Hotel Babylon? Bobbins

There was quite fun piece on MSN yesterday about the UK's favourite TV phrases. I suspect it came from one of those survey press releases which appear in abundance on newsdesks the week before a bank holiday because PRs somehow think they are more likely to get them in print when news editors think no-one else is reading.

All the usual catchphrases are in there - Only Fools and Horses (plonker), The Simpson (Doh!) The Apprentice (You're Fired) - all catchphrases which bring a smile to the face because you know you enjoy watching the programmes from which they come from (or, in the case of The Apprentice because someone is being humiliated).

But, ever one to be different, I thought I'd present you with the world's most irritating TV phrase, one which strikes fear into my heart and guarantees a rant about the use of the TV licence fee:

"Now on BBC 1, tensions are running high at Hotel Babylon."

For some reason, I decided to series link Hotel Babylon . Perhaps I believed the website strap of "A tantalising and seductive insight into the world of a luxury hotel."

Bobbins. And that's been polite. When you see an actor like Max Beesley appearing in Hotel Babylon one day, and then three days later in the excellent The Last Enemy you soon realise not even the best actors in the world can rescue a "drama" devoid of decent stories, and crippled by poor scripts.

Sure, it's got the fancy camera moves and clever use of music, but if the producers of Hotel Babylon believed that's all it takes to ape the success of big American dramas, then they surely must realise now how badly wrong they were.

By contrast, Holby City, which runs just before Hotel Babylon, is combining slick production with gripping storylines to create neat, one hour episodes which take the best of American production values and mix with the best of British scriptwriting.

Maybe, I thought, Hotel Babylon suffers because of what is on around it. Stick a muffin next to a full-sized chocolate birthday cake, and it looks quite inferior. Stick it around lots of other muffins, and it does the job just fine. The problem with the muffin called Hotel Babylon (stick with me, I'm on Lemsip at the moment) is that no matter where you found it, one bite and you'll realise that it went off a long time ago.

One hour, once a week, of complete and utter nonsense. Good actors reduced, I would assume, to thinking their appearance in the programme is ironic. And it probably pays well. At least, I hope it does.

Perhaps it was meant to be the BBC's answer to Footballers' Wives - utterly unbelievable, but amusing because of it. But it doesn't work. Footballers Wives, you suspect, is at least based on a smattering of truth, hidden away. Or at least we all like to think it is.

Hotel Babylon, by contrast, doesn't even have that. I'd go into the plots with you but that would defeat the purpose of removing it off series link.

And just when it couldn't get any worse, the world's most annoying man, John Barrowman, turned up for a cameo. Time for this one to check out, for good.

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