Have you ever watched Strictly Come Dancing? It’s a terrible programme that actually encourages witless celebrities to cavort around a dancefloor with all the guile and grace of a mule being dragged down three flights of stairs by a Mini Metro.
Not only that, it’s the show that willingly shoves Bruce Forsyth out, bewildered and making dreamlike jokes to himself to polite, pitiful laughter from concerned audience members. The smell of urine and cough-mints must be unbearable.
That said, Auntie BBC is very protective of her baby and is suing an Italian TV channel for making a pornographic version of the show which is quite obviously far, far better than the one we get in Blighty.
The corporation’s Worldwide arm has called in lawyers to sort this out, after they discovered that Mediaset (owned by notoriously nice and honest guy, Silvio Berlusconi) had ripped off the show and added genitals.
Italy, of course, already has a fully licensed version of the show (under the international title ‘Dancing with the Stars’), but now there’s a new version called Baila! which is mucky as hell and based on South American programme Bailando Por Un Sueno.
The mucky South American version once saw a dancer perform topless while simulating sex with her partner. It sounds amazing!
Have a look at the sort of thing it airs.
A spokesperson for the corporation said:
“BBC Worldwide takes the protection of its copyright extremely seriously and is currently undertaking legal action in Italy to protect its ‘Dancing with the Stars’ format.
“It has been named as the world’s most successful reality TV format and has been licensed to over 35 international broadcasters.
“It is very important to BBC Worldwide and its international licensees that the format is protected from infringement.”
However, Pier Silvio Berlusconi – deputy chairman of Mediaset and the Italian Prime Minister’s son – claims there are key differences in the formats of the two shows.
He said in a statement:
“It is a dancing talent show with the peculiarity of involving both celebrities and normal people. The dance talent show is a format that works on commercial television everywhere in the world. We certainly wouldn’t claim that the only reality format is ‘Big Brother’.”
Just imagine John Sergeant taking part in it.
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