none of the steps. Not one. Wonderfully, she doesn't give a hoot. "If you win, it's because your mother has been on the speed dial," says guest judge Jo Brand abruptly.

Of course Carol does win, beating poor fire-gobbling Mallandra Borrows, who has spent a week forcing paraffin-soaked pokers past her tonsils for nothing.

It's an odd indicator of how saturated Britain is with Z-listers that you can now set fire to your own face on terrestrial TV dressed as a dominatrix and no-one cares: not the audience at home, not the audience in the studio, not even the judges who are paid to be there to judge you. "Does this go on for long?" sighs Julian Clary, as Mallandra limps off to apply frozen peas to her cheeks.

There are so many wrongs about The All Star Talent Show that they make it totally, unmissably right: the fact that Julian Clary pulls the same parched, bewildered smirk through every act, peppering his judgments with filthy bons mots of the Norman Lamont variety. The fact that you tune in believing stars like TV chef Kevin Woodford surely must have a real singing talent hidden under a bushel, only to find he sounds like a tramp being wrestled into a police van.

The fact that tonight's show (15 September) has Ron Atkinson on singing a big-band classic, followed by Jodie Marsh doing Latin American dancing, then Andy Scott-Lee doing magic. Hooray for light entertainment!

I'm slightly nervous about Jodie Marsh's turn. As Celebrity Big Brother showed, old Satsuma Face isn't exactly great at receiving criticism. Three minutes under the scrutiny of the Joan Collins Fan Club and she'll be wishing the judge was someone fluffier like Pete Burns.

Thought of the Week: The X Factor

Is telling your slightly simple colleague they've got a "really good voice" and should audition for The X Factor (Saturdays, ITV1) the new version of sending them off to find "tartan paint" or a "left-handed spirit level"?

"But everyone at work says I sound just like Robbie Williams!" appears now to be the war cry of the delusional throughout Britain. "I think they might be pulling your leg," says Sharon, kindly, as Simon sniggers from behind his belt. Shame on you, whoever is up to this.

Day one at the Leeds audition was a very poor do this week, with no-one at all being put through to boot camp despite several candidates seeming in real need of some type of correctional facility. "I'm going to sing Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)," announced one hopeful, fixing the judges with a Charles Manson stare before honking ghoulishly through the Marvin Gaye classic.

I'm sure he was a nice man really, but the way he sang it sounded more like Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's Where Police Can Begin a Strong Line of Enquiry). Regardless, I'm still addicted. I'm loving toothy boy band Avenue. Oh, and rum luck, Eskimo Blonde. Don't worry, ladies, Tony from Security can remove you forcibly from the building flailing and squealing, but he'll never take your dignity. Or something.

Can't wait for - Pulling

Looking forward to this dark sitcom (coming to BBC3 in November), created by Sharon Horgan, Dennis Kelly and Harry Thompson, about 30-something love, jilted fiancées and living the single girl life in "lovely Penge". I loved Sharon Horgan as the beleaguered celebrity booker in Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive; here she plays the lead role of Donna.

Feelgood moment of the week - A New Life: Risking It All

After borrowing one-and-half million pounds, quitting London and beginning a scary new life renovating a ramshackle hotel in Dorset, Joe and Gemma Sais eventually found out that their hotel could make £270,000 a year profit (A New Life: Risking It All, Tuesdays, Channel 4).

See what happens when you actually "listen" to the experts? Are you watching this, Property Ladder fools? Imagine if anyone actually listened to Sarah Beeny instead of nodding impatiently then converting the third bedroom into a roller-disco with a ball pool.

Big Brother 7 update

Perfect Pete and Nikki Grahame graced Jonathan Ross's couch (Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Fridays, BBC1) last week. Nikki told an excruciating seven-minute-long anecdote about a splash of water hitting her face at a party while Pete feigned falling asleep. Ah, new love. Imagine what he'll feel like if they last five years and he's heard that anecdote 147 times and can tell it better himself?

In a dull interview, the golden moment was Ross winding up Nikki's droning with, "Well, I've been with you for ten minutes and I'm f***ing exhausted. Pete, mate, I don't know what you're like after a whole night but I'm like a wet rag."

Either the producers lost half of the interview because of Pete's swearing, or Pete had another one of his "cosmic cash register" angelic visitations, telling him to save all his most lucrative anecdotes for his next glossy-mag shoot. Whatever, the pair are very boring.

Over on Sky One's The Match (Sundays), Mikey "Raise the Roof" Dalton didn't make it past day one of the trials, thus cruelly denying Britain any more sightings of the Scouse sasquatch lolloping about in his fetid, khaki vest. Meanwhile Mikey's lickle cuddle-bum Grace Adams-Short is rumoured to be starring in this autumn's Sky One's Cirque Du Celebritee (celebrities learning circus skills).

Sadly Cirque Du Celebritee will be animal-free, made up of mostly trapezes and tightropes, meaning there is no chance of seeing lovely Grace getting her cravat re-arranged "Siegfried and Roy" style by a giant, disgruntled tiger. No other BB7 sightings reported this week.

Smooth move of the week: Entourage

Turtle: "C'mon, make out with me."
Hollywood bimbo: "Nah… Y'see, I was hoping to sleep with Vince."
Turtle: "Well, Vince is gone. Make out with me instead... Oh, c'mon! Make out with me! Make out with me…and I'll show you where Vince eats breakfast."
Hollywood bimbo: "Oh… OK, then."

Turtle, Vince Chase's less attractive, svelte and employed friend wooing the LA honeys on HBO's Entourage (Sundays, ITV2).

Shows you told me to watch

Dog the Bounty Hunter (daily, Bravo)
US reality TV series featuring Duane "Dog" Chapman. Bounty hunter, man-mountain, born-again Christian; watch as Dog trails then pounces on fugitives, before haranguing them heavily about the majesty of the Lord until they fling themselves into jail willingly to avoid a further ear-drubbing.

Dog's wife and long-suffering colleague, Beth, makes Cilla Battersby look like Sienna Miller. Dog the Bounty Hunter's chief weapon is surprise. OK, surprise and God. Saying that, it's difficult to be anything other than surprised when an 18-stone bodybuilder with a two-tone mullet in cycling shorts jumps out at you quoting the Book of Job.

How to Find a Husband in Ten Weeks (daily, UKTV Style)
OK, I assumed this would be a hateful throwaway dating show full of glib ideas. Instead it smartly tackles the real problem for men and women who feel they've missed the boat love-wise. Much of the magic is down to Sally Gray, 37, the TV presenter who puts her heart on the line for the "experiment".

Sally's so funny, likeable and genuine that every time someone stands her up, I feel like ringing him up myself for an ear-battering. Sally, if you're reading this - please pick Gary. He's the sort of man you can trust with a flat-pack shed, he loves his mum, he looks like he's got more than two pairs of pants on rotation and he's not married to anyone else. It doesn't get any better than that.

Currently coming to the end of a two-week run, but hopefully to be repeated sometime very TV soon. (Thanks to David D and Julie for tipping me off about the shows.)

Extras (Thursdays, BBC2)
On both The Richard and Judy Show and Jonathan Ross, Ricky Gervais flagged up Keith Chegwin's performance in episode one as one of the best he'd ever seen.

He was so right. Cheggers was chillingly good. Just please tell me that was acting. Please. Because now all my childhood memories of twinkly Cheggers leaping about in yellow dungarees with Adam Ant on Cheggers Plays Pop are besmirched with his hollow-eyed "Jews and queers" speech. I can never play my seven inch of Wanna Be a Winner by Brown Sauce ever again. (That Mitchell and Webb Look, on afterwards, made me laugh a lot too.)

Psychic TV

Next week I'll be watching, among other things:

Guys and Dolls (Monday 18 September, 10pm, Five) Documentary about men who use sophisticated life-size dolls as partners for dates, affection, holidays, lifelong companionship and, erm, other moister stuff.

Trust Me I'm a Holiday Rep (Monday 18 September, 11pm, Five) Rowland Rivron, Noel "Ex-Hearsay" Sullivan, It girl Emma Jones, Brandon Block, model Samantha Rowley, but best of all Nancy Lam! Ah…the ingredient every relaxing holiday needs: Nancy Lam banging on your door at 7am to squawk 100 euros out of your money belt for a coach trip to a feta factory. Happy holidays!

TMi (Saturday 16 September, 9am, BBC2 and CBBC) Sam Nixon and Mark Rhodes, better known as Sam and Mark, clearly being groomed as the next Ant and Dec with their new Saturday-morning show for kids (and kidults who are inexplicably still awake). Special guest is Nikki Grahame from Big Brother 7!

The Janice Dickinson Modelling Agency (Thursdays, 9pm, Living TV) Did Janice tell you she was the world's first super model? She was. She was the world's first supermodel. And now she's opening her own agency, which is bound to succeed, because, well, Janice was the world's first supermodel. She doesn't like to brag.

She is good. Very cutting but honest.

:)

Last week's column:

Trust me, I'm a television addict
Posted on FRI 22 SEPTEMBER, 1:45PM

Trust Me I'm a Holiday Rep

What we've learnt this week:

1. To truly enjoy Trust Me I'm a Holiday Rep (18-27 September, Five) - where celebs become holiday reps in Crete for ten days - first you must get into the mindset of a particularly stupid person and believe that Roland Rivron, Brandon Block and Nancy Lam all exist at a level of A-list mega-stardom, which means they never tie their own shoelaces, make toast, walk anywhere ever, etc. Only then can the show make sense.

"It's 10pm!" gurgles the voiceover as Roland puts his shoe on, "And our pampered celebs are having to tie their own shoelaces for a change! Imagine?! And there's no limo now to take them to the fun pub, which is 100 metres away. How will our celebrities manage without their chauffeurs?!"

If you keep frothing at the mouth shouting: "It's not bloody Sylvester Stallone! It's Roland Rivron - he's not even that famous!", this isn't the show for you.

2. Noel Sullivan from Hear'Say is so totally non-famous that when he got to Crete he just treated the job like a real summer job, setting about organising folk onto coaches visiting parrot parks and finding lost luggage with such boggle-eyed intensity that the crew eventually stopped filming him.

3. Other celebs weren't as helpful. If you're being kicked out of your holiday apartment at 9am and your flight isn't until 4am the following day, don't expect any love from Britain's premier female oriental chef and tawny owl impressionist Nancy Lam.

"You all get out of room now! Cleaner need in!" screeched Nancy, in a voice that must sound marvellous when you've sunk 18 flaming Slippery Nipples and fallen asleep on a lilo on the balcony only two hours previously.

4. Stroppy blonde 18-year-old Sam (ex-Hollyoaks) might be a bit of a brat, but she's a beacon of common sense compared to the real reps. "So they're going to make 40 people miss their flight because I'm not wearing my badge to the airport? Oh, OK then," she said, biting her lip.

The real reps really, really like rules. Especially the rules on uniform. Trying to convince a real rep that it's OK to wear the wrong-shaped earrings that contravene rules is like trying to talk someone out of the Children of God cult.

5. If there's no Trust Me I'm a Holiday Rep, I'm pitching a show called Block and Rivron: Trousered and Trouserless, where national treasures Brandon Block and Roland Rivron simply stagger about with big red noses and wine-stained teeth, insulting waiters, turning pots and pans into bongos, revolving their genitalia like windmills, then each week showering themselves with vomit. I'll begin by pitching to the people who made Calum, Fran and Dangerous Danan for ITV2.

This week's top ten slices of TV magic:

1. Matthew Crane, the 13-year-old baritone winning the grand final of Brian Conley's Let Me Entertain You (formerly weekdays, BBC2) by belting out Nessun Dorma, narrowly beating Mr Mouth the Human Beatbox. Please, please say there's a second series! A light has gone out in my life that Ainsley Harriott farting about with polenta on Ready Steady Cook cannot replace.

2. Geordie fishwife Girls Aloud's Cheryl Cole chucking a diva-like tantrum then eventually barfing hangover puke into an airport bin on T4's Girls Aloud: Off the Record (Sunday 17 September, Channel 4). If this is the footage the PR approved, she must be a real hoot in private.

I also loved the comments from the record execs as they watched the rushes of Girls Aloud's latest video and totted up which girl got the most camera time: "Oh, God. If that's only the first time we see Sarah," winced one, "then there's going to be trouble." (Note to stylist: someone needs to reboot Nicola, her hard drive has frozen.)

3. Move over, Frosties kid, there's a new annoying ad now currently playing on ITV every 15 minutes: (to the tune of Food Glorious Food)
"Chips, glorious chips!"
(Stage-school brat holds oven chip in air in wobbly lipped wonderment)
"Just how do they do it?"
(Stage-school brat is joined by 100 pirouetting chimney sweeps and flower girls waving sunflowers)
"Spuds! Sunflower oil! There's nothing else to it! Just wait til you hear the news! Writ large on the pack!"
(Crowd is joined by another zillion Victorian chip fanatics for big jazz-hands finale)
"And that's five per cent fat! Five per cent fat! Five per cent faaaaaaaaaat!"

4. Totally Boy Band began on MTV (Fridays), from the makers of Totally Scott-Lee. Making a bid for pop-comeback success: Bradley ex-S Club, Jimmy from 911, Lee ex-Steps, Dane Bowers from Another Level and Danny Wood from New Kids on the Block (who looks like an old John Travolta). Featuring my favourite reality-TV person ever: the scary woman from Concept Records who made Lisa Scott-Lee blub every week by telling her the truth.

5. GMTV (weekdays, ITV1) doing its own version of Who Do You Think You Are?, checking out the family trees of presenters but in under five minutes with no complicated words. Yesterday, Fiona Phillips: "Hello, I'm Fiona Phillips! And here is a gravestone that maybe is or isn't one of my relatives. And here's some certificates we haven't got time to look at and now here's Andrea with the weather!" Profound stuff.

6. Call-centre worker Connie winning Stepford Wives-style singing competition How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria? (Saturday 16 September, BBC1). The best bit was the summing up interviews with the mothers of Connie and runner-up Helena, where Helena's mum said she was surprised Helena decided to concentrate on singing because she used to think her daughter couldn't sing. Cheers, Mum.

7. "That's Numberwang!" Thank you to the totally brilliant That Mitchell and Webb Look (Thursdays, BBC2) for nailing precisely how all numeric game shows sound to number-phobic people like me. Just a burble of nonsense and buzzers: "Let's play Numberwang! Now, round two is the imaginary numbers round! Filth-hundred and neeb? Twentington? Yes! That's Numberwang!"

8. Gina Yashere carrying the whole Mobo Awards (Wednesday, BBC3) by herself for two hours by basically talking total nonsense to a deserted Albert Hall half-occupied with seat fillers from the local drama school. Celebrity guests included Aisleyne from Big Brother (dressed as Daisy Duke), Michelle Gayle and Kelle, who was once in Eternal.

9. Jamie Oliver standing in the kitchen of Kidbrook School (Jamie's Return to School Dinners, Monday 18 September, Channel 4), picking husks off a sprig of fresh rosemary for one of his school-dinner recipes, finding out from Nora that since her kitchen had stopped buying in turkey twangers they are £20,000 in deficit and the dinnerladies are working harder than ever. Good footage later of Tony Blair looking totally knackered, being told by Jamie Oliver that his promises were "a bit wet".

10. Wednesday night on Five. The best night for a mindless TV overdose at the moment. The Teen Tamer (small assertive therapist gets spat at and has stones chucked at her by minute Begbie off Trainspotting until little Timmy blubs and decides he just needs a huggy), MacIntyre's Big Sting, Swinging, Respectable, then Trust Me I'm a Holiday Rep. Pure couch-potato fodder.

TV I can't wait for: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin's new drama featuring Matthew Perry (Friends), Bradley Whiteford (The West Wing) and Nate Corddry (The Daily Show). Hugely hyped, slick and addictive drama about Hollywood TV execs behind the scenes of a fictional live comedy show. Think The West Wing meets The Larry Sanders Show. It's been bought by Channel 4 and is due to launch in the UK in spring 2007.
If you're over the age of 30 and awake at 8am on Saturday morning waiting for kids' TV, then it's time to have a word with yourself

Bleak TV moment of the week: The Janice Dickinson Modelling Agency

Five foot 11, thin, 18-year-old Lauren Wasser is weighed in front of 12 other models, agency bosses and a full reality-TV crew (The Janice Dickinson Modelling Agency, Thursday, Living TV). She's then yelled at for being fat. Then she's chucked out of the room. Then she's yelled at some more in private by Janice: "It's not coming off fast enough. I've given you two weeks," Janice shouts.

A personal trainer is called and he draws on the bum cheeks of the incredibly skinny girls with pens, telling them they're fat. Obviously, if they could lose this ounce and that tiny bit of womanly flesh, then they'd be more like 11-year-old boys and therefore perfect.

Theresa, a homeless young girl found wandering the streets whom Janice has magnanimously given a chance to be a model, is told bluntly to change her ugly nose. Janice arranges the young girl an appointment with a surgeon but when she doesn't turn up to lose half her nose she is fired for her bad attitude. The quicker Living TV takes some responsibility for its output and shelves this body-image warping crap the better.

TMi with Sam and Mark - everything you need to know:

1. TMi stands for Too Much Information.

2. TMi is the brand-new Saturday-morning BBC2 kids' SMTV Live/Ministry of Mayhem/8.15 from Manchester/"totally bonkers" kids' show.

3. If you can still remember the 8.15 from Manchester and for bonus points can tell me that the Inspiral Carpets did the theme tune, you're probably too old to watch TMi. The general rule is that if you're over the age of 30, don't have kids of your own, but are still very, very much awake at 8am on Saturday morning watching Transworld Sport waiting for the kids' TV, then it's time to have a word with yourself.

4. TMi isn't just a kids' show with gunge-chucking and silly games. It's a reality-TV show, too! Sam and Mark live in a house all week where they are filmed, erm, chucking gunge and playing silly games. Oh, and being visited by celebrity guests.

5. This week's guest was Chico. It was Chico Time! Chico was also on Proms in the Park and Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. Hell, who is Chico's agent?

6. Chico gave Sam and Mark some tips on how to woo Caroline Flack, their TMi co-host.

7. Caroline Flack isn't allowed to live in the reality house. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because she's a girl and she'll spoil it by wanting to do the place up and go to Ikea all the time.

8. Sam is the cheeky, cherub-cheeked, brown-haired one. Mark is the taller, burlier, short-haired, more laddish one. Let's get this straight now, people, before we have another Ant and Dec "no-one in the country knows which one is which" incident.

9. TMi is on BBC2 because kids' Saturday-morning TV has now been eroded from BBC1 and ITV so that Antony Womble Thompson and his buddies can debate the merits of couscous for hours on end.

10. TMi is just basically lots of chaos and shouting. Kids have always loved chaos and shouting. Until recently, they used to grow up and progress to real grown-up TV. Nowadays they just get older and watch Russell Brand's Got Issues, The Charlotte Church Show or The Friday Night Project; less intelligent versions of Wonky Donkey, Chums and Challenge Ant. Enjoy!

Documentary of the week: Guys and Dolls

Davecat from Michigan discussing his decision to fall in love with a £4,000 plastic doll called Sidore-Chan (Guys and Dolls, Monday 18 September, Five), whom he bought from a factory in California: "So currently I'm living with my parents. I think there's definitely a sense of disappointment for them. My father…well, he sees it as, y'know, 'unnatural'. I think the thing my father finds difficult about my relationship with Sidore-Chan is that she's, not, like, alive.

"As a result, Sidore-Chan spends 99% of her time in my room. It used to be like sex, sex, sex, sex…but now that's tapered off and we're just, like, there for each other."

Psychic TV - stuff I'm watching over the next seven days:

High School Musical - Friday 29 September, 6:00pm, Disney Channel
Growingly unavoidable tweenage global phenomenon. Grease meets West Side Story performed by Mouskerteer-sorts. Watch the musical, then buy the soundtrack, then learn the dance moves, then see the stage play, then visit the theme-park ride, etc. Coming to BBC1 at Christmas.

The New Paul O'Grady Show - Monday 25 September, 5:00pm, Channel 4
The real king of tea-time chat is back. Let's see how Sharon Osbourne fares now. It might inspire her to chuck out the chintz on that ghastly set.

The Return of Courtney Love, Wednesday 27 September, 9:00pm, More4
Courtney Love gives cameras exclusive access to her life in a bid to prove to everyone beyond doubt that she isn't completely bonkers.

Ladette to Lady, Thursday 28 September, 9:00pm, ITV1
Drinking, farting, swearing-Jayne-Kitt-from-BB7-type sasquatchs are held captive in a stately home then forced to make soufflé until they recant their thuggish beliefs.

Geordie fishwife Girls Aloud's Cheryl Cole chucking a diva-like tantrum then eventually barfing hangover puke into an airport bin on T4's Girls Aloud: Off the Record (Sunday 17 September, Channel 4). If this is the footage the PR approved, she must be a real hoot in private.

:lol:

Grace is good. :)

Love last Friday's as well! :D

You make me feel like dancin'
Posted on Fri 29 September, 2:05PM

High School Musical - a User's Guide

High School Musical (Friday 29 September, Disney Channel) is a Disney phenomenon. It's the fastest-selling TV-to-DVD movie of all time.

The plot involves a) a high school and B) hundreds of aesthetically sublime teenagers putting on a musical. Don't fret about the rest of the storyline; none of the writers did.

HSM is apparently "the new Grease". It's not really. In fact, you need to watch High School Musical to suddenly appreciate how rude Grease really was, filled with dirty sing-alongs about erections, lost virginities and dropping out of school.

In contrast, HSM has every tiny, possible iota of teen smut or sexiness blitzed from it with a large Disney antiseptic wet wipe, then doused with motivational propaganda about the value of "being individual", "following your heart" and "eternal friendship".

You'd be more offended watching old Cliff Richard videos on VH1 Classic. At least Cliff wore tight leather pants and went quite fast on his rollerboots through Milton Keynes shopping centre in the Wired for Sound video.

When watching HSM (which will happen eventually - it's playing again three more times on the Disney Channel this week with a karaoke version, then on BBC1 over Christmas, then again and again for ever unless you move to the moon), the following reactions are normal:

0-20 minutes - tut like an old person about how it is "certainly no Dirty Dancing". Make comments about "Nobody putting Baby in a corner" - get ignored by all young people in the room

20-40 minutes - suddenly realise you've got songs like Stick to the Status Quo, Bop to the Top and Getcha Head in the Game buzzing around your skull like a trapped hornet

40-60 minutes - start to feel genuinely edgy about whether hunky Troy will miss the big Wildcats football game to audition for Twinkle Town with Gabriella. And will his dad and team-mates forgive him?!

93rd minute - crying into your popcorn as 300 ecstatic toothy kids are dancing a grand choreographed finale called All in This Together accompanied by a marching band. Damn you, Disney.

Other TV moments to be thankful for this week:

Oh, thank you, God. Teatime chat king Paul O'Grady (The New Paul O'Grady Show, weekdays, Channel 4) is bright, bushy-tailed and back. Not another minute of The Sharon Osbourne Show could I endure. It's like being stuck at your evil aunt's house while she feigns insincere interest in your GCSE results.

I like Sharon Osbourne on The X Factor, but I'll never buy her "woman of the people" guise or her sympathetic whinnying over "real" guests ("My amazing tattoos!" "Doctors ordered me not to have kids as I'd die but I got knocked up five times!") There's a reason I don't watch Trisha.

I couldn't stomach Osbourne's adverts when she used to push a trolley around a famous supermarket tapping her pocket and mooching through the "Whoops!" section for cut-price pork tongue, either. "Oh, fabulous! Twenty-eight pence off Cheese Strings! This will help Chef! Things have been tight since we extended the pool cabana. And only £3 for Big Momma's House on DVD, too! Bargain."

In contrast, I know Paul O'Grady has an equally starry home life. I know he knocks about with Cilla and is often snapped nipping into the Ivy with Elton, but for the purposes of 5pm-6pm on Channel 4 he's just Lily Savage in a sharp suit; self-deprecating, sarcastic, spontaneous and common as muck.

This week Babs Windsor was chatting to O'Grady about EastEnders. Within seconds talk had dissolved into a gloriously indiscreet tale of the pair getting so drunk during a celebrity episode of Ready Steady Cook they staggered down the street home and were both ill for three days.

"I can't do anything any more," drawled O'Grady, "Early nights. Can't drink… I think to meself: where are the raves? I should be spinning on my back in Covent Garden now covered in vomit. It's terrible." Stay well, Paul - I missed you.

Compare and contrast:

Courtney Love (The Return of Courtney Love, Wednesday 27 September, More4) on spirituality: "These are the things I chant for. A perfect home, perfect man, staying sober, health for my friends in Hollywood. A movie by 1 July. Kurt. Lindsay Lohan. Kate Moss. Having a baby with the perfect man who treats me well. Horses. Dogs. Pets."

"I've been a Christian. I've been a Catholic. I've been totally new age. I've been Episcopalian. I've tried Scientology. And I find Buddhism is just the most amazing transcending path to enlightenment. It absolutely works. You sit at your altar, chant for s**t and you get it."

Edina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous (UKTV Gold) on spirituality: Eddie: "Saffie, sweetie, you wouldn't say that about Buddhism if you knew how much we owe to my chanting, darling. Lots of things in this house, this house wouldn't be here, darling. I chanted for this gorgeous house. Chanted to be successful and believe in myself darling!… [aside] "Ting ting ting, please, let me make some more money so I can buy Saffron some more books and a car…ting ting ting…"

Ladette to Lady

My favourite genre of reality TV - because I watch so much I divide it into sub-categories - is "non-celebrity redemption". I love shows like Bad Lads Army, Teen Tamer and Intervention: We're Coming to Get You: normal people behaving appallingly, then going through a Road to Damascus-style conversion, with a TV camera halfway up their nose recording the weeping.

Basically, after a tough day of hearing about senseless killing in Iraq, Darfur and Canning Town, I want to watch feel-good telly with the message that, deep down, normal people are all right. Even the most pinch-faced hoodie wishes his mum was more proud of him. People who live on Pop Tarts and penny chews who do poos that make Dr Gillian McKeith's eyes smart can repent and learn to love Alfalfa sprouts. That sort of thing.

We're only one episode of ITV1's Ladette to Lady (Thursdays) in and it's already on my Sky+. It's soothing to watch someone stand up successfully to the "ladettes"; a bunch of teenage girls ten years after "girl power" whose own brand of post-feminism involves licking their own nipples in public, pole dancing in their local pub (uninvited), shouting about their piercings, then vomiting two-for-one shooters into the gutter.

It's fun watching them lock horns with the snooty old etiquette experts at Eggleston Hall in their green tweed and pearls. "Why would you brag that you sleep with a different man every night? Why would you tell anyone that you have a piercing between your legs? You are so inebriated that you cannot speak! You are vile! Go to your room!"

The beauty of Ladette to Lady is how the subjects clearly arrive on day one assuming the show to be as throwaway and daft as the audience and TV critics do. Then, as the first Neanderthal sobs into her pillow squealing "But I wanna change! I wanna stop punching people in the streeeet for lookin' at me funny!", something more magical takes hold.

(Saying that, I spent ten nights last month riveted by Roland Rivron ironing his Olympic Holidays rep trousers bickering about washing up with Paul Burrell, so my quality-control gauge may be faulty.)

Psychic TV

The Day of the Triffids - Sci-Fi, 9:00pm
Well deserved re-run of the terrifying 80s cult sci-fi series about a world takeover by massive disgruntled yucca plants.

Celebrity Wife Swap - Monday 2 October, 9:00pm, Channel 4
Former Conservative battleaxe Edwina Currie moves in with John McCririck and attempts to stamp out his habit of lying about naked in bed guzzling large vats of curry. A good day to begin the pre-Christmas diet.

Showbiz Darts - Monday 2 October, 10:30pm, Challenge
Stars of screen are trained by legendary darts players Andy Fordham and Bobby George to compete in a nightly darts tournament! Featuring: James "the Galloping Major" Hewitt, Holly "Hard to Beat" Willoughby, Phil "the Cat" Tufnell, Michael "Spirit" Le Vell (Kevin Webster off Corrie), Johnny "the Saint" Vegas, Keith "Cheggers" Chegwin, Vicki "the Vixen" Butler Henderson and Rowland "Right Here" Rivron.

Trinny and Susannah Undress - Tuesday 3 October, 8:00pm, ITV1 Unsatisfied with meddling with people's wardrobes, Statler and Waldorf cast their nets further to encompass marriage counselling and sex therapy. Suddenly all the boob groping doesn't seem so bad.

' ... Not another minute of The Sharon Osbourne Show could I endure. It's like being stuck at your evil aunt's house while she feigns insincere interest in your GCSE results.

I like Sharon Osbourne on The X Factor, but I'll never buy her "woman of the people" guise or her sympathetic whinnying over "real" guests ("My amazing tattoos!" "Doctors ordered me not to have kids as I'd die but I got knocked up five times!") There's a reason I don't watch Trisha.

I couldn't stomach Osbourne's adverts when she used to push a trolley around a famous supermarket tapping her pocket and mooching through the "Whoops!" section for cut-price pork tongue, either. "Oh, fabulous! Twenty-eight pence off Cheese Strings! This will help Chef! Things have been tight since we extended the pool cabana. And only £3 for Big Momma's House on DVD, too! Bargain." ...

LOL @ Sharon Osbourne rematks.Once again, Grace Dent is spot on.

:)

Last week's:

Doing it for the kids
Posted on Fri 6 October 12:40pm

The X Factor - "boot camp" rounds

As 180 acts are slashed to just 24 in The X Factor (Saturdays, ITV1), Sharon Osbourne is being assisted in the over-25s group by vocal coach Mark Hudson; a man with a silly turquoise beard dressed like Bertie Bassett. (Mark's face-fungus anomaly is never explained. Maybe like my cat he's hellbent on drinking from the toilet when someone's just put in a fresh-flush cube.)

Sharon's boot camp is full of tear-jerking tales. There's "blown-up-by-a-bomb" woman and "my-mum's-dead-ill-and-I'm-her-carer" bloke. Next to them there's "I-broke-my-spine-but-watch-me-shimmy-to-Kylie" lady, and a scary Brummie woman who cries a lot as her poor kiddies have never experienced life "in a big house with electric gates".

"Doing it all for me kiddies" is a common X Factor drone (patented by Kym Marsh in the Nigel Lythgoe Popstars era). I wish people would just be honest and say: "I'm doing this cos of my pig-headed urge to stand on a raised platform and murder Show Me Heaven by Maria McKee in every enormodome in Britain on the X Factor tour. I've no idea how "me kiddies" fit into that.

Sharon's final eight include Katie, 44, who we're reminded in tragic tones every five minutes has "worked at the same factory for 20 years" and Kerry, 31, a chirpy, determined lady in a wheelchair whose main disability seems to be the producers playing Kate Bush's This Woman's Work mournfully in the background whenever she appears.

Simon Cowell, supervising the under-24s, puts through Shaun, 16, a child who's never yet managed to sing a whole song without dissolving into terrified blubbing (and when he does squeeze out a line sounds like Orville after a heavy punishment beating by Cuddles).

Louis Walsh is mentoring the groups. He puts through my current top X Factor favourites: Scouse boyband Eaton Road (a Brian Molko from Placebo looky-likey and three camp boys in vests). Louis also puts through the Unconventionals, a seven-piece middle-England a cappella group, who bing and bong their way through Queen hits with ghoulish glee.

Obviously, none of this matters, as 20-year-old pretty boy Ashley with the long afro from Simon's group will win anyway. Bulletin over.

The Day of the Triffids - Earth bullied by uppity aspidistras

I first watched the eerie BBC drama The Day of the Triffids (Sunday 1 October, Sci-Fi) as a little girl in the 1980s. It terrified me so much that I've always had a sense of disquiet around potted yuccas ever since.

The plot is simple: one night in London a fantastic meteor shower rains down. All the Earthling fools rush into the streets to watch. The next day, the entire world wakes up blind and the Earth is being terrorised by filthy nine-feet-high mutant orange orchids with flappy soil feet and protruding stingy parts.

I was mentally scarred by The Day of the Triffids. Even today when people are getting excited about an eclipse or a comet, I feel an urge to shout, "Oh, go on then, idiots, everybody stare at it! Don't come crying to me when there's a giant vexed peace lily sitting in Downing Street using Tony Blair's head as a paperweight!"

Revisiting the drama again on the Sci-Fi channel hasn't helped. I'd forgotten the clackety-clack sound triffids make as they shuffle along asthmatically. Or how unbelievably patient triffids are when they want to kill you. Honestly, a triffid could spend four days loitering outside a phonebox waiting to slap you silly. What else has it got to be? It's a bloody triffid. It doesn't have other hobbies.

A chink of light relief comes in episode six when, after months of hiding in a creepy cottage our hero Bill Masen and girlfriend Josella jump in their Land Rover and escape to the seaside. "But are we safe here, Bill?" cries Josella. "Yeah, they can't move on pebbles," says Bill. This makes me feel a lot better. If, after the next solar eclipse, triffids do appear, let's all move to Bognor.

(Not so) Dear John - Celebrity Wifeswap

After the titles rolled on John McCririck's flabby arms poking over his curry-stained duvet (Monday 2 October), his turkey neck flushing red with anger while Edwina Currie sobbed on a step downstairs, the Channel 4 voiceover begged for more Wifeswap victims.

"Would you like to appear on Wifeswap?" it cried. "Just call the number below!" Oddly, despite the bleak way both the Curries and the McCriricks were shown, I know legions of people will have still picked up their phones begging production company RDF to enter their lives.

Because the fact is, nobody ever signs up for Wifeswap believing they'll be the show's weirdo family. Deep down, we all feel our household routine is beyond reproach. In fact, at some level, we feel we'd be doing the British public a great service by sharing it.

No woman imagines that her tidiness could come across like OCD. Or being laissez faire about housework and a "friend to her kids" will edit down to look like Waynetta Slob and her feral urchins. Or, in Edwina Currie's case, that letting your husband cook the evening meal will make him akin to an emasculated mouse.

In the show's history, the only Wifeswapper who appears to have understood RDF's agenda is John McCririck. For a lucrative fee, McCririck is more than content to ham up his role as a shouting, sexist, sociopathic oaf in a dysfunctional home, troughing all his meals naked in bed while wife "Booby" acts as gopher/slave. Writer Toby Young says he was offered £20,000 by RDF for a swap with Jade Goody, so I can only imagine McCririck's wage was just as lucrative. And rightly so: entertainment-wise McCririck earned every penny.

Of course, McCririck's behaviour isn't wholly an act. We've seen it all too many times before: the piggyness, the bullying, the obsession with diet coke and ice and his nasty humourless remarks about Booby.

What was new here was seeing how content Booby really is. In Booby's new role as temporary Edwina, the clever woman bashed out a Daily Mirror column then fielded a Radio London interview with grand aplomb, before scurrying back to the kitchen sighing that she's happier peeling spuds. "I made my choice not to do that sort of stuff," she says.

In the head-to-head meeting, "meek" little Booby screams like a banshee at Edwina for daring to mistreat poor wickle McCririck. "How could you treat my husband this way!" she rants, while McCririck sits sulking in his daft fez, bottom lip jutting out like a giant helpless baby pigeon waiting for worms.

For all McCririck's famous soundbites about stupid, thick, useless women, what we've learned is that he's helpless without one. He can't cook, shop, drive, run his diary, or even be trusted to remember to pick up his own coat in a public place.

The error Edwina Currie made was trying to turn up in his world and "improve" him; because it seems McCririck is happy to live virtually all of his life in his bed not talking to anyone.

If I was his wife, that would seem the most favourable option to me.

You Can't Beat a Bit of Bully - Showbiz Darts

Any enjoyment of Challenge TV's Showbiz Darts (Monday) depends on two things:

1) Loving darts so much you're prepared to watch Johnny Vegas and Phil Tufnell playing duff darts for half-hour sessions without jokes
2) Loving mindless late-night reality TV so much you'll happily turn up at work zombified through exhaustion due to staying up watching Roland Rivron drinking lager

As someone who savoured every episode of last month's Trust Me I'm a Holiday Rep, I'm guilty of one of the above. In fact, a big drama for me on Trust Me I'm a Holiday Rep was Roland Rivron quitting three episodes early due to a "prior arrangement", before showing up this week as a competitor on Showbiz Darts.

Yes, I've now reached a stage with reality TV where the nadir of my excitement is when the reality-TV celeb quits the show halfway through to go and film another celebrity reality show. I don't think this is a good thing.

Anyhow, I'm not hooked on Showbiz Darts. Greater than my fear of triffids is my fear of lumpen blokes with tiny heads poking out of the tops of their shiny acrylic darts shirts, counting backwards from 501.

If you love darts, love Johnny Vegas shouting and think Holly Willoughby is so sweetly pretty you could watch her throwing arrows vaguely near a dartboard till kingdom come, this is the show for you. Me, not so much.

But, I really hope someone is watching Showbiz Darts, because I sat up until 1am recently glued to Showdog Moms and Dads on Living TV 2 and this would be my unique chance to feel culturally superior.

Psychic TV

Brotherhood - Monday 9 October, 11:00pm, FX
Moody, Irish-American Sopranos-style drama about gangsters, corrupt politicians and people attacking each other with shovels.

Birth Night… Live - Sunday 8 October, 8:00pm, Five
The nation's first live televised birth. About as real as reality TV gets.

The Town That's Looking for Love - Wednesday 11 October, 10:00pm, Channel 4
Documentary about 21-year-old Vince's lonely-hearts campaign to attract women to his hometown of Alston in Cumbria.

Extreme Makeover Monday 9 October, 10:00pm, Living TV 2
Brand-new series of the hit show that gives lucky participants the chance to go through rhinoplasty, liposuction, tummy tucks, face lifts, teeth capping and a number of other painful procedures before living in a hotel covered in bandages for months in a bid to look acceptable to humankind.

And here's last week's. :)

Send in the clowns
Posted on Fri 20 October, 12:30pm
When it comes to Z-list reality shows, I think Five has the right approach. It films shows like Trust Me I'm a Beauty Therapist (weeknights, Five) on the cheap, months in advance, barely publicises them, then literally farts them out just before midnight like it really doesn't care.

"This show's a bit rubbish," it seems to groan, "But give it a go and it might make you laugh." Sure enough, in a sleepy pre-bed fug we tune in accidentally, catch John Alford grappling with Stan Boardman's blackheads and end up engrossed 11 nights on the trot.

No-one promises us it's Bafta-worthy telly, so when we tune in and see Lauren Harries (Britain's premier antiques expert/child prodigy/goggle-eyed post-op transsexual) undulating in her itsy-bitsy lemon bikini before pulling the hairs out of some poor lady volunteer's mufty, we hardly feel short-changed. "It's chewing gum for the eyes," as Father Ted used to say.

Meanwhile, over in Burkina Faso there are probably indigenous people farming the Zoundwéogo Province who've heard the unavoidable hype about Sky One's Cirque du Celebrité (Saturdays, Sundays, Sky One). "This is completely the best show in the world ever!" screams the general gist of the promo spiel. One big top! Twelve celebrities! (Zammo from Grange Hill, Sinitta, Kenzie etc) Watch as the stars are pushed to the absolute peak of fear as they learn death-defying stunts, then perform them live in front of a big top full of other stars!

They needed to be quick, mind. By the first ad break Simon Cowell has done a runner leaving a smoking audience seat, while Vanessa Feltz and Carol (not so) Smillie check their watches with faces of purest thunder. It's almost as if spending three hours on a fresh October night in a drafty tent watching Handy Andy wheeze his way round a static trapeze in a spandex unitard isn't floating their boats at all.

Meanwhile, Ruby Wax's links sound like they've been written in Japanese then put through some buggy translation software. "Please to welcome…yes, another celeb-eri-tee, into the ring for your pleasure…after another comment from the judges?…Oh, no, we go now to a break! Hello. Yes?" Wax yells, clutching her ear with her back to the camera.

I ended up feeling a bit sorry for BB7's arch-bitch Grace Adams-Short. "Please accept me!" her eyes squeal as the announcement of her recent engagement to Mikey Dalton is greeted with negative chunterings or indifference. "This is a chance for people to see the real me!" she gushes, clearly gullible as well as mean. Grace, we saw the real you every day for 60 days last summer. I don't think twirling a Hula Hoop wearing Eddie Izzard's make-up will help you now.

"And to…yes, now!" yells Ruby Wax at the close of the show, "We have something what is known as…yes!…Very special. The celeb-eri-tees will form a human pyramid!" All 12 celebrities run out into the ring and do a little dance to I'm Still Standing by Elton John. At no point do they ever form a human pyramid. If this show is still here in 12 weeks' time I will cook my own Sky+ box with a cheese gratin and enjoy it with a nice bottle of peach Lambrini.

I watched the documentary Who Is the Real Jennifer Lopez? right to the end last night hoping she might really be someone exciting like Lord Lucan, but sadly not

Bored in the USA

Two new channels popped up this week courtesy of Five. American import channel Five US and lifestyle channel Five Life. Life appears to cater for yummy mummies, cranking up at 6:00am with a full day of kids' programmes (Tickle, Patch and Friends, Elmo's World) then at 2:00pm, just in time for mum's first large gin and tonic, there's Trisha then The Ellen Degeneres Show, plus loads of repeats of Five lifestyle shows, although no mention yet of Keith Chegwin's naturist quiz show Naked Jungle. Disappointing. I watched the documentary Who Is the Real Jennifer Lopez? right to the end last night hoping she might really be someone exciting like Lord Lucan, but sadly not.

No sign on the schedule either of soft-porn series The Red Shoe Diaries, which must have been aimed at women because every week it was some dippy bird having a fantasy about being carried across a beach by some body builder in a tuxedo with a curly-at-the-back mullet while the hits of Kenny G blared from behind a nearby sand dune. I live in hope.

Five and Five Life is all about Make Me a Supermodel right now; yet another one of those totally brain-zappingly pointless "model search" shows where teenagers are stuck in a house and shouted at by fashion "experts" and told they'll never ever be a model because they can't climb up a rope ladder in their underpants, balance two pineapples on their head in a wetsuit or a million other stupid tests that have literally sod all to do with becoming a working model and all to do with being exploited for their naivety and tears by TV crews. I loathe "find me a model" shows.

Over on Five US, the butch manly channel, you can watch every culmination of CSI going, cowering somewhere behind their ginormous channel ident. "We'll bring you the very best of American television" is their mission statement, which is basically an absolutely fib as the hottest, newest US imports such as Ugly Betty, Brothers and Sisters, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip have all been acquired by Channel 4 for January 2007 onwards. In fact, I rooted through the next two weeks of Five US scheduling and all I wanted to record on my Sky+ box was Young Guns, because in the absence of The Red Shoe Diaries, I'd settle for Emilio Estevez sweating in a big hat. Still, early days for Five US, so I'm sure it will find its feet.

The last laugh: That Mitchell and Webb Look

My faith has been restored in British comedy of late. I loved That Mitchell and Webb Look (14 September-19 October, BBC2). It was probably some of the cleverest, most original stuff I've giggled at since A Bit of Fry and Laurie. One-off sketches about dentists and cavemen (that defy brief explanation) mixed with regulars like Numberwang, the p****d snooker commentators and supported by the fantastic Olivia Colman, made it one of my top shows of 2006 so far. I hope they repeat it soon.

I'm also loving Lead Balloon (Fridays, BBC4/Thursdays, BBC2) mostly for Magda, Rick Spleen's (Jack Dee) depressed Eastern European housekeeper and her commentary on airy-fairy British living: "What is driving test? In my country we buy licence. Cigarette, alcohol…butter."

Also wonderful is Rasmus Hardiker playing Ben, the feckless teenage boyfriend. Hardiker is one of my favourite British actors at the moment. As he showed when he stole every scene in Steve Coogan's Saxondale (19 June-31 July, BBC2), no-one can do "teenager" as accurately as him, with his unwashed beanie and small satellite delay before every response. Also brilliant lately was brothel comedy Respectable on Five (30 August-4 October) and lastly, not TV but hopefully coming to TV very soon, The Museum of Everything on BBC Radio 4 (27 July-31 August).

Thank heavens Britain's back in the game comedywise. Because what on earth happened to Extras?

Psychic TV - stuff I'll be watching next week (among many others):

Stop Treating Me Like a Kid - Tuesday 24 October, E4
Hoodies are left home alone to see if they're so bloody clever. Stop shouting at them, they didn't ask to be born.

True Stories: KZ - Wednesday 25 October, More4
What's it like being a tour guide at an ex-concentration camp? What do they sell in the giftshop?

The Best and Worst Places to Live in the UK - Thursday 26 October, Channel 4
Kirsty's sister Sofie Allsopp and Phil Spencer have a sneer round grottsville before sloping off back to Battersea.

I don't often disagree with her but I think Grace is being rather harsh about the Cirque de Celebrite show.

Nevertheless I love her column. :)

Don't worry Eddy, she's got a new target this week! ;)

Dirty Old Town
Posted on Fri 27 October, 12:45pm
"It's bleak here!" announces Phil Spencer, standing beside a filthy, graffiti-daubed council block, mangled shopping trolleys and bags of rubbish (The Best and Worst Places to Live in the UK, 26 October, Channel 4).

Images of urchin kids, tramps and the indolent unemployed fill my TV screen to depict charming Newham in London, the fourth worst place to live in the UK, apparently. "And this is based on facts and figures, not simple prejudice!" Phil adds.

That's weird. I live in Newham and it doesn't feel like that to me at all. Saying that, I own a house on one of the many thousand unremarkable, nicely kept Newham streets far too boring to be shown. If I'd known Phil was coming I'd have stuck on a vest and some stained shellsuit bottoms, drank two litres of white cider, wet myself, then pulled wheelies on a mini-motorbike up and down the main road. I'd hate Phil to get here, see all the nice people going off to work and school who aren't on drugs or dying of diabetes in this "health hell hole", and feel disappointed.

I suppose the brilliant thing about living where Phil from Location, Location, Location terms as "the best place to make a swift exit" is that at least he's put a certain type of person off investing here. I'm talking about the excruciating tosspots who appear every week on his show looking for a home. "Jemima and Guy have a cool £985,000 to play with!" purrs Phil. "How?!" I always shout, "How do they have £985,000 to play with?! They're about 30 years old! How does that happen?"

"Jemima dreams of a five-bedroom property in Winchester that she can renovate and run a small internet business from, selling candles made of organic beeswax. Guy, who is a city high-flyer, wants a crash pad in central London where he can live five nights a week. I think we can help them out!" For the following hour, Jemima and Guy sigh their way through various idyllic mansions, rejecting all of them for not having an Aga, the babbling brook being too noisy, or the penthouse being too far from Bond Street where Guy likes to pick up his shirts.

Sadly, now, Jemima and Guy will never come to Newham. Good! Stay away! We don't want you here. Neither do the people of Manchester (which is apparently a hell-hole unless you happen to own a £650k apartment in the old Hacienda nightclub), and nor do the good, decent folk of Middlesborough, Nottingham and Hackney.

Oh, sorry, not Hackney, "Crapney" as Phil claims Londoners call it. Can I just go on record saying that I have lived in London for over ten years (and have hung about Hackney for all of them) and have never, ever heard anyone call it Crapney. That piece of info wasn't based on facts and figures, Phil, it was based on simple prejudice.

The thing that annoys me most about this show is the constant mantra that if you're stuck in a UK blackspot - say you're that person in the graffiti flat in the nastier part of Crapney beside the broken shopping trolleys - then you should simply leave. Little Miss Posh Sofie Allsopp must have said it a hundred times last night, without ever explaining exactly how people ingrained in poverty can go anywhere at all.

It must be nice to live in a world of infinite possibility. A world where if you don't like your home you can simply go somewhere better. Or if you don't have any experience of being a TV property pundit you can walk into a primetime TV job standing in for your sister. Next week I might go to the pub and get really drunk, in that case TVOD will be written by my brother David in Carlisle, who has no journalistic experience whatsoever and actually doesn't watch that much telly, though does have the same surname as me so that's OK. Enjoy.

The kids weren't picked for their bad behaviour, but more for being brilliant examples of the dilemma of "teenagerdom"

The kids are alright

According to TV today, it feels as if there are two sorts of teens in Britain: the ones who have ASBOs, wear the crutch of their pants at knee level and shout stuff like, "Give me a fiver, you fat b***h!", or alternatively, the ones who wear nice pullovers, enter the Question Time schools' competition and appear on Sky News leaping for joy after gaining 11 A*s at GCSE. Until E4's Stop Treating Me like a Kid (Tuesdays) there's not been much middle ground.

Throwing eight 16-year-olds in a house together, then leaving them to get jobs and run their own lives sounds like a recipe for carnage, Indeed, the trailer did show shouting, crying and the chucking of chairs - but if you give the show a chance, it's far more rewarding than that.

There's good, interesting case studies here; like Suzie Dowling, a home-schooled girl who has never been away from her mum before, Elliot Steer, a thoughtful emo kid who looks and acts about 35, and Tanique, a headstrong Essex girl who immediately sets herself up as house bank manager to the teens' annoyance.

The kids weren't picked for their bad behaviour, some of them are really nice, but more for being brilliant examples of the dilemma of "teenagerdom". Being on the cusp of adulthood, pleading to be treated like a grown-up, but then expecting mum to have your chicken dinosaurs and potato UFOs on the table by 5pm prompt before driving you to a party.

Beau Keef from Bethnal Green, a hip-hop kid (who is the hinterland between Abs from Five and Frank Spencer), is a good example of this; he relies on his mum for everything. Just watching Beau and his housemates try and feed themselves from the local village shop is riveting. Never before have so many pickled-onion spaceships and spready cheese triangles been bought and consumed in one house in the name of "dinner".

The moment of the week in episode one has to be Jonny Derbyshire, the tiny Manchester "no-hoper" turning up at the local farm for a job and being roped in straight away to the birthing of a cow. "It were just there! It's face was sticking out, so I pulled it and it came out of the cow's bum!" he told anyone who would listen, with tears in his eyes. It was almost as if for the first time he'd realised that there was a far bigger, more interesting world out there that he'd ever imagined.

The most notable thing about the kids, though, is that they're actually really well behaved. Because, the last thing I thought to do when I was 16 and home alone with my parents' drinks cabinet was play Blind Man's Buff.

True stories: KZ

There have been hundreds of documentaries about the Holocaust. The details, for me at least, never become any easier to endure or comprehend. However, this film (25 October, More4) about the everyday life of rural Austrian town Mauthausen, home of a concentration camp where people of 30 nations were tortured and killed, was simply remarkable.

Instead of dealing solely with the atrocities in the camp, KZ examined the town of Mauthausen in 2006 and questioned whether life really moves on. We meet the young marrieds living in former SS officers' houses, who jog and mountain bike every day through fields where 20,000 Hungarian Jews perished. And we meet the older residents who still recall the sights, sounds and smells of a living camp in their back gardens.

We also meet the Mauthausen residents working as tour guides at the camp, who spend every day roaming the gas chambers and punishment blocks. It clearly takes a dark emotional toll on them. And with no voiceover leading the way, we're left to draw our own conclusions over whether any of the community is really happy to live there, and if we've learned any lessons at all. If only all documentaries could be this powerful.

Psychic TV - next week I'll be watching:

Unanimous - Friday 27 October, Channel 4
Big Brother meets Deal or No Deal. Nine contestants are shut in an underground bunker and have to decide who wins a cash prize of £1 million.

George Clinton: Tales of Dr Funkenstein - Friday 27 October, BBC4
Don Letts's profile of the godfather of funk, whose 50-year career has inspired many. Contributions from fellow complete fruitcakes Macy Gray and Outkast's Andre 3000.

666: Searching for Satan - Saturday 28 October, Living TV
Living TV's in-depth exploration into the work of Beelzebub and all his tiny heinous goblins. I'm hoping this might shed some light on Coronation Street's David Platt.

Last week's. :)

Too sad to bear
Posted on Fri 10 November, 15:05PM

Planet Earth

"Planet Earth's back. And it's polar bears. I love polar bears!" I chirped last week, like a total mug. Well, I watched Planet Earth part two on Sunday (5 November, BBC1), thank you, Mr Attenborough, and it did not make me happy.

In fact, it made me more suicidal than the last series of Planet Earth when the baby elephant got confused in the Namibian desert and began trekking the wrong way down a parched river channel to a chargrilled demise, with a bleak orchestral score playing in the background.

I was haunted by that elephant for a week. I can't even discuss the exhausted polar bear/walrus situation. It's still too raw. If I could've jumped in myself and strangled a walrus with my bare hands, I would have done.

Maybe I anthropomorphise animals too much? I was just thinking that today as I put a little tweed jacket on my cat and we practised his unicycle act. Perhaps I just can't face the truth about global warming. Or maybe after a weekend of The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and endless Friends re-runs it's just a shock to be actually made to think.

I wish that after Planet Earth, there was a light BBC3 extra-footage show called Planet Earth: Far Out, where Claudia Winkleman goes behind the scenes and interviews the animals and assures us that none really curled up on a rock and died of hunger during filming. I want to know that when the cameras stopped, the polar bear got his appearance fee and began larking about again in sunglasses drinking Cresta. I wish that was the case.

The X Factor

There's too much suffering in the world. That said, I'd rather be a polar bear than Björn Ulvaeus from Abba on the X Factor last Saturday (4 October, ITV1) listening to his entire back catalogue being pillaged by those honking, tuneless gorgons.

My theory is that Björn could have been slipped Rohypnol by the researchers to stop him storming the stage during the MacDonald Brothers' version of Fernando yelling "Schttttop! Schttttop! You are killing my songs with your atonal bleating! Dis is worse than Mamma Mia!"

Still, whatever the MacDonalds' crimes, they live another week. As does Ben, thank God, as Britain is crying out for an Andrew Strong from The Commitments sound-a-likey quacking his way through Mustang Sally like someone who's been drinking two-for-one bourbon at a chain-pub balti night.

And, of course, we've still got bloody simpering nicey-nice Leona reverberating her way through each note, looking a lot like Whitney Houston if Whitney had got into Scientology.

Swing-tastic Ray is also still there, getting more orange and oily by the show. Being forced to sing Waterloo by Abba last week didn't set him back, did it? Ooh, no, he just sang Ain't That a Kick in the Head anyway, sticking in odd noodly riff about "Napoleon, ooh! He did surrender! Be-bop, yeah!" while showing off his spats and flipping jazz hands. When he gets kicked out tomorrow, Alton Towers should hire him to chase folk through the haunted house.

Actually, Ray probably won't get kicked out. Clearly, I know nothing. I wrote that little fluffy-haired pop-twinkie Ashley would definitely win, and now he's gone. Saying that, I wrote that Lea would win Big Brother 7. I told everyone Maggot was a safe bet for Celebrity Big Brother. I pity the fool who gets Matt Willis in the I'm a Celebrity office sweepstake as I'm backing him, too. I'm withholding any comment on the group who really have my heart, Eton Road, as I fear I may be jinxed. Ray to win!

Too Big to Walk

I admire the staying power of anyone who made it through all three episodes of Too Big To Walk (6, 7 ,8 November, Channel 4), where a group of 20-stone+ folk went on a 500-mile trek in a bid to lose weight and "find themselves". The non-stop moaning, whining and petty squabbles between Hayley, Vince and the gang, despite the odd moment of humour, was all rather gruelling. More importantly, the longer I watched, the more I sided with the walkers and not the experts about the sanity of the task.

These are people who average 25 stone in weight, do no exercise whatsoever and admittedly have no willpower at all when it comes to food. They eat for comfort to banish loneliness and, more than anything, because they are addicted to salty and sugary snacks.

Suddenly, their daily routine of 12,000+ cals of fat, refined carbs and hiding in the house is swapped for a meagre calorie-controlled chicken wrap and a 15-mile walk down highroads where people shout "fat b*****ds" out of vans at them on a regular basis.

"Did you see the venom in that bloke's face?" says Vince as he treks along bewildered and hungry on a route that takes him past every clotted-cream scone and fried chicken joint in the Monmouth area. Eventually he pops in for a snack, to the cameras delight.

I start to feel rather cross. Of course the walkers are going to be in a constant bad mood. Who wouldn't when cold-turkeying off huge quantities of sugar, fat and caffeine, being made to get freezing wet and suffer foot blisters?

They were bound to slip up and eat: if I'd been jeered at for five hours in the cold I'd find a quiet café and have a plate of egg and chips, too. Every so often the expert in charge, Matt, shows up to shout furiously about their lack of weight loss. "But, Matt, I can't walk for hours on just one small chicken wrap. I actually feel so hungry that I feel sick," says 25-stone Hayley, "Do you know what I mean?" "No!" shouts Matt, "I don't know what you mean."

If the little pumped-up Tom Cruise lookalike, Matt, had shown maybe an iota of compassion instead of total incredulity that the stupid task was falling flat on its arse, then I may have been more hooked.

I'm pitching an idea to Channel 4 this afternoon called Backpack Full of Crack, where I take crackheads away from their dealers, make them go cold turkey then encourage them to them trek for 500 miles in the rain past the crackhouses from Glasgow to Bristol to see if they can "triumph over adversity". Fingers crossed.

Dom Joly's Happy Hour

Further TV-examining addiction and over-indulgence is Dom Joly's Happy Hour (Tuesdays, Sky One), which purports to be an investigation into the world's relationship with alcohol. I say "purports" as Joly makes no bones about this actually being a contrived plan to let him and his best mate Pete cure the mid-life crisis blues by travelling the globe getting blasted on drink, dressing up as Miami Vice characters, tormenting red necks and having a right old laugh.

The opening scene of Dom Joly's first Happy Hour sees Dom and Pete receiving the call from Sky One's commissioning editor before laughing like drains at their jammy fortune.

If it was anyone else other than Joly presenting, I'd be scratching the sofa arms in fury at the shameless squandering of cash. Yet with Dom Joly I'm cheering him on, as he's endlessly, watchably good. I loved last year's Dom Joly's Excellent Adventure, where Dom and Pete revisited Dom's childhood haunts all over the Lebanon, eventually finding a cave he scrawled his name on as a little boy.

The magic of Dom Joly's travelogues is that in foreign, alien and often frightening situations, he's exactly his same, boorish, high-volume yet sweetly affable self. You know that intimidating shack full of locals playing a weird card game that you'd never dare go into as a traveller? Dom Joly will stride in there, order a beer and hold court in a manner not dissimiliar to his Trigger Happy mobile-phone character.

I learnt loads about Beirut from his excellent adventure, and next week him and Pete are off to Russia to explore how the Russians consume 80% of the world's vodka. Unless they get too hammered and forget.

Psychic TV

Next week I will mostly be watching I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here 2006 on ITV (and not feeling very proud about it).

I'm loving her I'm a Celeb comments. :D

It's like a jungle sometimes
Posted on Fri 17 November, 12:05pm
I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! - recap

It's week one of I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! 2006 (daily, ITV1) and six vaguely recognisable faces, plus four others who need a stiff Google search to identify them, are deposited in outback Oz.

These are:

Toby Anstis
Anstis was last spotted on Five's All Star Talent Show shuffling about pointing his finger to Justin Timberlake's SexyBack like a Triffid in a work-out vest. Currently he is getting the glad eye off Jan Leeming who thinks he's the ultimate alpha male. "But I have a girlfriend!" he cries, the tease, before whipping off his undies, soaping his undercarriage in a nearby waterfall, then doing a few press-ups. So dreamy.

Lauren Booth
Columnist and journalist. Sister-in-law of Tony Blair. Whenever I think my family Christmas might be complicated, I think about Lauren and Tony on crimbo morning exchanging Hi-Karate gift sets and wearing party hats following her recent "650,000 dead in Iraq" anti-war speech. I've always liked Lauren Booth. I like her even more when I hear what she's said about Gest. "Ooh, just flippant comments!" cringes Lauren when he tackles her about it.

This is the downside of being a columnist. I think Lauren was quite brave. Usually when I spot anyone I've written about, I drop to the floor then sniper-crawl like Andy McNab towards the door with my handbag over my head. This proved very useful just after Big Brother 7 around Grace Adams-Short's family.

Faith Brown
The last time I clapped eyes on this woman she was on just after Marti Caine, Lena Zavaroni and Bernie Winters and Schnorbitz and I was eating a Funny Feet ice lolly, wishing the grown-ups didn't always bloody watch Seaside Special. I don't remember her boobs looking like that. They are even more mesmerising than Lea from BB7's. When the group were given that "finding a needle in a haystack" task they should have sent Faith to do it because that's what she must feel like every time she drops a Malteser down her cleavage.

Jason Donovan
Earnest, philosophical, ex-teen heart-throb. Over the following week Jason is tormented by the gang to sing Any Dream Will Do from the musical Joseph, despite making it clear he's uncomfortable with it as he knows the second so much as a line passes his lips everybody on earth will slag him off for trying to stage a comeback. I hope he has a song as brilliant as Insania by Peter Andre secretly up his sleeve to "remember" on week three.

Dean Gaffney
Dean is a great example of why faded celebs should do I'm a Celeb. At ten o'clock on Thursday I was muttering loudly that Dean Gaffney was a pointless addition whose only talent is romancing a cacophony of strumpets in Essex VIP rooms with boobs larger than their heads. By 10:30pm Gaffney had done his Bushtucker Trial and in a complete volte-face I was saying he was a lovely bloke with a lot of humility who could probably win. Sorry, Dean.

David Gest
Small, perma-tanned, cosmetically enhanced concert promoter. Known mainly in the UK for his wedding to Liza Minnelli featuring Martine McCutcheon inexplicably as bridesmaid and a "kiss the bride" moment that resembled two necromancers sucking the life force from each other's souls. Gest starts his jungle adventure by slagging off Jan Leeming, saying she has her head up her own front bottom. This is ironic considering his own face is so puffy and bizarre.

Scott Henshall
Fashion designer. According to his pre-show interview Scott doesn't like fat people and people who aren't cute. Why on earth is Scott Henshall on this show? What will he gain? I can just hear the snooty fashionistas now: "Ooh, I love your dress, darling, is it couture?" "Mmm, I know, c'est fabulous, n'est pas? And it's designed by that man who ate all the bugs and eyeballs and did the poos in the chemical toilet and paraded about in the sweaty T-shirt!"

Myleene, I know you as one of the sinister breed of opinionless, media fembots who they trot out for various occasions as you look nice in spaghetti-strap frocks

Myleene Klass
"You might know me as a singer, or a presenter, or a classical performer," Klass says cheerily. No, I know you as one of the sinister breed of opinionless, media fembots who they trot out for various occasions as you look nice in spaghetti-strap frocks and don't rock the boat. "Is Holly Willoughby available? No? What about Fearne Cotton? Damn. OK, how about Tess Daly? Liz Bonnin? Oh, balls, have they got Myleene Klass?"

Jan Leeming
Fey, fragrant 64-year-old newsreader. Leeming is of the halcyon generation of newsreaders who used to live behind a desk, exude dignity and never make themselves the news story. (For examples of how far we've travelled, tune into Children in Need.) Leeming doesn't appear to have ever watched I'm a Celebrity before, seeming to think it's going to be one jolly Girl Guide-style camping trip with sausages roasted over a fire and maybe the odd singalong about how you'll never get to heaven in a biscuit tin.

"Why are they picking me for a Bushtucker Trial again!" moans Leeming as she dons a special canary-yellow spandex unitard to prevent lesser-spotted Tazmanian nuzzling spiders crawling up her nounou during Treetop Terror. Poor woman.

Phina Oruche
Who? No, honestly, who? I don't even remember her from Footballers' Wives. A weird mix of abrasiveness and OTT media luviness, Phina's accent ranges from Santa Monica to Skelmersdale in the space of one sentence. "If anyone crosses me I will crush them like bugs," she says. I decided I didn't like her from the moment she made an entrance in the pre-jungle cocktail party by walking in, raising one hand in a showbiz twinkle then making a sound like a car alarm. Phina and Scott Henshall deserve each other.

Matt Willis
"Beer Matt", dark-haired goblin-esque ex-Busted bloke. Seems to be spending most of his jungle time in the diary room giving a running commentary on everything. "Man, we just saw a spider and I was like 'Woooh, it's a spider…' and then Faith went for a poo but she couldn't do a poo and then I coughed and then a twig moved…"

Matt, mate, you don't have to comment on everything. The boy's not daft though. Detoxing in the jungle is much easier on the pocket than detoxing in rehab. At least in the jungle they're paying you to be sober instead of you paying £25,000 per week to some private healthcare trust to mooch about a stately home playing ping pong.

Stuff I have learnt this week:

* Being in the jungle makes you constipated. Nobody aside from Lauren Booth has had a poo. Oddly enough, living on a diet of boiled muddy water and chargrilled alligator bum doesn't do much for the bowels. Neither does sitting on the loo praying for movement with David Gest's ghoulish face against the door clutching a bucket of water asking if you've had any luck.

Saying that, by day four I'm warming to Gest a bit. He's not a bad bloke really, damn him. He didn't even moan that much about being locked in a box full of huge spiders, snakes and alligators during the Flash Flood task.

* No amount of juicy revelations in the tabloids about Kerry Katona's lifestyle seem to make her an unsuitable candidate to represent a certain frozen-food supermarket. Katona's on at least six times an hour during I'm a Celeb, surrounded by her ba-bbies, toyboy lover and cartons of cut-price chicken curry.

* In the new ads Katona's boyfriend is dressed as a fox and he has pulled the fridge into the living room so he can be closer to his king-prawn ring and ice-cream roll. Katona is pregnant again, but there's no mention in the ads of whether it belongs to fox man or the father of the other babbies or if she just got that down at the shops, too.

One more celeb is being sent into the jungle - Malandra Burrows. Are you excited? Are you?!

Psychic TV

This week I'll be watching BBC Children in Need (Friday 17 November, BBC1), then even more I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!

More hilarious I'm a Celeb stuff this week. :D

Bugged out
Posted on Fri 24 November, 3:05pm
I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! - week 2 recap

Day 7

It's Sunday in the jungle. Jason Donovan has spotted a yabby. The small, startled crayfish is taking its morning constitutional when Donovan captures it in a net and manhandles it back to camp to present to the celebs. The assorted stars of pantomime and infomercial are overjoyed. "We'll eat well tonight!" whoops Lauren Booth optimistically (one small yabby shared between 12 would barely smatter a small cracker for a light amuse-bouche).

I feel awful for the yabby. The mistake Jason made was telling me he found it on the path "wandering back after a swim". Now, in my mind, the yabby has a little personality and a Sunday routine. He likes a morning dip, a leisurely stroll through the jungle and then perhaps a lounge about with the Observer supplements and a pot of tea with one eye on the Hollyoaks omnibus.

What right has Malandra Burrows got to bash his head in and turn him into rudimentary lobster bisque? If anyone deserves to be sacrificed for protein's sake it should be her. Following an animal rights debate, the yabby is set free. The celebs agree to have four spoonfuls of soggy basmati rice instead, cooked in the putrid boiled water.

Jan Leeming is picked for another Bushtucker Trial involving snakes and immediately begins sobbing and ranting. All the celebs keep gushing that she must be up for every trial as she's so "sweet and entertaining". Jan isn't buying that one little bit. Jan knows people keep voting her in because as a nation we're psychologically askew and enjoy watching a little old lady being placed in a Perspex box with giant mutant spiders with long legs and big faces, which look like a sinister hybrid of the arachnid kingdom and Frank Sidebottom.

This episode throws up many questions for me. Why do I feel sorry for Jan even though she's a pernickety, uptight biddy? How long can Faith Brown uphold her eye-make-up standards? How does Myleene Klass look so aggravatingly great in a bikini? Has she never heard of a nice mid-afternoon pasty or a box of Quality Street green triangles? And how has David Gest with his dry, daft stories begun to be my favourite jungle celeb?

Day 8

Ant and Dec turn up and divide the camp into two halves. Boys v girls. The girls pack up their things to leave for Snake Rock. Toby Anstis sobs real tears knowing how much he'll miss Jan's great Bushtucker Trial anecdotes and her numerous renditions of Summertime.

Jan feels sad, too. "I'm not a woman's woman!" she says, sadly. Now in a way, this I can understand. Life in the boys' camp appears to be much simpler. Get up, sit about, talk about who has had a poo, listen to Gest's Vaginica Seamen stories, have an early night. Meanwhile, over in the girls' camp it's all: "Well, excuse me, I can cook, too! People travel for miles for my famous roasts!" and "Psst…do you think Lauren is comfortable in her skin? Are her legs retaining water or has she just let herself go?" and "I can't believe you said that! Well, it's not what you said, it's how I thought you sounded when you said it." Great fun.

It'd be good if they just switched the cameras off at Snake Rock and let us hear David Gest's amazing showbiz stories instead. I wish he would talk about Liza Minnelli. It's intriguing how two people could come to hate each other so much. Especially as he does such a good impression of someone really quite laid-back. Maybe Liza tried to make him eat sausages. That's the only thing that's really ruffled him so far: "I hate sausages! Hate them! I won't eat them! They make me sick and go right through me and make me constipated!" claims Gest, which sounds like a reality spin-off show in itself.

Boys v girls; Phina, Lauren, Matt and Scott wade through swamps to open a chest and win cheese and biscuits. As the girls forge ahead to win, Scott runs off and sits on the chest with his hands over the lock. Scott has now taken the game to a weird place. Everyone is hungry, angry and disorientated and suddenly Scott's flipped the flimsy rules about, claiming it to be lateral thinking not just brute force or plain awkwardness.

Phina goes berserk and begins grappling with Scott, determined not to be beaten physically by a man with a semi-permanent eyelash tint. Scott is bitten. Lauren tries to split them up. Matt is tearful. The girls win the biscuits but return to camp shaken and ashamed.

Scott Henshall, who started the trouble, is both incandescent and righteous. "I have been attacked!" he rants, pointing at a light chafe on his chest. "If this was the real world I would press charges!" Good for you, Scott. Next time I can't get the police to respond to a call out, I'll sleep easy knowing it's because they're tied up helping you report an altercation over Tuc biscuits.

Day 9

David Gest now claims to have lost over 28 pounds. He knows people who have lost just as much weight as this in the Outback. They all died. Some of them became so ravenous they even considered eating a Cumberland sausage before they perished.

At Snake Rock, Phina has finally had her fill of jungle beans and has begun to vomit around the camp like a Bigg Market hen-party harpie. Jan Leeming and Scott Henshall are chosen to do the Catch a Falling Star task, which involves chucking themselves out of a plane and catching ribbons on their way down. Leeming cries a lot. No-one really, truly cares.

Am I the only person who doesn't think it's a good idea to emotionally bribe a 64-year-old woman with a fear of flying into a complicated parachute jump, where her focus must be on catching ribbons on the way down instead of trying not to break her hip? OK, just me then.

The girls are worried that the boys are starving. Gest doesn't like to be dramatic, but he must have lost at least 71 pounds by now and his internal organs are ingesting themselves, which is exactly what his good friends Michael Jackson, Lord Lucan and the Dalai Lama warned him about when he was shooting pool with them in wibbly wobbly world.

Malandra Burrows lets Dean Gaffney win the celebrity chest task so the boys can win some supplies. Instead the boys end up with plastic sumo suits, which not even the most skilful chef could whip into a tasty snack. Let's face it, nobody ever says, "Well, excuse me, I can cook too! People travel for miles to eat my famous sumo suits." Not even Jan Leeming.

Day 10

Oh, Scott Henshall, there's no pleasing you. One minute you're starving, then someone presents you with a delicious plate of kangaroo anus and penis washed down with nice lumpy bug smoothie and suddenly you're not hungry again. And you, Leeming, why won't you eat the testicles? They're not that big. Two bites at the most. It's not like they're making you eat the hairy testicular sack too. They've given you a knife to scoop it out with. What's bloody wrong with you?

Aren't you desperate to please us, Henshall? Ricky Tomlinson has even given a short interview saying how disappointed he is with you. And Lee Ryan's (who used to be in Blue) tour manager is irked at you, too. (Who?) And one of the Dingle women from Emmerdale.

Yes, basically anyone who was in the ITV building who'd vaguely watched I'm a Celebrity and was willing to give a soundbite was totally disappointed with you, yet still you refuse to eat live crickets. Lisa Scott-Lee even managed to get her face in there. I bet she'd eat the kangaroo testicles. I bet she'd do a Totally Scott-Lee: Eating Kangaroo Testicles Special every day on MTV in December if she thought it would get her a top 20 placing.

Day 11

News just in: Toby Anstis has finally had a poo. Toby's being very vocal about it. Matt Willis is enjoying it vicariously as much as Toby did. In Snake Rock, Phina has finally snapped and yelled at Jan for whining. Jan loses her temper back and swears at Phina. Now Jan is even more upset at Phina for making her swear and Phina has become overcome with "The Tongues", which control her in testing times.

Phina is a very big Christian (apart from when she's biting fashion designers over a box of Ritz crackers and some Edam, which isn't mentioned in any of the biblical scriptures.) Jan Leeming shouldn't drink. One glass of wine and she was coming on to Toby Anstis. Half a beer and she's taking on Phina, and even Ricky "the Hitman" Hatton wouldn't take on Phina.

The camps are joined back together. Scott is still very irked about being beaten up by Phina. Phina apologises lots of times but Scott is a vision of uppitiness. She'll never get back in Scott's good books now and she can kiss goodbye to getting one of his backless, frontless size 0 corset frocks for next year's TV awards.

Toby Anstis is the first to leave the jungle. He looks really sad all the way across the rope bridge, until he gets a glass of booze in his hand, then he seems just fine. I'm more worried about Kerry Katona: she lives with a giant hyperactive aardvark and a crocodile and she's not tasted complex carbohydrates for a fortnight. No wonder she drinks.

Psychic TV

Next week I'll be watching more celebs eating kangaroo testicles and the baiting of a 64-year-old woman on I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (daily, ITV1).

:D

I love Grace. :D

Jungle sickness
Posted on Fri 1 December, 4:20pm
I read every one of your emails. I love getting them. Lots of them are really hilarious and clever. Some are irate. Last week the same people who mail Terry Wogan's Points of View, threatening to slice their heads off with Strimmers because the Beeb ran a trailer during the closing credits of Planet Earth, wrote to me too.

"Why, oh why, oh why are you only writing about I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!? Are you not watching anything else?" Well, yes, Dismayed of Ecclefechen, I am.

This week I watched:

Entourage

I love Entourage (ITV2/ITV1). It's still not vanished from my Sky+ box despite the plot only truly kicking off midway through season two with the recent James Cameron-directs-Aquaman saga. Mainly, Entourage revolves around little more than the beautiful if slightly vacant star Vince and his three best friends wandering the streets of Hollywood chatting about women. They do a lot of walking. In and out of restaurants, through department stores, around movie moguls' office blocks, all the time gossiping about which models they've just kicked out of bed.

In a sense, Entourage is just Sex and the City for men, although that does it a disservice because instead of annoying Samantha wigging on about vibrators and premature ejaculation, there's grotesque yet lovable Ari Gold with his sexist diatribes, big bucks obsession and useless family-man skills. At least Ari is genuinely, albeit offensively, funny.

"I'm with Vince" is Entourage's tagline, but to be honest I don't actually care about Vince - he's a bit of a moron who doesn't even pre-read his own scripts. Who I care about deeply is Eric. I want E to succeed as a manager, to wipe the floor with Ari, to get over his ex, Kristen, and get it together with Emily. But I never get what I want in TV Land. If I did, Eileen Grimshaw would be married to someone nice and running the Rovers by now.

Stupid

A lot of kids' TV today is brilliantly written and acted. Shows like Harry Hill's Shark Infested Custard, David Schneider's (The Day Today/I'm Alan Partridge) Uncle Max and My Parents Are Aliens are often genuinely witty and far less puerile than, say, Tittybangbang or Blunder. My favourite kids' programme is Stupid, currently being repeated on CBBC on Saturdays and written by Dean Wilkinson, who's written all types of brilliant comedy including Chums with Ant and Dec.

In brief, Stupid is about King Stupid, a mean-tongued and pompous ruler initially played by Marcus Brigstocke (We Are History/The Late Edition). King Stupid is assisted by his gremlin butler Goober (Rusty Goffe), with whom he bickers endlessly in a dry, sharply written Blackadder-and-Baldrick style.

King Stupid watches the word via CCTV monitors and uses his powers to make people do stupid things. It's a silly sketch show, basically. I like sketch shows. I even really liked The Sketch Show with Lee Mack and Tim Vine. I'll even admit to sometimes sitting up until 1am watching Shoot the Writers on ITV, which is a sketch show that frequently contains no jokes.

Recently Brigstocke has been replaced in the role of King Stupid by Stella Street's Phil Cornwell, who for me will always be Gilbert the Alien on Gilbert's Fridge, sitting in a prisoner of war camp singing How Far to Hitchin?. He's very good too. If you ever wonder where some of our best comedy actors and writers are hiding away, they're doing the 3:30–5pm slot, entertaining a demographic of under-sevens and indolent freelance writers.

OK, I can't help myself. For my money, I wanted David Gest to win

Crimewatch

A favourite of Asbo teens and Daily Mail readers alike, Crimewatch (BBC1) never fails to send me to bed depressed, anxious and mildly titillated, all in one jumble.

Twenty-two years on, the formula hasn't changed much: ghoulish reconstructions of aggravated burglaries and bogeymen in bushes; CCTV footage of senseless drubbings at suburban train stations and blokes in Halloween masks clearing newsagents out with baseball bats (plus the occasional missing antique clock that no-one at home gives a stuff about because it was on just after the pet-shop arson and the chainsaw slayer).

Elsewhere, hunky cop Rav Wilding takes charge of the rogues' gallery filled with photos of squashed noses and swooping-swallow neck tattoos, accompanied with pleas not to try a citizen's arrest as it could lead to your decapitated head being used for dribbling practice right through Skelmersdale Concourse Centre. "But remember, these crimes are very rare," Nick Ross says, every single month, "so please don't have nightmares." It's a nice sentiment but, with total respect, he stopped pacifying me with that line a very long time ago.

Sky News with Martin Stanford

"Get involved! If you have any thoughts at all about the news today, send us an email! Or use your webcam or 3G phone or send us a text or give us a call or whatever! Don't worry if you've not really thought through what you're going to say or have been sitting about all day in your underwear drinking gin and brooding about immigration, give us a call! We'll stick you on live TV, filming yourself with a wonky camera phone. After all it's your opinion that counts. Topics this week will be immigration, Muslims, the war on terror, Asbo teenagers, rising crime statistics and 'are Poles taking over our town centres?'

Ooh, and here's the result of our text vote just in… Eighty per cent of you pressing the red button thought that Britain is really terrifying these days. Do you agree? Well, don't just sit there, get involved! If you have any thoughts at all about the news today, send us an email! Or use your webcam…" (Repeat every night endlessly until everyone is too scared to leave the house.)

Skint

Depressing but compelling reality doc about the daily murky happenings down at Cash Converters. Skint (BBC1) centres around unemployed chancers like Vernon and Gaz who eke a living from pawning their tellys and rings, and finding stuff in bins that they use in a buy-back deal for 15 quid. It's not much, but at least they can eat that day. Or just buy some lovely extra-strong white cider. Actually, it's pretty much always the cider.

Skint's regulars are likeable but continually frustrating: they're either moaning about their hideous luck, begging and scrounging, or messing things up further with bags of heroin, alcoholic girlfriends or booze. Sad and often uncomfortable viewing, it sends you off to bed feeling more fortunate to be you.

I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

OK, I can't help myself. For my money, I wanted David Gest to win. Two weeks ago I thought he was a jumped-up, whiny, gold-digging LA airhead. Now I think he's sweet, eccentric, funny and at times vulnerable. He was a good leader too. Not many people can pull off those grand Napoleonic "we must all rise together and work through this!" speeches without being jeered and derided. Somehow he could.

Yes, he might look like he's made out of the same fuzzy felt and foam as Rosie and Jim, but he wasn't a bad bloke. I liked his "albino hotel" story, the way he coached Jan in her singing and how, when asked what charity he was on the show for, he told everyone dryly that it was the Chinese Girls with Herpes foundation. Give him his own Living TV show - I could watch him balking at sausages all day long.

Psychic TV

Next week I'll be watching, among other things…

Nigella's Christmas Kitchen - Wednesday, 8:00pm, BBC2
The Secret Millionaire - Wednesday, 9:00pm, Channel 4

Are you Dismayed of Ecclefechen? What did you watch this week? Email me at grace.dent@bbc.co.uk.

Nice to see you taking on the mantle, paul, well done! :D

It's a wonderful life
Posted on Fri 12 December, 4:05PM
Nigella's Christmas Kitchen

"Some people are just so boringly cynical about Christmas," oozes Nigella Lawson in tones of velvety goo (Wednesdays, 8pm, BBC2), "but I just love it. Every last twinkling light."

Nigella is in Austria, sipping gluwine, sublime in cream cashmere and wearing an expression of ethereal bliss. She looks younger and yummier than she did ten years ago. Nigella is certainly not stressed about Christmas. A bit like Noddy Holder, she wishes it could be like this every day.

We'd all like a Nigella Lawson Christmas. Nigella Christmases don't seem to include writing tons of cards, buying gifts and suffering bleak hangovers. Or lugging 20lb turkeys or finding party outfits or standing on wonky ladders fishing boxes of baubles out of attics. They don't involve the complex inter-family minefield about where everyone's staying and for how long and who wants to watch who opening their gifts at what time and who will never recover from the smite if they don't get their way.

I bet Nigella Lawson has never paid Virgin Trains £90 on Christmas Eve to travel 400 miles to Carlisle, sat in a train corridor by an overflowing toilet, perched on a gift-wrapped Clairol Foot Spa, surrounded by paralytic Glaswegians singing Sunshine on Leith by the Proclaimers. Even if she has, I bet she still radiated angelic serenity.

"You see, this simply IS Christmas for me," says Nigella, standing alone in the gargantuan pristine kitchen of her west London townhouse, faffing about with cardamom pods for mulled cider. "They're just so huskily evocative," she witters dreamily, like it's her only Yuletide chore.

The truth is that Nigella Lawson's Christmas kitchen has about as much relevance to normal people planning Christmas dinner as Heston Blumenthal showing us how to make a gateau with an orbital sander, but this will never ever stop me and millions of other women vainly aspiring to be her.

I'm a worse Nigella disciple than most. I own all her recipe books. I've watched Forever Summer umpteen times on UKTV Food. There's so much duck-egg blue Nigella Lawson cookware in my kitchen it feels like the set of Nigella Bites, if you overlook the fact that it's smaller and cheaper and instead of fine prosciutto and ripe figs there's spaghetti hoops and Marmite and a cat hell-bent on sleeping on the Nigella breadbin.

OK, my life's not like Nigella's at all. But it should be. I've got the Nigella matching cake tins. I've mastered her lavender cupcakes and quadruple chocolate loaf. But I'm sorry to say that at no point has this brought me any closer to living the life of a yummy mummy/worldwide culinary phenomenon and wife of a millionaire art collector. (The cupcakes actually brought me closer to resembling Roseanne Barr's sumo-wrestling sister.) Still, I live in hope.

Twelve minutes into episode one and - hurrah! - Nigella's boiled ham is ready. Nigella always boils a ham at Christmas, and then she coats it in some kind of mulled-wine jam stuff. "It's so easy and stress free," she assures, producing a lump of pig stewed in wine that puts me in mind of a severed head I once saw being kicked about like a football during footage of a Sao Paulo prison riot. There are festive party shots of rich, stiff people enjoying the jam ham, pulling "Mmmmm, this is spectacular" faces.

Obviously, for viewers at home, making Chrimbo jam ham would not be stress free at all. Basically, you'd spend hours boiling and faffing only for your guests to arrive and squint at the jam ham mystified, like you'd unveiled the Stone of Scone. If you were lucky, one person might try it.

So, still trying to channel Nigella's state of zen, you'd unveil your special Nigella Lawson homemade salmon gravlax, but then people might balk at raw fish and Imelda's children can't eat dill as they'll go into anaphylactic shock and the mulled cider has set someone's type-two diabetes off kilter and by this point you just wish everyone would bugger off home, leaving you and the jam ham to drink Baileys and watch Pirates of the Caribbean alone. Nigella's Christmas never ends in tears. Everyone behaves themselves.

And now, behold, here's Nigella and her gorgeous photogenic children making gingerbread tree-decorations! The children are gazing up in dewy-eyed adoration as mummy stirs the bowl, all three united in Yuletide family togetherness.

"My children always know that Christmas has officially begun when we all make the gingerbread!" beams Nigella, as parents everywhere sigh jealously, aware that Christmas officially began in their household when their kid picked up a Toys "R" Us catalogue and began plastering Post-It notes on every page and shrieking "Mine! I want it all! Now!"

"Y'know," says Nigella, now inexplicably in the Alps watching people skiing, "Christmas is like a bonfire lighting up the dark winter months! I love the snow. I'd take a snowy scene like this over a Caribbean beach any day." Thank god we've got that cleared up.

Episode one draws to a close. I know I'll be back next week. The closing credits roll and Nigella is in her pyjamas, pouring an enormous drink and pigging out on cake. See? She's just like one of us after all! Except, actually, she's not. Because if you're Nigella Lawson, lying about by yourself in your nightie getting hammered with melted chocolate on your face, you're a kooky, naughtily decadent off-duty goddess.

But if you're not Nigella, seriously, you're just a slob.

The Secret Millionaire is reality show with, gasp, a serious purpose

The Secret Millionaire

This is a reality show (Wednesdays, Channel 4) with, gasp, a serious purpose: doling out lumps of cash. Each week a millionaire is sent to live undercover in a deprived community and made to decide who best deserves a cash injection.

This week's tale of rags to riches County Durham businessmen John Elliott, 62, visiting Kensington in Liverpool, was engrossing stuff, and not simply to find out how Elliott planned to exist on 11 quid a day once his enthusiasm for Marrowfat peas and washing his undies in the kitchen sink had waned.

Elliott met OAPs and the local unemployed but, as a staunch Conservative with strong views on asylum-seeking "scroungers", the local displaced Kurds and Zimbabweans were bottom of Elliott's list for a possible hand-out; however, after a few visits to the local hostel and chats with the residents, Elliott was so dismayed at their situation he donated £7,500. Elliott also gave one man, Phillip from Zimbabwe, a job in his firm as an accountant.

Elsewhere, Elliott also doled out £10,000 to a young Liverpool family in need of a house deposit. They named their next child after him. Brilliant, informative stuff. I'm praying Nigella Lawson takes note and wanders down my way - I need all that money back that I blew on salt pigs and breadbins.

Psychic TV:

Next week I'll be watching, among other things…

The Royal Variety Performance, Tuesday, 8pm, BBC1

Should I make jam ham this Christmas? If you're not too frantic making gingerbread tree decorations, email me on grace.dent@bbc.co.uk.

Right royal fun
Posted on Fri 15 December, 4:05pm
This week, I vow to myself I'll watch The Royal Variety Performance (12 December, BBC1) from start to finish.

"It promises to be an unforgettable night of entertainment," says Natasha Kaplinsky standing outside the London Coliseum. "There'll be more surprises than you can shake a stick at!"

I like the idea of being so utterly flummoxed by surprises that I'm too fatigued to shake a stick. "Oh, my god, it's Meat Loaf singing Dead Ringer for Love with Jamelia…want to shake a stick…but caaaaaaan't." Here goes…

7:45pm - Kaplinsky is awaiting the arrival of Charles and Camilla. I think they're probably still at Buckingham Palace arm-wrestling the Duke of Edinburgh for the tickets. "It's so unfair!" the Queen's probably sobbing, "We have to stay here in the palace, lovely and warm, eating dinner, and you lucky things get to enjoy 18 hours of acrobats, miming popstars and endless numbers from West End musicals performed out of context so they make no sense whatsoever. Pleeeeeaase let us go!" Sorry, Queenie, it's not your turn.

8pm - Charles and Camilla arrive at the Coliseum and are presented to Jordan and Peter Andre. Jordan is in a white meringue ballgown and Peter in a snug matador-style outfit - they are both the colour of chicken tikka. A royal equerry pulls Camilla away before Jordan's Tourette syndrome kicks in and she broadcasts exactly what position she was in when she conceived this time. "Ere, Camilla, so Pete was on top, right…"

8:10pm - The show opens with Torchwood's John Barrowman singing Feel Good by Nina Simone joined by high-kicking girls in feather boas.

8:15pm - "And now it's the Puppini Sisters!" shouts Barrowman. Men all over Britain perk up like meerkats mistakenly hearing "the Beany Sisters" and imagining Sarah and her equally plentiful-chested sisters on pogo sticks bouncing to the Vengaboys. Sadly it's just three skinny girls in 50s frocks doing In the Mood.

8:17pm - I'm in the mood. The mood to start drinking.

8:20pm - Jonathan Ross appears with his hair arranged into a formal do like he's en route to have a school photo done and his mum's quickly done it with spit. Jonathan introduces some numbers from Spamalot.

8:22pm - It's Tim Curry and the cast of Spamalot. I reach for the Sky+ remote then remember I'm watching in real time and there is no escape from the infomercial.

8:30pm - Curtain closes on Spamalot. Three fey little Lord Fauntleroy types scamper onto stage. "It's the original West End Billy Elliot boys!" shouts the announcer. The boys perform "a skit" around how they're past it now and need to prove they can still tap dance. They then proceed to tap dance for five minutes. Who is enjoying this aside from their mothers? Viewers all over Britain are re-creating the Adagio for Strings segment of the film Platoon. I'm not shaking a stick yet, but I am considering pulling my own arm off and attacking the TV with the squelchy end.

8:35pm - Tap-dancing ceases and is replaced by the Sugababes. They are miming and have what appears to be the cast of Stomp with them. They sing Hole in the Head and do a routine involving them leaping on and off a moving travelator in high heels. I'd like to do the risk assessment form for that.

8:40pm - Comedian Omid Djalili brings my first smile of the night doing jokes, weirdly enough, about suicide bombers. Have decided to stop worrying about Prince Charles's sensitive disposition after reading that he and Prince William are big Borat fans.

8:50pm - Odd pre-recorded interlude where Graham Norton pretends to be sitting in one of the theatre's boxes with Andrew Lloyd Webber getting all excited about seeing How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? star Connie Fisher. "She's just marvellous!" gushes Webber, almost crying with excitement.

8:52pm - "The hills are alive with the sound of music!" sings Connie running on stage embodying everything that is good and pure about the cosmos. I bet her pants smell of summer meadows and her tights never ladder. Connie Fisher reminds me of the girl down my street when I was a child who made her own pot-pourri, played the accordian and wore Littlewoods cardigans and kick-pleat skirts. My mother loved her.

9pm - It's "one of the hottest names in British comedy, Michael Macintyre!" He does a good routine discussing the type of people who ring radio stations to warn everyone else about traffic jams and the special walk we all do when trying on shoes in shops. This is the first time I've properly laughed all night.

11:10pm - Ken Dodd - the highlight of my show. I love Ken Dodd. I even have a favourite Ken Dodd joke

9:10pm Paul O'Grady introduces Barry Manilow, who has been nipped and tucked into a double for Anne Robinson. "I'm going to take you on a trip down memory lane!" says Barry, doing a step-together, step-kick dance then launching into a 60s medley.

9:20pm - A group of oriental people are doing a tae kwon do display to soft-rock classics. It's nice when it stops.

9:30pm - Connie Fisher introduces pop star James Morrison performing You Give Me, which is brightened up by a crowd of celestial angels in stockings and suspenders rolling about with their ankles in the air.

9:40pm - Comedian Jason Byrne attempts to perform some of his set without any fecking and blinding. It's a short set.

9:50pm - Jordan and Peter Andre sing two lines only of A Whole New World. You've got to admire Jordan. She can't bloody sing at all, yet somehow she's crowbarred herself onto the Royal Variety Performance singing live in front of millions of viewers for Prince Charles. This woman is an inspiration.

9:55pm - Meat Loaf appears singing his new song I'm a Big Fat Man (and I really love brackets). Or something like that.

10pm - Holy foccachio! It's David Gest introducing the magic cabaret act David and Dania. I love David and Dania. They truly put the show in showbusiness. (Type David and Dania into YouTube and behold the wonder yourself.)

10:10pm - Comedian Lee Mack really makes me laugh talking about how "mental" Bank Holiday furniture sales always claim to be and how the truly mentally ill should be used to advertise them.

10:15pm - Hosannah! It's Take That. Lovely Jason and Howard just get better with age. They certainly all look a hell of a lot happier and more content than Robbie Williams. Comeback of the year.

10:30pm - And it's the end! Oh, no. Oh, god. Just the interval.

11pm - Part two begins with some numbers from the musical Wicked for everyone who wasn't put off it by the Children in Need performance. I feel sorry for the poor actress who spends her whole time painted green in a black sack.

11:05pm - Natasha Kaplinksy appears in a different frock introducing the musical Avenue Q. Things begin to unravel. A foam version of the Queen is produced called Mrs Thistletwat and another called Lucy the Slut, who sings a dirty song directly at Prince Charles offering him personal services. "You are especially hard for me," Lucy shouts at the royal box as the audience sets aside their sweets in dismay.

11:10pm - Ken Dodd - the highlight of my show. I love Ken Dodd. I even have a favourite Ken Dodd joke. "Ooh, what a glorious day! What a glorious day for sticking a cucumber through the next-door neighbour's letterbox and shouting 'the Martians have landed!'" Sadly, Dodd doesn't do that one, but he tells plenty about tax evasion. "The tax people sent me a letter saying 'self-assessment'," he says, "I said, 'Cuh, I invented that'."

11:15pm - Noel Edmonds introduces Rod Stewart.

11:20pm - Huge rip-roaring finale led by John Barrowman. Then a rousing version of God Save the Queen.

11:15pm - Prince Charles is woken up by Camilla and they make a run for the door before being dragged downstairs to shake hands with everybody including the cleaners. Next year, they'll probably send Princess Michael.

Psychic TV - Christmas TV special

What are you looking forward to watching this Christmas? Mail me on grace.dent@bbc.co.uk

If I could, I would marry Grace Dent.

:)

Happy holidays!
Posted on Friday 22 December, 1:00pm
Nobody gets more excited about the special Christmas double issue of Radio Times than me. Just one peek at its festive front and I'm rabid with glee.

Here's some stuff I've circled in felt-tip pen to watch with a large whiskey, sorting the noisette triangles from the toffee pennies, wearing antlers…

Whatever Happened to Gareth Gates? (Saturday 23 December, ITV1)

I've been wondering that. Have you been wondering that? Where is Gareth Gates? We've not set eyes on the poor child ever since Jordan attempted to cure his stutter by rattling his head between her implants shouting "Yee-hah!"

Is Gareth still working at all? Or is he working the 2–10pm shift at the Wacky Warehouse near Bradford? And does he still wear St-St-St-Studioline wet-look hair gel? All this and more will be revealed.

Coming soon in the series: Where the Hell Is Chico?, Crikey, We've Lost Darius! and I'm wondering about that cross-eyed bloke from the chicken factory who sang Barbie Girl on The X Factor, any news?

Xtra Factor: the Winner's Story (Christmas Eve, ITV2)

Thankfully, we've not lost radio contact with Leona yet. It's been a week since she beat Wolverine in the X Factor finale.

What's she been doing? My guess is a) crying B) totally not being able to believe it c) saying "this is like a dream come true" 347 times d) singing one of her two-hour-long wibbly wobbly versions of Over the Rainbow d) sobbing into her lemon cardigan sleeve remembering those tricky days at the Sylvia Young Stage School, then the Brits Academy when showbiz was but a distant dream, e) being chased by an ITV2 film crew for this show.

Never Mind the Buzzcocks Bumper Edition (Christmas Eve, BBC2)

I'm seriously back into this programme since Simon Amstell took over, and better still, David Gest, Danny McFly and Kevin Eldon are guests for the Christmas special. I'm still laughing about Amy Winehouse's slurred, confused appearance last month. "Amy?" said Amstell, "You know when they asked you to go to rehab and you said no, no, no…on reflection, should you have maybe said yes?"

The Queen (Christmas Day, BBC1)

Poor Queen, no-one gets excited about her Christmas speech any more. There's no gimmick, that's why. It's just plain dignity and stoic reserve.

She won't pull on a neon unitard and do robotics to Kraftwerk. She won't eat maggots. She won't use it as a ten-minute diary room rant to get stuck into Cherie Blair. She won't cry about how touched she is that we're letting her rule. She probably won't make any facial expressions at all. She's the Queen. She doesn't do winking, squealing or "raise the roof" hands. God bless her: there's not many like her left.

Merry Christmas and goodwill to all men…except that heinous little brat David Platt

Coronation Street (Christmas Day, ITV1)

Into this time of goodness and light treads the cloven-hoofed dark prince David Platt with a special Christmas gift for Gail. Just try to watch the Christmas Day edition without dreaming of pulling his silly flashing antlers off and hammering his head to a smoothie consistency. Merry Christmas and goodwill to all men…except that heinous little brat.

David Icke: Was He Right? (Boxing Day, Five)

Obviously, there is a small chance that David Icke was right. Perhaps the Queen isn't a nice lady with a Mr Whippy hairdo who holds our best interests at heart, but is instead a giant blood-drinking, shape-shifting alien lizard. It's high time David Icke's teachings were re-examined. He is, after all, the son of God.

I think a lot of Icke's failure as a religious leader has been down to image. Look at Tom Cruise and the Scientologists. They look bloody great. Expensive clothes, salon hair. You don't see Cruise in a teal-coloured eastern-European shot-putter's tracksuit and streaked mullet. I shan't follow any religious group who look like they were kitted out by following a bloke holding a placard on Oxford Street that reads "Sports Sale - Amazing Bargains". Anyway, this is Icke's chance to re-sell Ickeology. It can't be any weirder than three kings following a star.

ET the Extra-Terrestrial (Boxing Day, ITV1)

Every time I watch this movie I think, "right, I won't cry this time", then it gets to the bit near the end where the government officials know about ET and he's going white and dying and Elliott's trying to get the transmitter contraption working but it won't and ET's really missing his mum and dad and he keeps saying "ouch" and Elliott is sobbing and saying, "No, ET, I could take care of you. We could grow up together!" And ET knows he's dying so he puts his finger out and touches the tear on Elliott's cheek and…oh, god, it's too much.

It Started with Swap Shop (Thursday 28 December, BBC2)

A look back at Saturday-morning children's TV, hosted by Swap Shop's Noel, Keith, Maggie, John and hopefully Posh Paws.

If we're suddenly all appreciating Noel Edmonds again, can we have Noel's Christmas Presents back on Christmas morning next year? Ill children, tragic accidents, re-united families and Noel Edmonds in the middle in a small home-knit jumper dispensing glad tidings of comfort and joy. It made the Mirror Pride of Britain Awards look like an episode of Mr Bean. A good excuse to hit the bottle early, too.

The Spice Girls: 10 Years of Girl Power (New Year's Eve, Sky One)

Julie Burchill's exploration of the Spice Girls' post-feminist and socio-political legacy of Skinny, Nutty, Shouty, Shellsuit and Old Codgers' Fantasy Spice.

This Life Ten Years On (Tuesday 2 January, BBC2)

The repeats of the original series on BBC2 over the last month have felt as fresh as ever. Now here's Anna, Miles, Milly and Egg, ten years on, reunited for Ferdy's funeral.

Egg is an author, Miles has a country mansion, I'm not sure about the others yet. Hopefully Anna is still an uncompromising bitch with only glimmers of compassion and vulnerability and Milly has stopped lusting after crinkly old men with temple-of-doom hairlines. How were their lives so dysfunctional yet aspirational at the same time?

Celebrity Big Brother (Wednesday 3 January, Channel 4)

It's back. Oh, I'm so excited. Here's my wish list: Kevin Federline. Robert Kilroy-Silk. Jo Guest. A Chuckle brother. Julie Goodyear. Anthony from Eton Road. John Leslie. Donny Tourette (Towers of London). Leilani. Tara Reid and Starsky. Is this too much to ask? Happy Christmas xxx

Psychic TV

The next TV OD is on 5 January, when I will be blogging about Celebrity Big Brother and this time trying not to get so obsessed that it takes over my life, OK?

Who do you want to be in the Celebrity Big Brother house? Mail me on grace.dent@bbc.co.uk.

It says on the Radio Times website that Jane Rackham will be the reviewer for CBB5, not Grace Dent.

That's a pity, I really enjoyed Grace Dent's BB7 blogs.

I'm pleased to say that I was wrong. Sorry about that.

Here's Grace Dent's Celebrity Big Brother blog:

Radio Times, 05/01/06.