June 2008 Archives

When that nice farmer chap who invites 180,000 mud lovers onto his Glastonbury land every year sits down and asks himself why his world-famous festival failed to sell out until the last minute, I hope he remembers this: BBC.

Why? Forget the discussion about whether rap artists should be allowed to perform at Glastonbury (answer is yes, after all the festival has it origins with all-embracing hippies) and whether that knocked sales. The answer is much simplier. The middle class who have made it so hard to get tickets in the past now know they can experience Glastonbury in a much nicer way, from their living room.

SUNDAY evening telly ain't what it used to be, is it? Well, actually, yes it is. It's utterly crap. If ever there is a time of the week when the National Grid might feel a surge as television sets the country over flick between channels at lightning spped, it's Sunday evening.

This week, my hunt for a decent programme on a Sunday evening took me to BBC 4. It's normally a channel I skip by in a hurry - it's highbrow remit, a kind of doffing of the cap by the BBC to its traditional roots, doesn't normally appeal - but The Secret Life of the Motorway (BBC 4, Sundays, 8pm) stopped me in my tracks.

IF there is one DVD you buy this summer, perhaps as an alternative to the ongoing football, it has to be the best of Mock The Week.

Regular readers of this blog will know no programme comes anywhere close in my estimations as Mock The Week. Like the bastard younger brother of Have I Got News For You, it's satirical comedy left off the leash, and with the likes of Russell Howard, Dara O'Briain and Frankie Boyle, it doesn't know when to stop when it comes to crossing the line.

WHILE the Euro 2008 opening games have colonised the BBC and ITV schedules, causing havoc with Mark Austin's meal-times, another sport has been quietly occupying an earlier part of the BBC's day.

Normally, I'd simply skip by anything with the word "tennis" in it, but as the temperature creeped up during the afternoon in Menorca, dragging the TV out on to the balcony was the only way to go. With BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 3 and Sky News to go at from the English channels, it doesn't take long to get bored with rolling news and day-time afternoon dramas.

So thank God for the Artois tennis tournament from Queen's. It doesn't have the wall-to-wall promotion of football, nor the tens of millions to lavish on its key participants, but there's a lot "soccer" - and those covering it for TV - can learn from it.

Well, hands up who expected Sir Alan Sugar to follow on from telling Lee he was hired by saying to Claire: "And do you know what flower, so are you?"

All the way through the final minutes of the main show, and then during the spectacular spin off "You´re hired" (spectacular in that it was the second spin off show within an hour on the BBC following Sir Alan´s big announcement) I kept expecting Sir Alan to pull the rabbit out of the hat.

THE SUNDAY MIRROR'S article on Britain's Got Talent winner George Sampson makes a subtle point which pretty much sums up Britain when it described how viewers got behind him after hearing his hard-luck story.

George, for those of you who have maintained a life in recent weeks rather than be glued to the series, is a dancer. In my opinion, not a particularly good one. He's in his early teens and didn't even make the semi finals last year.