Accorinding to the previously unheard of Kerry McCarthy, Jeremy Kyle's show is "a modern day freak show" in which people "aired their dirty linen in public."
]]> She goes on - oblivious, it seems, to the fact that perhaps a recession, two wars in the Middle East and so on are probably more worthy of discussion at the moment - to say that "They served up damaged people and dysfunctional relationships for entertainment."And reaching her peak, saying participants "risk humiliation, bullying, feeling rejected, feeling hurt."
Hmmm, now where else can we find people with often dysfunctional relationships risking humiliation and bullying while airing each others' dirty linen in public?
Oh yes, that's right. BBC Parliament. Best get that switched off, too.
]]>I've never particularly enjoyed Strictly. I don't particularly think much of Bruce Forsyth as a presenter, and the idea of ballroom dancing as entertainment appears to have passed me by.
As for the X-Factor, it's normally round about now that I become interested once again - once the rubbish make-up-the-numbers-because-they-have-a-sob-story contestants have been binned off.
Both programmes are excellent at what they do, both are very different in many ways but strangely, both are suffering the same affliction, at the same time.
Both have judges who are suddenly trying to steal the show.
]]> Let's start with X-Factor. What was with Danni Minogue crying, all because Louis Walsh accused her of stealing a song one of his groups wanted to sing that weekend?Surely Danni's concern should have been for the ex-druggie over-25s singer - the one who was ultimately knocked out after singing the song Danni "stole" from Louis's rather naff boy band.
It almost made you forget that it's supposed to be a singing competition - one in which the viewers are supposed to make the choice.
Over on BBC 1, the judges were rather getting ahead of themselves by bemoaning John Sargeant's massive popularity in the competition. Sure, it is supposed to be dancing and the like, but crucially it's us, the public who are supposed to have the final say, isn't it?
If that is the case, then I have this question: Why have the sing-off/dance-off? Is it to add to the drama, or merely to pad out the programme?
Or is it so that the judges retain a degree of control over who goes through, and who goes home? Let's face it, it's very rare that two superb acts end up in the bottom two. Normally, it's the duff one, and one of the ones marked for the final -especially in the case of X-Factor.
And what happens when the judges don't get to chuck out the useless one? Well, they get crabby - just look at what happened on Strictly when John failed to make the bottom two. He probably deserved to go, but the public took its vote and used it exactly how it saw fit - to keep in the one they liked.
What am I driving at? Well, put it this way, for as long as we have the sing-off or dance-off, we don't have a competition where we decide who stays and who goes. We have a bit of a say, but the public's vote is strictly controlled.
And that, to me, simply isn't worth voting for.
It's come in for a hard time lately, and rightly so, even if a lot of the criticism came from factions within its own empire.
But its coverage of Rememberance Sunday and Armistice Day was, without doubt, superb.
]]> The coverage of the live events from the Cenotaph was pitch perfect: not too invasive but personal enough to remind anyone watching why we should continue to care about events which happened up to 90 years ago.BBC News at 10 also did a superb two-night feature, presented by reporter John Kay, in which he took two teenaged lads to retrace the steps of their great-grandfather who died during the First World War.
The only minor blip was the use of celebrities in a series of programmes called "My Family At War.' A bit like Who Do You Think You Are, but just for war relatives. Some of the celebrities, such as Kirsty Wark, were dignified and impressive, others, such as Rolf Harris and Matthew Kelly left a bit of a poor taste in the mouth.
Did Rolf Harris really need to liken his relatives' First World War experiences to his song "Two Little Boys", while Matthew Kelly's ecky thump professional northerner routine in Ypres was a just a little over the top.
But these are minor criticisms when compared to the superb tone overall. The BBC deserves praise - something you won't hear on this blog too often.
]]>But Mariah Carey's appearance on the The X-Factor perhaps won't be remembered the way Simon Cowell hopes. Am I the only person who found Mariah Carey a little, well, odd?
]]> It was almost as if she wasn't real. Her voice was so soft it was as though she wasn't even trying to speak, and her comments when the X-Factor hopefuls (and the hopeless) were hardly insightful, were they?And as for her performance of Hero, well. Where was the glass-shattering voice which made her the star she is today? Where was the stage-dominating performance which makes tickets to her show the hottest in any town?
It was as though, midway through, perhaps at the point when the X-Factor wannabes joined her on stage, she woke up and began wondering what the hell she was doing there.
And she wasn't the only one.
]]>Now it's even got a name. Depending on where you get your news, it is either Manuel-gate or Sachs-gate, if you're into your broadsheet.
But, nine days on from the Mail on Sunday's "revelations" about a radio show broadcast at least a week previously, here's a question for you: What was all the fuss about?
]]> Yes, it was foolish of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to ring up Andrew Sachs and leave messages on his answerphone about Brand's sexual activities with Sachs's grand-daughter.But, truly, honestly, does it really matter? We're talking here about two of the most outrageous broadcasters in the country, employed by the BBC to do what they do best - bring in an audience by being outrageous.
Then, when they apparently overstep the mark with a stunt which prompted two - yes, count them, two - complaints at time of broadcast, one is forced to walk away, the other suspended for three months.
Here's my thinking: It was aired by BBC Radio 2 - a station desperate to be cool while still catering for its core, middle-aged base during the day - late on a Saturday night. It triggered two complaints, which suggests, to me, that the stunt wasn't out of balance with what the audience expected.
The complaints began pouring in once it appeared on the front of the Mail on Sunday, and then the rest of the Press got involved. But these weren't complaints from listeners. At best, they were complaints from people who gone and pressed the listen again function on the BBC I Player. At worst, they were from people who complained a) because they like complaining or b) because they thought everyone else was.
And nowhere in the acres of coverage does there appear to be any suggestion that the victim of the prank, Andrew Sachs, was the instigator of the Mail on Sunday's article. He did indeed complain to the BBC. So, of the 30,000 who did, we now have three who really had a right to - the two who listened and the man whose answerphone took the brunt of the prank.
Nor has the issue of how Brand knew what her grand-dad did for living come up. Georgina - a shy, retiring burlesque dancer - admits sleeping with with Brand on the first date, and twice after that. When would anyone else mention what their grandpa did?
The moment Georgina appeared to be making personal gain out of the situation, the moment her credibility as victim was shattered by her own revelations, the BBC should have stopped saying sorry. By this point, Sachs himself had said he was happy with the apologies. End of story.
Yet it's not the end of the story. The BBC now has one of its best talents at home on unpaid suspension, while Brand will take his audience elsewhere. But the greatest damage to the BBC isn't from the actual broadcast, but from its inability to stop saying sorry, and its reluctance to tell people: "If you don't like it, don't listen." Hell, it's the reason why Terry Wogan is never on my radio.
Yet the BBC didn't see it that way, and pretty quickly it cranked its own news operation into action, insisting that it be among the sternest critics of one of its own. For three days in a row, the Five Live phone in was dominated by the saga. Strangely, the majority of callers who got on air complained it was all too much fuss - but when the BBC sees a bandwagon with its own name on it, commonsense isn't enough to stop it climbing on board.
In a week when thousands were being made homeless in Congo and the FTSE rose by one of its largest percentages ever, not to mention the small matter of a US election, the flagship news show on the BBC, the Ten O'Clock News, led with a row over a late-night radio broadcast which triggered jut two complaints at time of broadcast.
Of course, at this point, Sach's grand-daughter Georgina Baillie was busy playing the role of the hard-done to victim whose private life had been ruthlessly exposed on air. And, of course, the only way to react to such an invasion is to respond, on the front page of the Sun, denouncing Brand's performance in bed and revealing intimate secret yourself.
]]>Here's the top 5:
5. Glamrockerqueen has posted Jo Waite's take on "My Old Man's a Dustman" - it's called My Old Man's a Banker.
4. No-one should ever accuse Americans of being Dumb without good evidence, and here it is. Primetime news, networked across the States, turning to cartoons to explain what the credit crunch is:
3. From Weebl comes Credit Crunch: The Commercial. I particularly love the line "How do you make it so salty? Answer, it's made from the tears of a 1,000 bankers."
2. The Credit Crunch Anthem. Anyone who can improve an Elton John anthem (not difficult), and then insert the words Bradford and Bingley where the phrase England's rose was, deserves a place in this chart.
1. And our number one goes to AntanDebt. If not just for the name, then for the sheer effort that has gone into the Credit Crunch Song. I'd love to be the one who discovered it, sadly, 357,000 people have got there before me....
But, two episodes in, it's obvious to see that it's back on form.
And, in hindsight, perhaps the tinkering which wrecked series six will prove to be the thing that keeps Spooks going for many series to come.
]]> Think about it, who had high expectations for Spooks this time? Even the BBC played the promotional stuff in quite a low-key way - I don't even remember anyone appearing on the BBC Breakfast sofa with Bill and Sian/Kate/whoever he's not flirted with yet to discuss the series.Last series was a bit of a disaster. Partly because it focussed so heavily on the threat posed by Iran, and I'm not sure many of us really saw Iran as threat. But the biggest problem with Spooks was they turned it into one, long storyline spanning a dozen episodes or so, rather than the self-contrained stories spanning, at most, two episodes, which has worked so well in the past.
Then, of course, was the dreadful spin-off on BBC Three earlier this year, which had more in common with S Club 7 than it did with grown-up Spooks.
That's all forgotten, though, now we're two episodes into the new series. Bloody excellent. With an emphasis on the bloody. We've lost the star of the last couple of series, Adam, after he was blown up saving London from a terrorist bomb.
And in comes his replacement, Lucas, released by the Russians after eight years as a captive there. Which also brings us in neatly with our new enemy, the Russians. Who, if Spooks is to be believed, are trying to plot middle-eastern terrorist acts in the UK to show Britain that relying on oil isn't the way forward - Russian gas being the alternative, of course.
Let's face it, we all love a nasty Russian. And by returning to a familiar format, and a familiar enemy, Spooks appears to have returned to a winning formula
By that, I mean, does it make you want to buy their bread?
]]> Now I'm not advocating we go down the American route of wall-to-wall adverts which scream "buy me" in each one, but this Hovis advert does seem to push things a bit far.Yes, it's a talking point. Yes, it's got hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. Yes, it's one of the few adverts we don't mind sitting through because it's quite pleasing on the eye, but the question still remains:
Did it make you go out and buy a loaf of Hovis? Cut through all the crap from adland about how it is meant to associate Hovis with Britain throughout the years, how it lifts the brand (makes it rise, geddit?) and how arty it is.
Will it sell more bread? It's not made me switch, so in my mind, that makes it a waste of dough.
]]>Called Newswatch, it's basically a Points of View for BBC News, presented by some chap called Raymond Snoddy, a self-proclaimed media pundit. In it, he bascially serves up the complaints of BBC News viewers to someone senior from the BBC, who generally rebuffs them, points out that they are there to report news, and that not everyone will always be happy with what they broadcast.
Unlike Points of View, there's no humour to be had at some of the things which prompt viewers to write in. Newswatch takes itself far to seriously.
I suspect it's supposed to make viewers think that their views are listened to. The fact that very rarely does the BBC agree with viewers is neither here nor there, it would seem. Hell, what would the viewers know, after all?
]]> The reason I witter on about this mind-numbingly pointless exercise in viewer patronisation is that the BBC News Channel is currently promoting this ridiculous programme throughout the day, yet it still manages to miss the mark when dealing with a big issue.This weekend's chosen topic: Robert Peston's report on the banking crisis. The general gist of the conversation was that viewers weren't happy that Peston was reporting details which were wiping billions off shares as a result. The one thing neither Snoddy, nor the BBC manager lined up to bat away Snoddy's amusingly pointless questions, seemed to address was this: It's matters not the impact of the story, as long as the story is right.
Was Peston guilty of damaging the market? No, the blame there lies with those who filled their boots in the good times and therefore left the cupboard bare for the bleaker times. As the chap from BBC News said, he broke news stories which were followed up the world over, which is something the BBC wasn't doing while broadcastings NewsWatch.
Robert Peston made have the sort of rising and falling voice that sounds like the flush of a Virgin Pendolino toilet, but you can't line him up for a flogging just for breaking a news story which had an impact. That issue could have been dealt with within 15 seconds of the start of NewsWatch, but instead it filled the entire programme (with just a bit left over to look at the new look Business Lunch programme, which people didn't like because it featured someone's grandma).
And here's the best bit, poor old Peston is due a grilling from Snoddy next week.
If the BBC is truly commited to rooting out the faults of its news operation, how about posing this question on air: What is the point of Mihir Bose?
The BBC's sports editor, who appears not to understand the point of being on television is to engage with your audience, appears to have a very similar job to Robert Peston. He is an editor, and therefore commentates on big issues in his area, sport, and blogs about it.
The only thing is, whereas Robert Peston gets things right in his blog, and then gets criticised for it, Mihir Bose gets something wrong on his blog, and no-one says anything about it at all.
Now I know sports reporting is often about speculation and rumours, but hell, if you're the BBC Sports editor, you have to accept that your words carry a bit of weight with them.
So imagine the general excitement when a story broke on Friday, from Bose, that Everton chairman Bill Kenwright was jetting abroad to sell the club. Nothing new in the fact Kenwright wants to sell the club, but the line about the going abroad bit was news-worthy. So newsworthy in fact that Bose was on Five Live before you can say "rolling news: never wrong for long" explaining what was going on. The fact his sentences are so long and rambling that you've forgotten the start by the time he gets to the end isn't a great help on radio, either.
According to Bose, the sale wasn't going to be to an Indian billionaire who had been linked to the club. In fact, not to any Indian at all. Bose was right on both fronts, because there wasn't any sale going through at all. Why? Because the Everton chairman Bill Kenwright was actually in London casting for a new show.
This rather crucial fact was confirmed by the Liverpool newspapers within 30 minutes of Mihir Bose blogging about Everton's pending sale. Now, when newspapers get things wrong, they tend to publish a correction. No Mihir Bose. It's now Sunday evening, and his blog is still there. You can read it here.
The BBC, which sees fit to employ Raymond Snoddy to ask silly questions to BBC executives who I suspect have better things to do with their time, hasn't found the time to remove the post, or adapt it. In fact, it has fallen to a commenter, (number 15), to report what the club said about it.
Perhaps if Raymond Snoddy wants his 15 minutes of weekly fame (geddit?) to be worth something, perhaps he could bring in Mihir Bose to explain where his facts came from, why he didn't correct the facts and what research he does before going on air to say one of his favourite catchphrases: "I can reveal", "I can understand," and "I have learnt."
And then maybe, just maybe, Robert Peston can be allowed to get on with his job. Or find time to visit the voice coach. And as for me, next Saturday, I'm have a lie-in.
Miserable, self-righteous, pompous, cold - she's been something of a pet hate figure of mine for quite a while. In fact, she's one of the reasons I stopped watching Casualty during its last series (yes, it still runs in series sequence, it's off air for at least a fortnight between each season). Her and the increasingly boring staff v management and consultant/important doctor sleeping with nurse stoylines.
But the two-part opener to series 25 (25!) was little short of spectacular. Which is the least you'd expect from Casualty. A reality TV crew following the cast managed to get involved in an exploision in a block of flats - with paramedics about nine floors up - then film paramedics running over the girl who'd caused the explosion and who, in the meantime, had fallen out with Tess when being treated for burns.
]]> Tess then chased her after finding her office overturned by this girl - only to end up empaled on a spike in a derelict building site. And that's where she stayed for most of the two episodes.At first, gory as it was, I wasn't too fussed about Tess. But the drama which built up around it - the riot which exploded in the wake of ambulance crash, the discovery of video of Tess empaled on the spike by staff who found Tess's phone with the ambulance-crushed girl, and their reaction ... great writing, great direction. This was a drama back to its best.
What knitted it all together so well was that interviews with the characters, supposedly for this documentary, were interweaved with the action, showing how, despite their differences of opinions on each others' professional worth, ultimately, they all played together as a team.
Of course, they found Tess, but only after sending out some medics undercover to try and find her on this estate. Given that it was a sink estate, seemingly with far-right sympathies, perhaps including a black woman doctor and young public school-educated medic in this team wasn't the best way to stay un-noticed. And, of course, it was the porter - told he wasn't needed when the team set out because he didn't have any medical experience - who saved the day by taking it on himself to go anyway. He helped find Tess, by recognising the sound of a train in the video footage.
At this point, it ran the risk of becoming a little too sickly. It didn't, though. It was quite good, in fact. Tess, of course, survived - the spike missed all vital organs (much less likely to hit a heart when you don't have one) and the team lived to fight another day.
Casualty now feels much slicker, it's had the Holby City makeover - and looks and feels all the better for it. The opening wekeend has also set several hares running which should ensure the storylines which flow between episodes aren't just about going to war with management or trying to stitch each other up (not in the literal sense.)
It's a welcome return for Casualty, I'd say. It had only been away for a fortnight, but in terms of quality, it's like meeting up with a friend not seen for much longer than that.
]]>But, by God, it's compulsive viewing when there's a storm on. In the UK, when there's a severe flood on, Sky News might go over to its "news wall" more often for an update than usual. At Fox News, with Hurricane Ike pounding Texas (natural born Fox News territory if ever there was such a place) they went to their, wait for it: Extreme Weather Center [sic]. Oh yes, this is news injected with dangerous hormones to the factor of 10.
Did you hear what the anchor said when the reporter was taken out by the wave? "Even when he takes a licking, he keeps on ticking!" Not even Drop the Dead Donkey could have dreamt this up!
And then, while hundreds of thousands are homeless, power's out everywhere, the fact the reporter took a fall becomes the story!:
I also loved this clip. No weather experts in the studio here. If you're worth you salt you're out at the scene:
It goes on and on. At one point, a reporter was on the scene describing how he was surrounded by all sorts of debris - boats on road, contents of houses in the rivers and so on. The woman back in the studio: "Is it possible to pan the camera round. I hope to god it's not on tripod." Yes, that's right. We've got cars hanging out of trees and the anchor in the studio is worried about what the camera is attached to.
And then there's the language. It's supposed to be English but when did you last here Huw Edwards announce "There's a whole heap of stuff going on down in Texas."
Finally, even in a storm, Fox doesn't get irony, and one reporter, also in Texas, said: "Some people in Texas stayed the storm out. I think that says more about Texans than it does about Ike." He probably didn't mean it confirmed that George W Bush, Texas's best-known native, wasn't an exception to the rule when it came to braincells, but there you go.
God Bless Fox News.
It's one thing for us to enjoy it, it's quite another to see six comedians enjoying the work of a seventh, quite so much.
Yet that was just what happened when Stewart Francis appeared this week. He had Frankie Boyle in stitches, Russell Howard doubled over with amusement and host Dara O'Briain smiling for longer than the obligatory moment he gives most people.
]]> Anyway, the BBC have been good enough to put it up on YouTube, so here is arguably the best moment of the series so far, and I never expected that would be when Boyle wasn't at the microphone. ]]>Oh yes, Setanta. The most hated satellite channel going. Setanta Sports, the supposed rival to Sky Sports which appears to be nipping around buying as much sport as possible and then making us pay to view it.
At the weekend, it declared: "Setanta is the best thing to happen to TV sport for years." Really. That's what it said. Which is no doubt what the estimated 10 million who normally watch an England game will be thinking when they either had to make do with Five Live commentary or slink down the pub to watch the match on Setanta.
The reason for this was that Setanta bought the rights to the game. No problems here, they simply outbid Sky and the terrestrial broadcasters. The problem is that they've also did not sell the highlight rights, as Sky normally do, to a terrestrial broadcaster, because no-one offered enough for it.
Perhaps that's because Setanta got greedy, and wanted too much for the highlights. That's surely the only conclusion you can draw when several people don't offer what you expect for something. And highlights football can be a real ratings winner, so you'd think the terrestrial broadcasters would be prepared to dig a little deeper to get the rights. But obviously not deep enough.
In the end, they screened the highlights for free on Setanta at 11.30pm - still not enough for the millions without satellite or freeview. Too little, too late, I'd say. And how funny that Trevor East, boss of Setanta, then said it was always Setanta's intention for as many people to see the game as possible. Funny then, that they locked it behind a subscription - and then refused to let terrestrial telly have a look in.
Setanta no doubt hope that landing the England international rights will win them a legion of new viewers. I suspect it won't, largely because it's one game, every now and again. Does it justify a second monthly sports subscription, on top of Sky Sports? In a word: No.
What else do you get for your money? A couple of Premier League games a week. Oh yes, Setanta have been a rip-roaring success with that too. Their pundits lack the insight of Sky's team, their graphic seem cheap compared to Sky and the sense of occasion Sky build into a game is sadly lacking on Setanta.
That's probably because they tend to show the duff games of a weekend. Monday night football has come a long way since Sky first launched with a few fireworks at a football ground. Setanta appears to be taking us back to a no-frills experience quickly.
Or put another way: Andy Gray v Sam Allardyce? No contest.
Presumably, the rationale at Setanta is that if they buy everything, the audience will follow. Not so - just ask ITV when they bought the Premier League highlights. Footie fans know what they like. They like Match of the Day. They like Sky Sports for the way it revolutionised the way we watch. The tolerate ITV when it nabs a contract. But they don't like being played for fools and made to pay twice to watch games which in the past you just paid the once for. Especially when Setanta brings nothing more to the table than the chance for Des Lynam to remind us he used to be a sports presenter.
The FA claim they can't control who the host nation sells the rights too. Maybe, but they can - and should - be putting pressure on Setanta to play fair, making it quite clear that the fans are the most important thing and when they dish out contracts, they will bear Setanta's behaviour in mind.
The publicity-hungry minister Andy Burnham shouldn't just nash his teeth and sympathise with fans - he should be ensuring that it can't happen again, putting highlights for away England games into the must-be-on-terrestrial list.
Despite winning 4-1, I suspect England were watched by one of the lowest TV audiences ever. That certainly isn't the best thing to happen to sport on TV. I suspect the best thing to happen to sport on TV would be the end of Setanta, complete with its carbon-copy of Sky Sports News.
How long till that happens? Well, it's hard to say - I've never heard football fans chanting that they hate a football channel before, but that's what we heard this week.
]]>Whereas Hollyoaks has glamour and beauty to bring you back into the world after a heavy night out, X-Factor instantly makes you feel better about yourself as the great deluded line up to be humiliated by Simon Cowell and co.
Given that the prize of winning X-Factor is a bit hit-and-miss - for every Leona Lewis and a Shayne Ward there's a soon-forgotten winner too - it seems quite frightening that so many people can turn up to audition in the seeming belief they have a god-given right to be stars, even though God appears to have been less than generous when it came to giving them talent.
And it's no surprise that snipers have been queuing up to suggest that Cheryl Cole is on the judging panel this year because she caught Simon Cowell's eye. Yes, she's far prettier than Sharon Osbourne who she replaced, but from what we've seen so far, she adds much more to the panel than Danni Mingoue, last year's inexplicable addition to the team.
She's been there, she's done it. She knows the nerves which comes singing for your life at an audition in some soul-less venue, hoping to be picked. She is proof that you can have a career on the back of a TV show like X-Factor. Which is good news for those who do have talent. But also bad news for the trash that trundles through like some limited-talent recycling plant.
If I was deluded enough to appear on X-Factor, I still like to think that I'd twig early on that if the cameras were following me intensely, it probably wasn't good news (unless I had a handy sob story to hand).
But I'm obviously in the minority on this one. Which is just as well, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to search YouTube for these beauties:
Having got up at 6am to drive to a wedding on the south coast, I'd parked up at Oxford services some time around 10am, and invested my overdraft in a breakfast (tasty, surprisingly) before sitting down in front of a telly. Since when did service stations have tellies?
So I watched - and boy did I get into it. So much so that, had it not been for the fact that I can't really afford £3 for dishwater tea (food lovely, tea grim). The first thing I did when I got to the B&B we were staying in was switch on the TV (flatscreen - yes I was surprised too) and watched some more rowing. This time, we took a Gold. Or four, to be precise. I nearly forgot to go to the wedding. But then that's why I have a girlfriend.
And since Saturday, I've tuned into as much as I can. I even marvelled when Louis Smith won a bronze for something called the pommel horse, which, it turned out, had everything to do with gymnastics.
The BBC's coverage isn't bad, as it happens. I have no problem with Gabby Logan appearing on the telly around the clock. I quite like tuning into Five Live as they flip from one event to another, with the likes of Nicky Campbell trying to make it sound as if they are ever so au-fait with the intimate workings of the dressage. Some of it is positvely cringe-worthy, like when Nicky Campbell got one of the eight-strong rowing team to talk to his parents live on air moments after they'd missed out on gold. It wasn't meant to be like that.
But admist this myriad of sports-hopping, something special is evolving before our eyes. Relatively free of the computer generated nonsense which goes with sports like football and cricket, the presenters have been left to focus on the athletes themselves. Athletes who often have spent the last four years struggling make ends meet, getting up at 4am to go swimming and so on. And when they win, they're made up. And so are we, because they are British. And we don't normally win so many medals at the Olympics.
Whether we'll win many more is open to debate, but in a world of broadcasting where so much sport is neatly packaged and often without surprises, played by people whose salaries warrant them to be called professional, with so many liggers and hangers on they'd be better off being described as industries, it's great so see something different.
No doubt we'll have the flood of stories about people taking up swimming in the future and so in the quest to become the new Michael Phelps, but all of a sudden, as a man in the North, I don't begrudge this huge dose of the feel good factor coming to London in 2012. I might even go one better than the Chinese and buy a ticket to the sailing. Because, by then, Adrian Chiles will be presenting that, too.
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