The tragedy of George of the Famous Five

When I was growing up my favourite books were those by Enid Blyton about the Famous Five. How I longed to join Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy on an adventure.

I watched and enjoyed the 1978 television series. It was therefore with great sadness that I found out yesterday that Michele Gallagher who played George committed suicide on 31 January 2001 at the age of just 36. The internet has a very lengthy forum entry which posits all sorts of bizarre theories including one that she went into a witness protection programme!

I would be very interested to know the true story about Michele and what happened to her. If you know please leave details and I will get back to you. And may she rest in peace and her family and friends find comfort.

Grade is taking the Michael

Yesterday morning at about 7.40am, ITV executive chairman Michael Grade in an interview with Radio 4's Today programme claimed that the viewing public were "watching ITV and BBC1 in unprecedented numbers".

This claim is absolute nonsense. Coronation Street - one of ITV's bankers - pulled in fewer than eight million viewers on Christmas Day. That is a crisis number when it used to attract double that figure.

Just because someone working in TV says something doesn't make it so...

TV wasn't so bad in the old days...

A BBC director has said that there are too many coloured faces on television.

Samir Shah, a former BBC head of current affairs who now runs an independent production company, said this had led to a "world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease".

Shah spoke at the Royal Television Society: "The difficult truth I want you to accept is this: the equal opportunity policies we have followed over the last 30 years simply have not worked.

"Despite 30 years of trying, the upper reaches of our industry, the positions of real creative power in British broadcasting, are still controlled by a metropolitan, largely liberal, white, middle-class, cultural elite - and, until recently, largely male and largely Oxbridge."

Hmm, some might say that that "elite" didn't do too bad a job and actually made programmes that people wanted to watch - unlike much of the rubbish churned out today by sundry Tamsins and Justins.

An audience with comedians is what ITV needs - failing that... an audience

Last weekend in the gap between the end of Britain's Got Talent final and the results, ITV screened An Audience with Neil Diamond.

Neil Diamond is, without doubt, a songwriting genius but sharing scripted quips with an audience full of people he doesn't know does not for television genius make.

When will the people who run ITV realise that An Audience with... only works with comedians. Bob Monkhouse, Dame Edna Everage, Jackie Mason - brilliant. Take That, Spice Girls, The Osmonds - no thanks.

Leave the Street alone

Today The Sun runs a story on Page 3 that a new Coronation Street producer has plans to sack “up to five of the soap’s longest-serving actors".

An on-set source said yesterday: “There is a feeling the show needs a younger and sexier feel."

As a long-term viewer of Coronation Street, might I ask why?

Which soap has the youngest and sexiest stars? Hollyoaks.

Which is the least watched soap? Hollyoaks.

The Sun adds that "It is felt some of the older stars are holding back the show".

Remember when Emmerdale introduced all those sexy advertising posters? Remember when Emmerdale hired Phil Redmond to spice up the show? He arranged for a plane to drop on the village.

Emmerdale is still the third most watched soap behind EastEnders and Coronation Street.

The Sun's source says, “The recent stars have been younger characters like David Platt, but many of the older characters are on huge money and are hardly involved."

And has there been a more detestable, loathsome, unsympathetic character as David Platt?

If the producers think that filling the Street with characters like David, watch the viewing figures drop.

Coronation Street's strength has always been its strong female characters: Ena Sharples, Annie Walker, Elsie Tanner, Hilda Ogden, Vera Duckworth, Bet Lynch, Cilla Battersby-Brown - its skill is that its storylines are character-led not issue-led.

How many fans really care about David or Sean or Molly or Paul or, for that matter, Leanne? They do care about Rita, Betty, Jack, Emily, Ken and Deidre, even Blanche.

They are the real Coronation Street as well as the reel one.

A variety of British talent...

On Saturday night an ITV documentary focused on talent shows and compares those of yesteryear - Opportunity Knocks and New Talent - with today's offerings Pop Idol, Britain's Got Talent, The X Factor and the like.

I didn't see the show but one obvious answer to the problem that no winners of today's shows seem to have long-lasting careers is that there is nowhere for them to go.

A winner of Opportunity Knocks or New Talent could land a regular spot as the singing guest on The Two Ronnies or appear on The Morecambe and Wise Show. Then there were variety shows such as Live From Her Majesty's and Summertime Special where the artiste could get more exposure.

How often have you seen Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts on TV these days since his win? Apart from, that is on the Royal Variety Show (which was part of his prize anyway) or propping up the sofa with Phil and Fern? What about Damon Scott (the 26-year-old with the monkey puppet miming to Michale Jackson) or the two barmen whose name escapes me. How often will we see Rhydian Roberts on telly? What about Same Difference? Even Leon Jackson, the winner who can't actually sing in tune, hasn't anywhere to appear.

Bring back variety shows - television which the whole family can enjoy. It's not a new idea but it is one whose time has come.

The death of British TV

We don’t have enough celebrities so we create them with reality shows and then complain that they have no talent.

British television has never been able to sustain for any length of time a 5-nights-a-week chat show and the reason is simple – there are not enough celebrities. The nearest we have come was the long-forgotten Jack Docherty who was on Channel 5 when it first launched. (One of his stand-in hosts was Graham Norton. Norton’s own show on Channel 4 could not really be described as a chatshow since it was more a vehicle for Norton’s own sense of humour and obsessions. The celebrity guests were mere catalysts for the fun.) Even the genial Terry Wogan, one of our brighter broadcasters, struggled after a while with a primetime show broadcast three times a week. His show is now probably best remembered for George Best’s incoherent rant about sex and drinking.

In the United States things are very different. The late Johnny Carson reigned supreme on The Tonight Show for 30 years and his replacement Jay Leno has been in the chair for the past 15 although he has announced that he will stand down in 2009. David Letterman has hosted his own show for a dozen years, as has Conan O’Brien who will take over when Leno retires. Usually in the UK chatshows are weekly affairs and a veritable who’s who of showbusiness have at one time or another tried their hands at hosting duties including Simon Dee, Michael Parkinson, Jonathan Ross, Michael Aspel, Clive Anderson, Clive James, Graham Norton, Frank Skinner, et al. Some of these suffered because the host was more interesting than many of his guests – or more egotistical.

American visitors to these televisual shores only grace the sofas when they have a new book/film/TV show to plug and are usually so tiresome and uninteresting that viewers quickly tire of these incessant plugs. We are not so deferential to celebrities in this country as America. When did you last see a sitcom star receive a round of applause for just walking onto the set?

So what do we do to combat this dearth of celebrity? We promote and publicise people with little talent and/or no brains and bestow fame and riches upon them. This is how someone like Jade Goody comes to be on the cover of showbusiness magazines and how Rebecca Loos ends up giving a pig a masturbating a pig.

Stop the love-in

There are few people in the public eye now that can be described as "best-loved". In days gone by Britain's best-loved sitcom was Only Fools and Horses; best-loved magician Tommy Cooper; best-loved double act Morecambe and Wise and best-loved royal Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Now people are liked rather than loved. Tolerated for a brief time until they are no longer wanted.

This doesn't stop publishers referring to "best-loved". I have already commented on Julian Clary who is not one of Britain's "best-loved entertainers" despite what his publishers may think.

Two more incidences arise. Richard Hammond is "one of Britain's best-love television presenters" and Graham McCann is apparently "Britain's best-loved showbiz writer".

This is plainly nonsense.

As with Clary, when was the last time you heard someone say, "We must watch telly tonight Richard Hammond's on"?

And Graham McCann is not "Britain's best-loved showbiz writer" for two simple reasons: one, Britain does not have a best-loved showbiz writer, and two, no one has ever heard of him.

Enough of the luvvieness.

The over-selling of Clary

Recently, I was browsing in a bookshop when I saw a new novel written by Julian Clary. Obviously, I didn't buy it – that only encourages them.

However, I was surprised that the blurb said, “Julian Clary is one of Britain’s best-loved entertainers”.

No, he’s not. He has a extremely limited appeal to a very niche market. When was the last time you heard someone say, “Oooh, we must stay in tonight (or set the TiVo) Julian Clary’s on the telly”?

TV Reviews: This is Your Life, Britain's Got Talent

This is Your Life is back and the first guest of honour (as Eamonn Andrews called them) was Simon Cowell.

No problems there but why on earth is Trevor McDonald hosting? Who in Network Centre thinks that it is a good idea to let him near any LE show?

For some bizarre reason, he hosts The British Comedy Awards despite having no discernible sense of humour, no personality and couldn't ad lib his way out of a paper bag.

And now, This is Your Life!

On to a show that had me laughing and crying - I have to confess I have never seen a Simon Cowell show before but had seen clips on YouTube of America's Got Talent (which he doesn't appear on).

Britain's Got Talent is brilliant - from the wacky (the angle grinder woman) to the genuinely moving (Paul the mobile phone salesman with no confidence but a voice that sends shivers down your spine). After two episodes I am hooked.

More, please.

Big Brother racist row - the latest one

I haven't watched any of Big Brother VIII until tonight when I watched the Emily Parr incident on YouTube.

Charley thought she was pregnant and Emily said, "You're pushing it out, you nigger."

Thoughtless, yes. Daft, yes. Offensive, not it appears to Charley and she was the one Emily was talking to.

Should Emily have been evicted for what she said? Should the opprobrium of the nation be heaped on this young girl's shoulders? Was she being racist? Nay, nay and thrice nay.

Channel 4 overreacted. You could tell from the eviction footage that she did not intend to upset Charley and if Charley wasn't upset, then who are the rest to take offence on her behalf?

Let Emily be...

The Bill

News reaches me that The Bill, ITV's premier cop drama, is to be cut to one episode a week because of falling ratings.

A few years back, it was cut to two half-hour episodes with a continuing thread then it became a self-contained one-hour story and now it is a continuing thread of sixty-minute stories.

One suggestion: perhaps the producers might like to consider spending money on story lines and good writers rather than snapping up rejects from other soaps (Taylforth, Nolan, Lucy, Lytton et al) I exclude the excellent Roberta Taylor (ex-EastEnders) from this.

The Doctor is too sexy

The third series of the new Doctor Who continues to entertain (apart from one boring episode so far, Gridlock).

However, one minor gripe why does writer head writer Russell T. Davies insist on inserting a gay agenda into the series?

Yes, I know he is homosexual and yes I have heard that Queer as Folk was brilliant. But this is Doctor Who for Heaven's sake.

He should be sexless.

If he can travel with the gorgeous Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant) and not raise an er eyebrow, why does he now appear to be some great sexual creature?

In the boring episode Gridlock why was it necessary to tell us (and all the watching children) explicitly that the two elderly women were lesbians?

And in Daleks in Manhattan why did he offer Frank the opportunity of kissing him?

It is unnecessary.

From the funniest TV critic in Britain

RICHARD MADELEY misunderstanding of the month.

Subject: Celebrity Wife Swap.

Vanessa Feltz: "Debbie McGee's got a plastic pig in the fridge that goes 'Oink oink oink, you fatty. Don't eat anything'."

RM: "She got that just for you?"

Feltz: "NO. In her OWN fridge."

Though she needn't dismiss the idea.