Spare us the Christmas specials

Well, the Christmas specials are certainly starting to come in thick and fast this week.
And all we can say is... make it stop. Please.
For One Night Only (ITV1, Sat) with Tom Jones, The Charlotte Church Nutcracking Christmas Special (C4, Sun), All Star Mr and Mrs Christmas Special (ITV1, Sat) and the awful Clash of the Santas (ITV1, Sun)... fun isn’t the word.
In fact, the word is something we probably can’t write in this blog.
Perhaps most gruesome of all was After You’ve Gone (BBC1, Sun).
This is the embarrassingly bad comedy created by the people who bought you My Family, with Nicholas Lyndhurst playing a (deservedly) abandoned dad and Celia Imrie as his utterly dull mother in law.
We’ve only previously caught the last five minutes or so on a Friday night (usually when switching over for Have I Got News for You), but even from this fleeting glimpse you could see it was very, very bad.
Nothing could prepare us for the full half hour experience though.
The Christmas plot, if you can use such a word to describe this kind of material, involved a burglary, a house swap and a hilarious case of mistaken identity.
A teenage son, who obviously had some kind of specials needs which was never quite explained, was also involved in a sub plot about selling toy dolls.
And Tracy Beaker was around for some of the time too as a teenage daughter. She didn’t get too many lines though. Lucky her.
It was only towards the end of this dire show that it suddenly struck us.
Nicholas Lyndhurst was once a part of the must-see show of the Christmas TV schedule (Fools and Horses). Now look at him.
If you think you’ve had a bad year, what with the credit crunch and all that, at least console yourself with one thought.
You’re not Nicholas Lyndhurst.
Best thing on the telly all weekend was actually a kids' drama, Dustbin Baby (BBC1, Sun) - about troubled teen April (Dakota Blue Richards) and her foster mum (Juliet Stevenson).
Penned by Jacqueline Wilson, it had a good story (a baby abandoned at birth and shoved in a dustbin at a pizza parlour), fine acting, warmth and a real Christmassy feel - despite having nothing at all to do with the festive season.
With the afternoon darkness outside, the twinkling lights on the tree, a large tin of Quality Street on the go and a reasonably happy ending, this was indeed a perfect yuletide family drama.

Sick of Christmas food programmes yet?

Well, we don't know about you but we're sick of the sight of food and Christmas hasn't even begun properly yet.
TV schedulers have gone a bit barmy with their festive food programmes this week.
First Nutty Nigella (Nigella's Christmas Kitchen, BBC2 Mon-Thurs) and her glamorous tagine feasts and deep freezers that "do all the hard work" when you're cooking. (Unfortunately, they don't trudge to Tesco in the rain and lug all the ingredients back home though, do they Nige?)
Then Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall showed us what Christmas at River Cottage (C4, Weds) was all about.
Mostly shooting perfectly harmless deer by the looks of it. Very unnecessary.
And finding out how to make Brussels sprouts palatable to someone who doesn't like Brussels sprouts. By covering them with black pudding and deep frying, allegedly.
Common to both these programmes was a major scene where the host's friends would turn up for a mind blowing Christmas meal involving delicious food and wine and merry-making.
Husbands, wives and children did not appear to have been invited.
We imagined them cold and friendless, sitting in a room next door watching EastEnders while all the fun was going on so close to them.
Wives and children were, however, present in Willie's Perfect Chocolate Christmas (C4, Weds).
The Willie in question here being ever so eccentric Willie Harcourt-Cooze, a man who cannot stop thinking about chocolate ever.
Yeah? So what's so eccentric about that?
This was one of those slightly tongue-in-cheek Channel Four jobbies where we got to see the everyday family life of our hero - including scenes with his "long suffering" wife and "adorable" kids in their rambling country home.
It was obviously supposed to come across as an endearing look at the chaotic life of this maverick cook and the people who love him.
But in reality, it just came across as one big festival of utter smugness.
And there wasn't nearly enough chocolate...

Strictly - why are we bothering?

It's been a bad, bad few weeks for Strictly Come Dancing.
Now we know it's daft to accuse a programme that involves more fake tan than you'd find in Dale Winton's bathroom of being artificial.
But that's how it feels now. A show full of phoneys. With the exit of Christine, all the nice genuine celebs, the ones we were rooting for, have gone. As have our reasons for voting. We'd put in a few calls for Cherie (doing it for the more mature ladies, amazing legs) until she went. Also John Sergeant, because he capered around with such glee. And Jodie Kidd and Christine were nice gals who had managed to cling on to that crucial attitude - perspective.
Without them, the show's gone whistling off into La-La land. Are there even any ordinary members of the public watching in that audience now, or is it just ex-soap stars and radio hosts?
Meanwhile, Bruceh is frantically ta-ra-ra-boom-deh-ah-ing like there's no tomorrow and Tess is turning into a peroxide Cilla Black all in an attempt to distract us from the fact that most of the personality has been squeezed from the show.
And what to make of Luvvie Lisa and her hissy fits? "Our sis-taaah is going frew HELL!" stomped Lisa's siblings. "Emotionally, it's unbelievable for her" chimed in her dad. Meanwhile we get to see yet ANOTHER close-up of weepy Lisa, wiping away whole ink-cartridges of mascara because "the public don't like me!" Gee, I wonder why.

Silksy should have stayed!

So East Midlands MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk became the first to be voted out of the jungle in I'm a Celebrity last night.
And it was pretty obvious to everyone he didn't deserve to go.
He was merely the victim of an unfortunate set of circumstances.
First, having initially been cast as the villain of the piece (and getting shed loads of lovely camera attention because of it), his "crown" was somewhat stolen with the arrival of the marvellous David Van Day.
The ex-Dollar singer has done nothing but sulk, argue, and generally stir up masses of trouble. In other words, he's turned what was set to be a bit of a boring series into an instant classic.
No wonder Silksy retreated into the background and left the pint sized porker to it.
The other thing that did for Kilroy was the insane idea to introduce those awful "immunity" trials.
It was criminal that many of the boring characters - like Carly "Who?" Zucker and Thingy from Blue - were saved from the vote.
Maybe one of them would have gone instead of Robert.
We'll never know.
But let this be a lesson to the show's producers: don't muck about with the formula.
Put your celebrities in. Let the viewers vote them out. End of.
And while you're at it, do something about those bushtucker trials. They aren't half dull this year...
Oh yes and another thing. DVD to win!

Strictly - The Sergeant Scandal

An absolute scandal. That’s what it is.
“Dancing pig”. “A dancing dis-arse-ter”. How are you supposed to carry on blithely with such comments ringing in your ears?
The fact beaming John Sergeant has managed to appear onscreen each Saturday sporting a smile above the spangles – and, in the process, brought a national feelgood factor unseen since Jonathan Ross took three months’ leave - is testament alone to his strength of personality.
The four Strictly judges should hang their heads in shame. They’ve driven the people’s choice out of the competition.
Their tactless championing of fancy footwork over feelgood frippery has cast a huge cloud over what is – no matter what anybody says – an ENTERTAINMENT show.
John says he feels forced to step down because there’s now a real danger he might win the show. So what? His performances are often more entertaining than some of his self-regarding rivals’ combined.
Besides, no matter what the judges said John COULD dance and we could see it. Perhaps he wasn’t so technically brilliant as Luvvie Lisa Snowdon and co but the vicious criticism and lowly marks he received were wholly unjust and prompted his massive popularity.
For the past few series, Strictly’s voting viewers and po-faced judges (who decide, between them, who goes) have been locked in an arm wrestle. There have even been rule changes to suit Craig, Arlene, Len and Bruno, with rumours of more next year.
Matters came to a head in the case of John. The meaner they were, the more we loved him. He was even blamed for good dancers falling by the wayside… but surely his continued presence only gave them a week’s grace, at best?
It’s purely the presence of ordinary Joe dancers like John that keep millions tuning in – and voting - week after week. In fact, could the BBC please offer us a refund on the cash we spent supporting him?
If Strictly were just about the “darnce”… like its predecessor Come Dancing, most of us would waltz off to the X Factor. Now John’s gone… well, we may do just that.

Kilroy the Cheat...

So, it was Robert Kilroy-Silk’s first bushtucker trial in the I’m a Celeb jungle - and what a cheating rat bag he turned out to be.

In a frankly rubbish task, he claimed some of the keys for the padlocks holding him in chains in the scary dark chamber “weren’t working” properly.

So when he popped open the lid and announced:"I've won!"- Ant and Dec had to point out that the reason he couldn’t get out was because he hadn’t opened the final lock correctly.

And he had to go back inside until he’d undone it properly.

Ha!

Course, by this time, rival Joe Swash had won the posh nosh for his team mates in “Camp Camp.”

Kilroy wasn’t happy.

But then how can you hope to compete with someone who has “protected and loved from above” written on his bum?

The trial was actually far less interesting than the other stuff happening on the show - especially now the two teams have become one and two new celebs are set to come in.

So far, George looks like he’s having a ball, Brian and Dani have both turned out to be proper stirrers and Esther is just lovely.

Joe is emerging as the life and soul of the party, while Martina seems to be sinking fast - she’ll have to get her act together if she’s going to make any kind of impact.

Can't really remember the others, they're so dull. And as for our resident villain Kilroy, he’ll have the chance to prove himself again as the public has chosen him to do the silly “Travolting” dance thing.

Unfortunately, some dimwit at ITV has decided we won’t see this spectacle tonight because the football is on instead. Grrr.

Still, we can always entertain ourselves by singing songs, like the ones Joe loves.

Altogether now: “Olly, olly, olly...”

Joe's a true gag man...

It looks like Joe Swash is in danger of becoming this year’s serial bushtucker trial taker out in the I’m a Celeb jungle.

After many years of playing dull old Mickey Miller in Easties, who knew the squeaky voiced cockney could be so brilliantly entertaining under duress?

If he keeps this up, none of the other contestants are going to get a look in.

Last night, it was the familiar old “bug eating” trial - coming surprisingly early in this year’s series.

And Joe vs world famous internationally renowned, honest, glamour model Nicola did not disappoint.

Surely she’d been practicing beforehand though? How else do you explain the confident way she ate those live crickets?

Joe on the other hand was a total wreck. Loved the way he kept apologising for his “gagging reflex.” Ant and Dec nearly wet themselves.

Elsewhere, gay police chief Brian Paddick clashed briefly with East Midlands MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk.

The former had “won” a visit to see what life was like in grotty old Away Camp.

Kilroy welcomed him by telling him to "clear off"- although the big smirk on his face hinted he might have been, you know, joshing.

Poor Brian was not amused though - arriving back in his own camp to tell his mates how horrid the nasty orange man was to him and how he nearly cried he was so scared. Bless.

The sooner they dispense with the silly “split teams” and get these two together permanently, the better.