Every December at BBC1’s Sports Personality of the Year, there’s almost guaranteed to be a KNUCKLE-CHEWING numbness.
Even more so on Tuesday, when Alex Scott announced that “the Strictly Come Dancing judges will have their say on our six contestants, later in the show”.
6
Chris McCausland and Dianne Buswell celebrate their win, triumphing in a season that also appears to have saved the show for at least another yearCredit: PA
6
A win might temporarily mask the feelings of decline fueled by needless bookings, emotional incontinence and the transformation of Craig Revel Horwood into another stern sycophantCredit: BBC
Beg and plead and bribe them all you want, but no power on earth could stop the BBC from going ahead with the idea or Claudia saying, “First, Jude Bellingham. Anton?”
“He is elegant on the ball, athletic in the air. A real star.”
So it went on and on, with Shirley Ballas giving her opinion on Keely Hodgkinson, Craig Revel Horwood adding his thoughts on Luke Littler, no one convincing me that they first knew what they were talking about, but they all reminded me of a prominent fact.
Wickedly noisy
The BBC values dance far more than sport, which is one reason why the corporation should name the W1 meeting room in Chris McCausland’s honour.
Because not only did the comedian save their precious franchise, after the Giovanni Pernice/Amanda Abbington feud, he also saved it from some of the worst instincts of the show itself, where a lazy booking process left him at odds with two dancers who were professionally trained, Sarah Hadland and Tasha Ghouri, and a third, JB Gill, who previously appeared in ITV’s Ples Ples Ples.
A win for one of those three would kill any memory of the last three months.
Fortunately, the result was never seriously in doubt, as Anton du Beke made clear, whose astonishing level of self-obsession did not, for once, fail him when he apologized to Chris and admitted: “My imagination was that you were the whole I’ll hold on and crawl on the floor for a while.”
It’s a guilty feeling shared by many viewers and certainly what I expected from him.
However, we could not have been more gloriously wrong.
Chris could dance and also possessed a wickedly loud and self-deprecating sense of humor that probably won him back the series on the September premiere when he shouted: “Dianne is absolutely out of luck getting me because she wants November off.”
Strictly’s Chris McCausland cheekily punched the doctor leaving the cast speechless
As immune to preachiness and self-pity as the comedian may be, however, even he could do nothing to resist the horrendous crying contagion that gripped Saturday’s finale.
Who or what exactly started it, I can’t be 100 percent sure, but one minute the night was progressing pretty harmlessly, the next Motsi Mabuse was wiping her eyes saying, “I feel sorry for people who think crying isn’t the best thing in town.”
He then headed to the balcony, where Claudia confirmed, “Just so you know, everyone up here was crying too.”
They want to give him his own BBC comedy show, you ungrateful bastards
And from that point on, the dancing competition was replaced by a competitive crying game, which was eventually won by Anton, sniffing: “I didn’t want to cry, but I started crying and I can imagine the whole of Liverpool crying too.”
I felt that maybe Shirley could have upped the ante by claiming that “the whole world is crying”, but Craig chose that moment to read a poem in honor of Chris that was such a creepy s**t that I feel “the whole world” might rise if anything from I reproduce it here.
However, nothing, including Chris and Dianna’s victory, should mask the feeling that the show, which has lost several hundred thousand viewers this year, is still a production in a state of gradual decline that will only accelerate the senseless bookings, emotional incontinence and insane urge to the only antidote to all judge cowards, Craig Revel Horwood, has turned into another Strictly sycophant.
The biggest insult
For now, though, he lives on and you’d hope the BBC would come up with a better reward for Chris McCausland than the carrot he’s currently dangling, which might have seemed like an honor 40 years ago, but seems like the biggest insult imaginable in 2024.
They want to give him his own BBC comedy show, you ungrateful bastards.
DREAM crusher in 2024?
Legends of Comedy host Lenny Henry: “If I ever do stand-up comedy again, I want to do it more . . .”
funny?
“Honest.”
Oh.
Fred is dangerous
6
Sending Gino D’Acampo and Fred Sirieix on a journey without Gordon Ramsay is like Tight Fit The Lion Sleeps Tonight without Tarzan Credit: ITV
SENDING Gino D’Acampo and Fred Sirieix on a trip without Gordon Ramsay is a bit like reforming Tight Fit without hiring Steve Grant to dress up as Tarzan and sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
More than pointless.
It could be worse. If Gino cancels due to the very modern crime of “crotch stuffing”, ITV will only be left with Fred, the waiter of First Dates fame, patronizing the rest of the planet.
In the meantime, we’ve got a two-part project to contend with Gary Barlow’s Wine Tour of South Africa for worst celebrity travelogue of 2024.
It was called Gino and Fred: The Impossible Show, and it featured a scruffy Italian burglar who got drunk and sauntered through Austria and Croatia, while a Frenchman gave us a useless lecture on the environment, thumbing his nose at all the other people who actually paid to be there. and said: “Our journey through Croatia showed us the potential threat that tourist hordes pose to this incredible country.”
These “hordes”, of course, pay Fred’s salary, but, like all the world’s most deluded bums, he tried to distinguish himself from the spring by claiming that he was “a traveler, not a tourist”.
If he also carried a mental image of drunken sex vermin with criminal records wreaking havoc overseas, then I lost the irony until they turned up at a Croatian restaurant, where the owner was storing his wine at the bottom of a local lagoon, and Fred asked, “You’re fine ? No one will steal the wine?”
Not. And. At least not until Gino showed up.
BOX FOR GLASSES. Giles, watching You Bet: “Nice to see Holly back isn’t it Mary?”
“Not really.”
And on that bombshell, it seems like a good time to wish you all a Merry Christmas.
Unexpected morons in the packaging area
TURNING POINT: Lucky Stars, Ben Shephard: ” ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the little donkey’ is a line from which BBC police drama series starring Martin Compston?”
Keith Duffy: “The bill.”
Ben Shephard: “In England, in the period before taking the motorcycle or moped test, the driver must show a learner’s plate with what letter?”
Olivia Attwood: “P.”
And impossible: “Which poet from the First World War was killed in action in 1918 just a week before the signing of the armistice?”
Jess, Emma and Connor who, given the options of A) Siegfried Sassoon and C) Wilfred Owen, chose B): “John Cooper Clarke.”
Random irritations
BBC1’s sports personality of the year cowards who wallow in the illusion of female friendliness while avoiding all mention of XY chromosomes beating women in Olympic boxing.
The Day Of The Jackal takes ten episodes to kill Lashana “Bianca” Lynch, and her acting should have been successful in the first five minutes. And Harry and Meghan’s Netflix Polo series, which is so deadly boring it could put a pod of caffeinated dolphins into a coma before the check-out rush is over. Man, it’s boring.
Great sports insights
LEON OSMAN: “By sending off Rashford, Ruben Amorim put his foot in the sand.”
Stephen Warnock: “When Fernandes equalized it was the winner.” And Theo Walcott: “Palmer does it time and time again. He is so unpredictable.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
6
Shayne Ward, one of the stars of the Christmas special The Good Ship Murder Credits: PA
WATCH all the telly you want over the next fortnight, none as bad but brilliant as Christmas special The Good Ship Murder, where EastEnders’ Minty is impaled on a Christmas tree while dressed as Santa and Channel 5’s singing detective Shayne “Jack Grayling ” Ward tried to bribe the Croatian owner of the comedy club by saying that he would “sing for free the next time we dock in Dubrovnik” if he handed over the incriminating camera footage.
And if not? He would sing his entire Breathless album.
MORE than ten hours into Day Of The Jackal, Eddie Redmayne: “Don’t worry, this will all be over very soon.”
NOT.
SOON. ENOUGH.
TV Gold
6
Donald Fagen of Steely Dan Credit: Getty
CHRIS McCAUSLAND is becoming the most coveted Strictly winner since Bill Bailey.
Michael McIntyre’s story of ordering from the wrong menu at a Beverly Hills hotel in his brilliant 25th annual BBC1 stand-up special.
The U&Drama channel is rerunning all nine series of the Beeb’s old masterpiece Bergerac on Sunday nights.
Inspirational speech by Dr. Mark Prince, receiving SPOTY’s Helen Rollason Award.
And a wonderfully tender and knowledgeable Sky Documentaries film devoted to the much maligned art of Yacht Rock, as presented by Kenny Loggins and The Doobie Brothers.
Although it must be admitted, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen didn’t see it that way and told the producer, “Fuck you,” right at the end.
Lookalike of the week
6
Larry David, left, and Geri from Pixar’s Geri’s Game
THIS week’s winner is comedy legend Larry David and Geri from Pixar’s Geri’s Game.
- Emailed by Connor David.
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: HIS Education