May 2008 Archives

HOLLYWOOD has lost Sydney Pollack and Midlands Today staff are mourning former colleague Alan Towers.

He was one of a kind, the sort of old-school broadcaster who probably wouldn't get on air today.

But, as someone born up north, he was probably the first TV presenter I associated with Birmingham thanks to the old Nationwide.

He sprang to fame thanks to a story about a skateboarding duck.

Somebody was looking out for him that day. And he made a career out of the opportunity.

Now that's class.

I'VE just caught up with I'D DO ANYTHING (BBC1) after having been away for a couple of days.

Nothing has changed.

The series began with Brum's lovely Amy Booth-Steel being booted off so unfairly.

But what goes around, comes around.

The final three are clearly not who Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber was dreaming of.

No wonder he was nearly in tears when four became three in time for next week's final.

He'll have to change the words to Evita.

DON'T forget I'd Do Anything (BBC1) tonight which will reveal who the three Olivers are for the new musical.

They've rightly been given a lower profile than the girls in this series.

But good luck to the three young chaps who are chosen. They'll need it.

Whether you enter showbusiness by the front door, back door, stage door or TV parachute it's a mercilessly-unforgiving business.

And the only true way to find out if you are up for it is to go through the curtains on to the stage on opening night. And then still see if you are surviving ten, 20, 30 years or more later.

Meanwhile, the girls are set to be whittled down from four to three ready for next week's final.

I do admire the losers in the weekly sing-off. Their good sportsmanship puts our petulant footballers to shame.

Catch them all in action from the earlier times of 6.50pm tonight on BBC1 and again from 7.15pm tomorrow when the axe will fall.

As for Eurovision tonight... all that'll be worth watching are the scores at the end to see what a fix this show now is in terms of the way countries vote for each other.

Don't waste your own money voting when petrol is going up like there's no tomorrow.

The BBC, so worried about the ethical nature of its own competitions recently including its little old Goal of the Month, should have refused to screen this bloated nonsense by now.

And Terry Wogan should have said the same instead of taking another trip overseas at our expense.

Maybe only then will the organisers wise up that the judging mechanism is not doing anything except raising unnecessary revenue like a desperate government eager to preserve its own overblown status.

Well done, Jonathan Ross.

You kept it clean for The Osmonds, who included Marie.

So, if you can do it for them, and your old fancy piece, why not the viewers at home?

Especially as we are paying you so much out of our licence fees?

Swearing isn't necessarily funny and your interview tonight was all the better for it.

Sometimes it's rather nice to let the guests get a word in.

ALL NINE Osmonds will be on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross tomorrow night before they come to Brum for some clean fun on Monday.

For once, he won't know which way to turn when confronted by so many Crazy Horses.

It'll be interesting to see if Wossy swears either with them, at them or in earshot, or whether he cleans up his act for once.

Maybe he'll undergo a process of Wossmosis and join them for a song as the tenth member.

Jonathan Woss-Mond has quite a ring to it.

FORMER Popstars' hopeful turned Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding has been at the New Street Odeon tonight.

The Ascot-born 26-year-old caused a mini-stir at the box office when she arrived ready to see Harrison Ford's new blockbuster, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull upstairs in Screen Two.

One assumes Sarah felt like relaxing on the night before Girls Aloud play Birmingham's NIA on Friday, May 23 as part of the Tangled Up tour.

Chances are, by the time the film was due to finish she'd probably have been Bored with Ford... which just might make her want to put on more of a show at the NIA.

Check out my review of the new Indiana Yawns movie in tomorrow's Birmingham Mail when I've been surprisingly kind to the oldest adventurer in town... if not the film itself.

AS PER my previous blog, I'm about to sit down to watch the Champions League Final more than an hour after it kicked off.

There's something lovely about being able to put your children to bed in relaxed fashion knowing you can enjoy the match in style later as if it's live.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking...

There have been a lot of unfortunate images on our screens in the past ten days.

These have frequently been introduced by the newsreaders saying: 'You may find some of the images disturbing'. Too right.

There would have to be something wrong with you if you didn't find the pictures of floating corpses in Burma distressing.

Or the plight of the earthquake victims in China.

But what I found really galling was the footage of Rangers' so-called fans going on the rampage after last week's UEFA Cup Final.

Instead of celebrating their team's achievement in reaching the final, and the fact they were in good health to be able to enjoy it, some of them had nothing better to do than to cause serious trouble, including kicking a policeman when he was on the ground.

What would these people do if a burglar broke into their house while they were asleep? Not call the police because they are so tough?

What if one of their children or relatives was kidnapped? Would they not want the police to help them then? Or if they had broken down on the M6 and were stranded?

As I sit down to watch Man United v Chelsea, memories come flooding back of the night I prepared to watch the 1985 final between Liverpool and Juventus at Heysel, a game which went ahead in a vacuum after 39 fans were killed.

I was living in Kings Heath at the time and I'll never forget that night. Twenty three years ago... unbelievable.

Whatever happens in the match tonight I just hope it's a good game.

I don't care whether Chelsea or Manchester United win.

And neither, really, should fans of either team as long as they enjoy the experience and return home safely after seeing their boys give their best in a sporting manner.

There were just two arrests at the Portsmouth v Cardiff City FA Cup Final which is great news.

All that matters tonight is that English football does itself justice and puts on a game to entertain the world, so fingers crossed.

Here we go....

SKY Television is celebrating the seventh anniversary of its amazing Sky+ programme recording system with a major new ad campaign shot by leading filmmaker Nick Broomfield.

Incredibly, 12 million viewers now use it to organise their viewing and Wednesday night's Champions League final between Man Utd and Chelsea is the perfect example of a good reason why so many people now have it,

Did you know that Sky+ enables you to record, pause and instantly rewind live TV?

It's so simple even grandparents instinctively know how to use it so... gone are the days when they would have to fumble around on their knees looking for an old video tape.

You can also automatically record every episode of a series thanks to Series Link so you can keep right up to date with Coronation Street or EastEnders.

And you can even use a mobile phone or go on line at sky.com to tell your system what to do - even if you are on the other side of the world and are desperate to make sure you record something for when you get back.

Sky+ is available from just £99 to all Sky TV customers, no matter what package level you're on.

And there's no longer any extra monthly charge so you really can have your TV cake and eat it.

But, and this is a big BUT, there's a secret way of getting even more out of it than you might think at first glance.

Keep on reading and I'll tell you more about a horror story of mine which made me change my ways for ever....

THE DUCHESS IN HULL (ITV1) was an interesting twist on the usual Wife Swap / healthy eating shows.

Sarah Ferguson - who gamely talked about having once been labelled the 'Duchess of Pork... it rhymes with York' - went to live with the six-strong Sargerson family on the east coast outpost.

A family with such bad teeth you felt like reaching for the pliers.

A family who are going to cause so much self-inflicted damage to themselves and NHS budgets by smoking so much, that you felt like asking Gordon Brown to redirect their benefits to China's helpless earthquake victims.

A family so rich in cultural history they didn't even recognise one of the country's most famous women when she walked through their front door.

But, after more than a decade living in the US, the Fergie of today is a very different one from the one they would have known when she married Prince Andrew.

Having tried to champion healthy eating in the US, Fergie is now using a British family as her base camp for doing the same in Britain.

Good luck to her.

But the Sargerson family in question, like so many in this country today, seem to be so far beyond the line of austere normality which confronted the post-war generation that I doubt whether even a personality as large as Fergie can save their souls.

At least she's trying having learned the hard way that to give of yourself is the best way to achieving personal enrichment.

Here, remember, is a woman who seemed to have that infectious sense of fun we love in all of our best friends.

She could also have been the one Royal we'd all identify and feel comfortable with.

By a strangely circuitous journey, she still might still get there after part two at 9pm tonight.

GLADIATORS (Sky One) went down a storm in my house last night.

My three nippers had only seen it for the first time on Saturday, but then they watched the second episode going out in real-time.

When the two male contenders both fell up the travelator at the end, they were bouncing all over the sofa like little powerballs.

I later came down to earth with Wild China (BBC2).

Never has there been a series more aptly timed after last week's earthquake.

It still takes ten minutes to tune into Bernard Hill's narration, but, once the pictures take over, there's no looking back.

This is a terrific insight into a country that is still so new to us - and yet the footage of the early botanical explorers was, perhaps, even more incredible than the new stuff.