The One Show (Wednesday 7 p.m.) night had Nick Hewer from The Apprentice, Guy Martin, a TT racer who told an enthralled nation about his spanner collection and a drummer called Sean who could hit his drum pad six hundred and fifty four times in thirty seconds.
Other highlights of the show featured: a twenty six stone man who could pull fourteen cars for eighteen feet with just his body strength; a 12-year-old girl called Scarlett who could go fifty metres in twenty eight seconds on a space hopper; and an interview with Prince Andrew where he was promoting an entrepreneurial scheme eerily similar to the one that his big brother, Chuck, was doing some thirty years ago.
The most memorable thing to come out of the previous scheme was a series of televised concerts at Wembley Arena by slightly over the hill rock stars with mullets and bad shiny suits with short sleeved jackets. If Prince Andrew’s scheme (which I’m sure he’s completely thought up himself) avoids that scenario, it will already be a more successful enterprise.
Nature loving Miranda Krestovnikoff went “ten miles south of Penzance” in search of elusive blue sharks. Barring a few pensive shots of Miranda out at sea, we had a four minute report where nothing actually happened before being held in suspense for a later conclusion as to whether she saw the Blue Shark.
A once-brave but now tense nation awaited the outcome and twelve minutes later, the report had moved two miles further from the Penzance coast. An adult female shark appeared soon after, thwarting any hopes of there being a repeat of that KitKat advert where the man is stood by the Pandas’ pen for days on end and they come out and perform a dance when he wasn’t looking.
We get the thumbs up from the intrepid Miranda. She told us the shark is “so beautiful and so so blue” and the country was so, so, so relieved. We’d managed to both see the genuinely beautiful shark whilst at the same time managing to avoid a six hundred word piece in the Daily Mail moaning about how the BBC waste licence fee payers’ money on such futile missions.
The inimitable Gyles Brandreth reported from Daniels of London, an horologist in the Isle of Man; it was a refreshing slice of esoterica on a mainstream TV show. A watch was displayed for our visual delight, whilst Gyles explained that it was available to purchase for a mere £172,000. Oh, and that there is a two year (approx) waiting list before you could actually get your hands on one.
Despite its occasional banality, The One Show is a success, predominantly due to the easy amiability of its presenters, Alex Jones and Matt Baker and the cerebral presenting style of Gyles Brandreth. It’s perfect television for an early evening audience who want some light entertainment.
Rip Off Britain: Live (Thursday 9.15 a.m.) sees the combined talents of Angela Rippon, Gloria Hunniford and Julia Somerville giving us a very impressive rendition of a real life mature Charlie’s Angels (with no Charlie alas). They’re here to help us, the needy, and bash the greedy. Hurray.
The gentle and sultry voice of Julia Somerville introduced us to a report where we’re shown behind the scenes at Royal Bank Of Scotland call centre in Spinningfields. What we see in the film is a happy, efficient and well run call centre which I’m sure is typical of every other call centre in the UK and India.
It was so well run that the BBC were not allowed to ask the staff themselves why RBS hadn’t scored very well in the Which magazine survey, but worry not, we were given a satement from RBS head office who assured us that they “do all they can to give us the best service possible”. RBS have a dedicated team of fifteen employees scanning social media for any comments made about the company.
Over at First Direct, we had an image of a young man who could quite easily be Michael Gove’s ‘love’ child, ploughing through social media who looked for “anybody mentioning anything negative about our brand”. So next time you’re getting unhappy because Pharrell Williams’ Happy has been on a constant loop for thirty minutes while you’re waiting on the phone, remember that it’s your fault, not theirs.
Angela presented a story which made me feel quite nostalgic. It was a cautionary tale I had not seen surface in the media in nearly twenty years and centred on the furore about major football clubs (in this instance, Chelsea, Celtic and Manchester United) having the most expensive replica kits. (£55.00 to me and you). Over in Northern Ireland, Linfield were charging £40.00 whilst in Italy, Roma were found to be charging £67.00. This just about capped off Roma’s week. If they thought getting beat 7-1 at home to Bayern Munich was bad, wait until they find that Angela Rippon is now on their case. Mamma mia!
Gloria investigated the growing market for Meet’n’Greets with major celebrities after a show. Primarily in this instance with the recent residency Monty Python had at the Dome in Greenwich where a meet’n’greet with the Pythons cost £495.00 per head. What they got was a stage set up with some barriers and the Pythons took two questions (in total) from the gathered audience.
The meet’n’greet was really an opportunity for about a hundred people to spend nearly five hundred pound to get a wrist band, stand close (but not too close) to the Pythons for ten minutes and my personal favourite, a Monty Python mug. Like the Spanish Inquisition, these Python fans were not expecting this.
This was first published on Quays News on Monday 24th of October 2014. The original article can be found here