Winona Ryder once said: “Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit now has a body count,” clearly she was watching Skins where, in the opening three episodes of the season, two people have been brutally butchered from the cast list. We haven’t seen one funeral.

In fact the closest we come to Richard Curtis territory is a seaside elegy and mere reference to a wedding. Obviously this is too inherently British for the residents of Bristol who are more content to wallow.

It’s all getting totes emosh up in here which is no doubt why the writers this week introduced us all to a new plucky character to reconfigure the group dynamic. He’s gay too, so that not-graphic-enough-sex-scene ticks another demographic box for the youth enveloping programme.

New Gay and dice man about town Alex got the spotlight this evening along with fag-hag Liv who’s back on the booze and off the rails, on fine form as all of her associates decide that communication is overrated. Instead, they opt for a series of scowls, smiles, and generally fraught looks.

Alex, despite the weird face and normal name, was actually a rather good character to introduce at such a late stage. They brought him in shrouded in a smug cloud of smuggish mystery, like an amateur Derren Brown looking for work in a bowling alley, but he turned out to be a well-rounded young man who actually introduced the concept of ‘see you at college’ to the group.

Obviously nobody saw anyone at college because this programme is teaching us all that you don’t need to learn things – you just need to know how to cheat at poker. We can recommend the DVD special features on the film 21 if you’re looking for a quick guide to card counting. Or just watch The Real Hustle if you can bear it.

Anyway, it was a strangely melancholy episode for Skins. With half of the cast dead or mysteriously absent, it only left a few faces to glumly teach us the art of the awkward silence and boy did they stay stony faced in solidarity. You know when your friend dies and you just knock back a few shots and don’t move on? That is exactly what happened for an hour last night on E4 – at least we had it in HD is all we’re saying. Of course it wouldn’t be Skins if there wasn’t time for a few parties, a quick flash of the tits and some reciting of Nietzsche.

Dead Grace would have loved the send-off, but she might have wondered where her boyfriend was. Rich, hi if you’re reading this –  please do come back and tell us you’re not in a mental institution for hallucinating all those moments with the one you loved after she had been dead at least 24 hours, cheers.

Frankly nothing really happened this week and it is easily the best episode of the series so far, which is a bit backwards. This is possibly because this mundanity is what being a teenager is actually like. It’s not smuggling drugs in the desert and the like. It’s sitting around, not knowing what to say.

It won’t last though. TV won’t allow a character to languish. It’ll be bags of ket in no time, with yawning predictability.

Hello soap fans, have a good weekend? Did you all wake up covered in vomit and shame this morning? Excellent news, you’re all disgusting and that’s why we tolerate you.

Last week was exciting in Soapland wasn’t it? All that stuff happened and then that other stuff happened too! Yeah we didn’t watch any of it but we looked back at our spoilers last week and they were utterly compelling.

Ready to sober up and read this drivel? Fantastic.

First up it’s Eastenders where Jack and Roxy hate each other and are still squabbling over that child they call Amy. Is that even her name? We don’t know.  We do know what you’re thinking about all this though- ‘On Friday the courts will decide who gets custody and then we can all move on and look forward to Heather’s death!’ but sadly those sneaky writers decided that Jack and Roxy need to turn all of that hate into second rate couch sex meaning Ronnie will find out, escape from prison, go nuts and start stealing babies again because that was a excruciatingly stupid really brilliant story line which needs to be repeated.  So who gets custody of Amy? Who cares. This isn’t real.

The new Lucy decides to thwart Mandy’s wedding dress fitting which is excellent news as it gives us an excuse to use the word ‘thwart.’  Lucy throws some coffee over Mandy’s wedding dress after claiming to have seen a mouse,  resulting in a big fight in the Queen Vic with Lucy facing the wrath of Salter.  Our favourite person on Eastenders Kim, organises a date with someone called Sinclair and when Ray jokes about her being ‘easy’ she decks him, with another slap aimed at Sinclair for having a stupid name.

Finally Bianca tries to kiss Ray and he recoils in horror. Understandably.

Next we’re off to Coronations Street where Carla is still getting a hard time at the factory. Peter suggests they move away from everyone and despite our cries of ‘F**KING DO IT!! GET OFF MY TELLY YOU BLAND SOAP ACTORS FROM HELL!!’, Carla decides to stay and front it out. Bitch.

Tracy plays loud music to wind up Steve. Tracy turns the heating down to wind up Steve.  Tracy must be stopped.

Jason and Rosie’s sexy story hits the front pages of the Gazette. When Owen sees the story he sacks Jason and Rosie is dropped from her road safety campaign but then cheers up when she’s offered a screen test for a new reality TV show.  It was at this point we decided to throw the communal laptop out of the window and never speak of this show again.

Neighbours time and Toadie can’t quite believe that Peter may be responsible for the attack on Chris!! We can’t believe it either! TOADIE! Who is Chris? But then he’s questioned by the police and ends up being accused of attacking the man we don’t know or care about one bit. It’s alright though because Rhys finds Chris at the garage and proves that not only is he good at finding people, he can perform emergency surgery on missing people whenever he damn well pleases.  Chris dies. HA! He doesn’t.

Kyle assumes that he and Jade and in a relationship but she reacts badly when the ‘R’ word is mentioned. We do hope ‘R’ stands for Rimming.

Thank god that’s over, time to mock another soap star and this week it’s Mark Fowler off Eastenders for the best moment ever on Dancing on Ice.

Another week, another loosely adhered to theme for Dancing on Ice. This week the theme was “Pop”, although really it should’ve been “Katarina Disagrees”. But that wouldn’t have fitted in so well with One Direction’s appearance, so pop it was.

Some teenage boys with suits and sideways hair weren’t going to stop Katarina, though. She has monumental cleavage AND Olympic medals. Nothing’s getting in her way.

Not even fellow Olympian Chemmy Alcott, who Katarina infamously called “big” a few weeks back, before begging her not to ever do any lifts ever again. Chemmy wasn’t having any of it though, and decided to do a handstand on her partner’s leg. Queen Katarina tried to pretend that she only wanted to keep Chemmy safe for the next Olympics. Nobody believed her.

Unlike Rosemary, who everyone believes all the time, bcause she’s lovely. Which is why the evil overlords of ITV decided that she had to be tipped upside down and spun round in circles until she was nearly sick all over the ice. Katarina loved it and gave her a seven. Everyone else was deeply, deeply indifferent.

As they were when Jennifer Ellison took to the ice. According to her VT, she needed to “go for it”, which is becoming such a recurring theme that we expect it will soon be given its own show. What Jennifer went for this week was some seriously unfortunate hair, supposedly because she was skating to ‘Vogue’. Really, we think the stylist just hates her.

Still, at least Jennifer can take comfort in the fact that the stylist hates Sam more. He was given a very, very dodgy blonde wig and made to skate to Wham. Which was presumably punishment for dropping his partner repeatedly in practice. Or for forcing everyone to see him in bed, as he did at start of his routine. It’s one or the other.

Despite his best efforts to traumatise the entire country, Sam still lost out on his attempt to become “Most Disturbing Person on Dacing on Ice”. Because Chico and Heidi were there.

Heidi skated to the caterwauling wreck that is Jessie J, and decided to pay homage through her wardrobe. Which was a catsuit. With spangles. On the vadge. Again.

Chico said the word “fluidity” and then donned a skin-tight silver t-shirt, leaving the entire country feeling more queasy than Rosemary after her upside-down-vom-spin. Robin told Chico to “keep something for himself”. We assume he meant the t-shirt. Please, please, make Chico keep that t-shirt for himself.

Whilst the midfield were battling their wardrobes, Jorgi and Matt were continuing their ice dance war. Except that it was a bit one-sided this week, because while Jorgi was skating around in a paedophile’s dream of a school uniform and getting top scores, Matt had ruined his back a bit.

Not really ruined, you understand. Just ruined enough to make him miss two days of training and struggle a bit with the sexual assault that is the sit lift. Robin and Louie thought he pulled it off. Katarina, shockingly, disagreed. She gave him 6.5 and a shake of her shoulder pads.

And then she ruined all of her credibility.

It all started when Andy came out and did a weird stomping dance to the Proclaimers. We were expecting Katarina and her bosom to point out that it was an awkward crock of dung, but instead she tried to tell everyone that it was entertaining. The lying bitch.

And she didn’t even try and stop Robin and Louie from throwing endless clichés at Sebastian. Apparently, he is on a journey, and has a lot to offer, and various other inane and predictable things. We were mostly just annoyed with him for trying a strange new jump and not falling over.

Also trying very, very hard not to fall over was Charlene, who was given a fast routine and a Lady Gaga outfit, which she then used to terrify everyone. It turns out that Charlene can do the splits. So she did. In the air. With her ladybits pointing at the camera. It was part of her attempt to ditch her status as the “skate-off queen” and get straight through to next week.

It didn’t work.  At all. Not even a little bit. Because she didn’t just end up in the skate off with Sam, she got booted off the show. So now we know; when middle-aged women flash their lycra-clad bits at you, bad things happen.

Now can someone please tell Madonna?

It’s a brand new week, scum buckets, and to start the downward decline is a brand spanking new episode of Skins and boy oh boy is it miserable this time around! Are you lucky?

First, let’s get real for a moment folks. This is the second episode, so they have to bring out the big guns now that everyone’s back in boring old Bristol and not some country that bristles with sexual heat, so of course, the writers needed to make an episode that tackles the burning issues—as long as something is hotter than fire we’re all happy right?

Of course there were parties and of course there was sex there was even some minimal drug use, but who isn’t rocking a casual line of coke these days. Where was the hard liquor though? We all remember the days when a bottle of vodka lasted for one quick swig, but now it seems everything’s a little too melancholy for anything stronger than a can of lager. It’s so down in the dumps this week that Phil Collins made the soundtrack when not even rain was in the air. These writers need to get their shit together and go on a rollercoaster or something.

This week it was Rich’s turn for the spotlight as he went bat-shit mental dreaming about his dead girlfriend—if you haven’t watched it yet then that right there is what we in the biz like to call a spoiler. Yeah Grace is dead now, they went to Switzerland and everything because it’s okay to euthanise (MURDER) people there. We told you there were issues. Though we’re not really sure how it tackles them in any way whatsoever, it sort of just waved at it from a passing car and said; “hey this is still a thing right? Guys?” it is indeed still a thing. Can you imagine a world where Skins solves the whole euthanasia argument because that makes us want to lethal inject our perfectly healthy bodies to death.

More in-keeping with you heathens and what proved so popular over the past five years, the show throws a party and really cleverly, they invite all their Facebook ‘friends’ to come and have an averagely good time while enjoying some mindless anarchy because, “that’s what the kids are into now right?”

Let’s all say this together…R I O T S.

See we told you there were issues, plural. Nobody can deny that’s an issue, that’s the sort of issue Skins can realistically grapple with and grapple it does. Except these upper class pritt sticks decide it’s all just a bit of harmless fun and wear their headache inducing clothes to a massive mansion to indulge in the meagre activities of the plebians. They’re all scum buckets who can’t even cry on cue so they just eat biscuits instead. If anybody offers you a biscuit when you’re sad that your friend is in a coma, you have our authority to crumble that bourbon up and put it in their hair. They probably love their precious hair. Dicks.

Then set fire to their faces and send them to Switzerland.

So it’s all a little sad this week, you might have even cried if you’re a pansy, but what we all really learnt is that you should never treat your phone like Rich does because it totally ruins the illusion of speaking to your dead girlfriend. Maybe the real issue the writers were tackling this week was insanity; there are just too many bloody layers for us all to wrap our heads around. These people are geniuses in the guise of tossers that’s what we think and you should too if you know what’s good for you.

Hello readers. Have a good week? If our frighteningly accurate hecklerscopes are correct, then most of you are either dead or feeling a very real sense of shame and self loathing. Either is fine with us. For those of you still here, let’s look at what’s going to happen in Soapland this week.

Yep, you guessed it, Eastenders first and before we begin, we’d like to announce some exciting news which may not be true but we’ll share it with you anyway.

Heather will be brutally murdered by Ben! hecklerspray writer Robin Darke predicted that she’d be killed by George Michael who would then launch a campaign of terror culminating in him pissing all over Arthur’s bench, but we’ll settle for Ben being all stabby.

Characters are  leaving!  Yes – Mo, Mandy, Afia, Amira, Tyler, Anthony, Billy and Lola are all for the chop and this means we’ll get loads more fresh talent and stop getting ghosts of Eastenders past, returning whenever they feel like it. What? Oh….

Sharon is returning.

Anyway,  Jane left last week under a cloud of mascara and snotters and no-one cares as they’re all too busy being self centered and fictional. The Bland Brothers Tyler and Anthony owe money to Derek for reasons we’ve already forgotten and he tells them to either cock it or walk it. No. Sorry, he tells them to help him out in committing a crime or he’ll break their spindly little legs. Then Patrick gets involved and then Michael and then the Police and it’s all rather tedious. Janine steps in and offers to pay Derek off and we long for the old days when she’d have laughed and happily skipped over their corpses while hurling abuse at passing pigeons.

Shirley convinces soon to be murderer Ben to visit Phil in prison and of course Phil tells him to retract his statement and he’ll forget about the whole thing. Probably not the ‘gay’ thing but the blackmail thing anyway. Ben says he’ll dance on Phil’s grave when he dies and we really hope it’s in some sort of German slap folk dancing.

Roxy’s little angel Amy pinches George at playgroup and Whitney decides to have it out with the parents (as she’s now qualified in child psychology after two minutes working in a nursery making rice maracas), telling Roxy and Jack it’s their fault for squabbling so much. They grass her up to her boss and Whitney thinks she’ll lose her job. She doesn’t. Those preschool pasta faces won’t stick themselves to the paper – she’s a valued member of staff.

Elsewhere, Lucy interrupts a passionate moment between Ian and Mandy as she continues to compete with Mandy for her Dad’s affection which is quite creepy really. Heather gets engaged (DEATH IS COMING HEATHER) and Fat Boy thinks Whitney is cheating on him because she probably is.

Next we shuffle off to Coronation Street where Frank’s trial begins and Carla takes the stand. Oh it’s exciting isn’t it? Both her and Peter deny having an affair until photographs are shown of them kissing and then Leanne wonders if she can ever forgive the insipid alcoholic.  But the burning question is- DOES HE GET SENT DOWN FOR RAPE??? The answer to that is-  NO HE DOESN’T. Cleared of all charges. So we hear anyway. Our ‘sources’ are very unreliable.

With Becky gone, Tracy is determined to make it work with Steve but he tells her that he never loved her and in fact still loves Becky.  She then returns home to find that Owen has turned No.13 into two self contained flats and threatens to tell the council as he didn’t get planning permission. Oh shut up.

Finally, we’re going to visit Casualty as apparently it’s also a soap. Who knew?  After taking on her sister’s two children, someone called Linda tries to fit them in around her working life and gets help from someone who we know even less about.  An old lady called Doris has Alzheimer’s and is attacked leaving Lloyd to try and figure out what happened. Then Keith returns complaining on neck pain and Zoe thinks it could be caused by the time he was forcibly restrained by Sam after he threatened Dylan in the ED? What does any of that mean?

Glad that’s over? So are we and as promised here’s another soap star making themselves look like an idiot. Here’s Adam Rickitt all naked and ending his singing career before it even started.

What springs to mind when somebody says “duel”? People flouncing about with swords, trying to kill each other? Yes? Well, forget about that. Because this week, Dancing on Ice brought us the least threatening duels of all time.

There were no swords. There was no serious injury. There were just two celebrities on the ice at the same time, skating one after the other, and wearing vaguely coordinated outfits.

And the prize for winning the duel? Did they get to use their skating blades to hack their rival’s costume to pieces? Or to inflict some dramatic but non-lethal wounds upon them? Or steal their partner? Or do anything? Anything at all?

No. They got immunity from this week’s skate-off. That was it.

First to compete for the world’s least exciting prize were Chico and Sam, who as well as sharing the ice and the music were also sharing their costume. Not literally, unfortunately, even though a pantomime horse on ice could be utterly brilliant.

Instead, they were both dressed a bit like Freddie Mercury and as per the rules of this particular “duel”, they started off facing each other. Doing push ups, which we assume was considerably easier for one Freddie than the other.

In fact, everything seemed to be easier for Chico/Freddie, who was just shitloads better than Sam/Freddie. He was faster, and better at the lifts, and did more complicated fancy stuff. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more devastating for Sam he had to finish the routine with yet more push ups, even though his arms were presumably burning more than Lindsay Lohan’s ladybits.

Next up were Jennifer and Sebastian, who were set up as the ULTIMATE SKATING DICHOTOMY. Jennifer, you see, has a background as a dancer but isn’t a great skater. Sebastian is shit-hot at skating, but can’t perform. If you could smush them together, they’d be great. But you can’t, so they were both just mediocre.

They couldn’t even match their costumes as well as the two Freddies. The judges just about managed to muster enough enthusiasm to give immunity to Sebastian. And then they had to attempt to be sympathetic towards Corey and Chemmy.

Corey and Chemmy don’t have any confidence, you see, and so they were united in the Duel of Low Self-Esteem. Luckily for Chemmy though, Corey also suffers from severe and long-lasting delusions. He’s under the impression that he can dance and skate, even though he’s still wearing kneepads. Like a toddler. Which is apparently what he is.

Yes, it turns out that Corey is just a great big deluded toddler. After his professional partner wouldn’t bow down to his greater skating wisdom he threw a massive strop and stormed off of the ice. Or just kind of wobbled off of it slowly. It was up to Chemmy to calm him down, which she did very nicely.

And then she shat all over him and got immunity.

Unable to summon up any such drama were Heidi and Charlene, who have both been in the skateoff and are therefore equally, unremarkably god-awful. Still the judges were forced to choose between them, so they gave immunity to Heidi because she’s got better hair. Maybe.

Jorgie and Matt, meanwhile, are both stupidly ridiculously good and so everyone was very excited about their duel. Jorgie had a lift that makes her dizzy and a bit vomitous. Matthew had ruined his back and dropped his partner. It was all INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC.

Then we saw their outfits. Matt had been put in something silver and shiny, and Jorgie was in a spanglebra and leggings. Who cares about skating when you’ve got people dressed like that?! The judges do, apparently. As they chose to give the sacred immunity to Matt, just because they had to give it to someone.

And then there was an anti-climax.

The producers had forgotten about Andy and Rosemary so had to just tack them on the end and hope that everyone hadn’t already switched off. Rosemary hadn’t got through a routine cleanly, but apparently she changed her attitude this week and that helped and now she is better at not falling down. So the judges gave her immunity, leaving six of the celebs facing the public vote.

In the skate-off, the public proved that they don’t like Americans who were famous in the 80s and have names beginning with the letter C, and so left Corey and Charlene in the bottom two. Somewhat inevitably, Corey barely managed to stay upright and got booted off. Which he apparently took VERY SERIOUSLY.

And so, we have lost deluded Corey and his stupid hair but that’s OK, because we’ve still got 11 other bland celebrities to will serious injury and deep humiliation on. We just need to hope that next time they duel, the producers let them have swords. Please, please, give the cretins swords.

Ka-loo ka-lay everyone! It’s almost the end of the week, and just like Lenny Henry tells us on those awful hotel adverts, it’s almost time for the weekend. And what’s a weekend all about? Going out, getting trashed and generally being like those pesky kids from Skins, sitting around in your pants as much as you can in 48 hours.

It’s what sets us aside from the animals y’know. They can’t figure out the little hole bit for willies.

It’d be remiss, and frankly irresponsible of us, as your favourite website of all time ever in the history of Google, to not keep you occupied between your next bottle of something fizzy or yeasty. It’d be like the 1994 film, Baby’s Day Out. You clearly can’t be left to your own devices can you? Sometimes, just sometimes, you actually make us sorry to know you.

So, like sheep to a machine that would slice their throat and ceremoniously bleed them to death, ready to be skinned, chopped and packaged in cellophane for your delectation, this is what you should be watching over the upcoming weekend. Make sure you do watch it mind, there’ll be a quiz afterwards and we wouldn’t want you to look like a dick.

Friday

Martina Cole’s Lady Killers, ITV3, 9:00pm

Serial killers are big business. Knock up a book with a feisty female detective and a particularly gruesome killer and you could be on the Richard and Judy Summer Booklist; a heady accolade indeed. Reading about the reasons behind notorious killings can be entertaining for two reasons: to better understand the human condition and what drives it to such depraved extremes, and to get tips to pull off the perfect crime spree.

So to help us all in our rampages crime writer Martina Cole has created this series about six of the most notorious female killers in history. Tonight is the turn of Myra Hindley. Which is slightly by-the-by to be honest, because the star of the show is Cole herself, who is the exact opposite of what you’d expect a crime writer to be. She’s essentially a female Phil Mitchell. Gruffer than chewing a plate full of pebbles and more mannish than Fatima Whitbread, this woman is something great. Believe.

How The Brits Rocked America: Go West, BBC4, 9:00pm

How great is music from the 60s please?

We could’ve just left our look at BBC4’s Friday night of documentaries at that, because you’re probably already sold and setting your Sky+, but that would be bad journalism and that’s something we strive not to do at HS. Sometimes it just gets away from us, mainly due to Chris Brown saying and doing such stupid things.

The first episode is a new series looking at how British brands broke the illustrious US market in the 60s. So there’ll be lots of footage of The Beatles. Followed up by the also-rans that are The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits and The Animals. With contributions by Sir Paul McCartney, Peter Noone, Donovan and Micky Dolenz, this will be a lovely reminiscent look at an era that changed music forever. Swinging.

Saturday

TOTP2: The 60s, BBC2, 23:35pm

Not only content with watching almost every minute of The Beatles’ career last night, you can also see what else was going on during the 60s in this brain friendly summing up of the main songs to come from the 1960s. So we’re looking at Beat music, the opening shots of the British Invasion, some of the greatest blues music of all time, and psychedelia. We dare you to watch this and not feel a) completely at ease with yourself afterwards, and b) want to cave something sharp into Ed Sheeran’s face for ruining music for everyone.

Look forward to seeing Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones, Sandie Shaw* (with no shoes probably) and Fleetwood Mac, and literally slatherings of Eurovision.

Airline: The Story Of Pan Am, BBC2, 10:00pm

Pan Am. A name synonymous with glamour and a woman knowing her place, that being at a man’s beckon call. It means a lot of things, to a lot of people. Clever people who know things like history and economy. And luckily for you dense collections of cells, they’ve made a lovely documentary for you to stick your telly balls at. Generous, generous people, them at the BBC. Find out how Pan Am kick started a new age of travel and managed to shrink the World, and made jaunty hats the absolute bee’s knees. Also, Honor Blackman narrates it. She was in The Upper Hand, so that’s got to count for something. It had a McGann in it.

Sunday

The Only Way Is Essex, ITV2, 10:00pm

The hecklerspray bedsit is literally a-buzz this weekend. But aside from the boiler that we can’t afford to get fixed, it’s because we’re all excited about the return of the The Only Way Is Essex in our lives. We love it. The way that they’re all vacuous, spunk trumpets keeps us so entertained week after week.

It’s all go down Essex way with Mark Wright, Harry Derbridge, Kirk Norcross, Maria Fowler and those arseholes Greek twins hanging up their Tanfastic clubcards and handing the reins of crazy orange madness to a massive twelve new cast members. Not much is known about the new additions, because they’ve only recently being let out of their test tubes for filming, but one is bezzie with Rochelle Wiseman, who professionally blows the tall one from JLS, and the other is best friend of Joey Essex. A man so unusually retarded that even dogs can pick things up faster than him. He’s got the intelligence of an orange. Bunch of pricks; entertaining, self hating pricks.

The TV Book Club, More4, 7:10pm

Panel shows are dreadful aren’t they? The way that they are almost exclusively populated by male comedians thinking that they are the funniest people on the planet even though it’s only differing versions of Hugh Dennis and Russell Howard. And the way that they are edited to within an inch of their existence by overzealous producers is sickening. It makes us physically sick. We have to have the sick bucket next to us whenever we attempt to watch Mock The Week.

The TV Book Club is different to the tired format which the BBC wank themselves rare over, and there’s a new series starting on More4, with new Caroline Quentin and Meera Syal joining regular hosts Dave Spikey (urgh) and Laila Rouass (indifferent) to talk about S.J. Watson’s ‘Before I Go To Sleep.’ And without a boss eyed splat of jizz in sight.

* HS FACT: Despite already being called the fantastically geographical Sandy Shore, she wanted to take it to the next level and snared fashion designer and Clothes Show megastar Jeff Banks, and became…DUN DUN DERR…Sandie Banks. FAS-CI-NA-TING.

And-roid Warhol. A psychedelic treehouse. A tank made of cheese. If there were any words we could employ to try and sway you into watching Noel Fielding’s newest “offering”, it would be these.

They show us many, many things. That Noel Fielding is sticking to his tried and tested roots of clashing the realistic with the absurd, with brain warping determination. That he clearly takes himself either far too seriously, or not serious enough. And that there clearly isn’t such a thing as flogging a dead equine.

We all liked The Mighty Boosh, that was unashamedly brilliant [No we didn't. Some of us hated it and everyone who watched it.  Ed]. Everything from the ground to The Moon was dead-on: keep things simple and fun and show everyone why Caroline Quentin probably shouldn’t be in a mismatched family unit. The mixture of boring situations clashing with fantastical characters kept us coming back for more. But Luxury Comedy seems trite and, slightly forced. Watch. Watch us how we’re magically become Noel Fielding.

“Papier-mache hedgehogs burrowing into Dave Carpets The Carpenter Apprentice afro play banjoleles about not being about to return a pair of combats to a shop because the mandatory 28-day guarantee was up.”

It’s as easy as guessing the lie detector results on Jeremy Kyle. Anyone can do it. But Fielding and Barratt (his cohort on The Mighty Boosh) were a living embodiment, almost of the ethos, behind it.

They looked the absurd parts. But with Barratt off fathering twins and doing other more serious things, it lacks the physical oomph that the straight laced, depressing Howard Moon brought. With no grounding force of banality to keep Fielding grounded, it loses some of it’s individuality. Actually, Fielding loses some of his individuality at the same time. Oddly.

The problem is that the formula behind Fielding’s comedy is flawless; take something ordinary and make it look as out of place as possible, then add a dark undertone (which is where the best jokes always lie: just look at Nighty Night – incidentally created by Julian Barratt’s wife, Julia Davis). Which is great.

But eventually, seeing bizarre things becomes routine and ordinary. Which is where Fielding seems to have failed. There was nothing new, or groundbreaking about this foray on a new channel. You can sum it up by one word. One word that Noel Fielding probably never needs to use because all of his clothes seem to look uncomfortable to wear. Like you would want everyone to have a quick peek at your balls.

Unfortunately, and it does hurt us to say this, but Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy is stereotyped. You know what you’re getting with it. It does what it says on the tin, except the ‘Comedy’ part. Or the ‘Luxury’.

So ‘Noel Fielding’ then.

Shame. We’ll always have Mod Foxes.

Before we even start talking about the first episode of the new season of Skins can we just discuss the opening titles for a second? As per usual they are the best thing about the show, but they’re also artistic to the point of idiocy.

Why anybody would put an opening sequence so shiny and clearly full of effort onto this absolute shambles of youth television is beyond us. They make you think you might be watching something with vague pretensions of quality instead of a braying collection of ingrate arseholes.

Apparently the writers thought that ‘Racism’ might be a good theme to adopt this year and so the girls colour code each other and add the suffix ‘bitch’ to the end of all terms of endearment, for example: “Hey black bitch, hey white bitch.” It’s like a novelty smack-talking chess set. They all seem to be much more fulfilled in themselves though so it’s clearly worth trying in your own life. Skins after all does come across as a manual for good, clean, wholesome living.

We’re now old and haggard and not the intended audience, though it does seem that they don’t really have an intended audience anymore, so the childrens’ partydar is lost on us. If you’re on holiday with your mates in a private villa with a lot of drugs then it’s just not necessary to find and involve other even more meagre samples of the human race, they’re just going to throw a spanner in the works.

Right on cue, after the whole Alo finally shagging Mini thing that we’ve been waiting all of ten minutes for, mechanical items are being lodged in all places and the horrible snivelling whiter-than-white boy, Luke, decides to consensually kidnap the no longer androgynous or interesting Franky. As Mini so aptly puts it: “I liked her better when she may or may not have been a lesbian,” yes we just quoted Skins, get the fuck over it, it’s a beacon of knowledge and hope for tens of people. Later there’s a menial car crash which incapacitates Grace so that hopefully we won’t have to hear her ridiculous excuse of a voice for the rest of the season other than in her cocking composition which will undoubtedly rear its head every time Rich is on screen lamenting the hopelessness of it all. Are you still with us?

Basically what’s happened is things have got deep and everybody has lost their entire not very interesting to begin with personality traits and exchanged them for a styling session at American Apparel. There are more colour clashes here than character based ones and believe us when we tell you we have a headache now. Not even Chris Addison could be arsed to turn up for work so instead he sent a letter and they got Josie Long to say an extra line while still in the ‘guise’ of a dimwit, oh yeah Dobby from Peep Show is now in it because for some reason the older Brits are desperately clinging on to a hedonistic time gone by.

The issue with this third generation is that they are absolute wankers and they all know it.

At least last season Franky and her ‘mind fuck’ Matty were brooding and heavily emoting their teenage sexual aggression, now they’re just arguing about Morrissey and Simone De ‘cultural reference’ Beauvoir. Quite frankly we think they should all just grow up and tell that Ryder dick to piss off because while he’s barely ever on screen his musk lingers like putrefaction and he makes us want to punch ourselves in the face just thinking about his bare chest.

If there’s one of these remorseless pricks that we do love to hate though, it’s Kyle; the young twat responsible for making sure the soundtrack to each episode is, like, totally hyper relevant and boomin’. Of course he doesn’t disappoint as the episode opens with an NME approved act Azealia Banks—bit sweary if you ask us—and then blasts through more Segal than you can shake a stick at with some Scott Matthews for those moments of melancholy, reflection, depression, death, and the moping. Maybe next week they can just stick the Scott Matthews record on and cut between some sombre close-ups, it sounds way more avant garde which is obviously the whole point of this exercise anyway.

There you have it, sub-species- our critical analysis of the first episode of the ‘oh god when will it end’ new season of Skins. It sure looks like it’s going to be full of the hateful mediocrity that made all the other years such as delight. If getting a life was on your cards this year then now’s a great time to consider putting that plan into action. Us, we wouldn’t dare so we’ll be right here all over again next week continuing to win the record for slowest suicide ever.

It’s soap spoiling time again you lucky people!  Once again we’ve been held at gunpoint and forced to write stuff about something we’d only care less about if we were dead. Want to know what exciting things happen in Hollyoaks this week?  Tough. We didn’t include them.

As usual we’re off to Eastenders first and before we give you this weeks predictable spoilers, we’d like to jump up and down topless in appreciation of Kim, who’s near death rubbish pile romance scene with Ray was our highlight of last week.

This week Ben’s hilarious plan to get his dad arrested has finally worked. Yes Phil Mitchell has been charged with the murder of Stella in a plot so drawn-out we had to look on YouTube to remember what actually happened. We’re still not sure.  However, the smug grin is soon wiped off his face when Shirley throws him out and he’s forced to go and live with Ian Beale and as you all know, when you move in with Ian you have to marry him – it’s Eastenders law.

Anyway, it seems that once upon a time, Bianca managed to sleep with someone who wasn’t completely unattractive! New face Ray is determined to be a dad to Morgan and offers to cook dinner for the Butchers. He then reveals he has a daughter called Sasha and Bianca isn’t happy. OH THERE’S A SHOCKER.  Still, our protests last week seem to have worked and Ricky has pissed off, so hopefully Bianca will be next.

Elsewhere, Tanya and Jane fall out over her plans to go to Wales, Lucy confronts Mandy over her secret phone calls and Derek gives Ben a jumper. This isn’t a euphemism.

Next we go to Coronation Street because you lot moan when we don’t write about it. Tracy and Steve get married this week and as Tracy is a scheming, lying villain, you know this won’t end well or have any comedy value whatsoever. Yes Becky gatecrashes the church to tell Steve that Tracy is all of those things we’ve just mentioned and manages to ruin the whole bloody charade.  Don’t fret though, BECKY IS LEAVING! We’ve already put bunting up in the hecklerspray bedsit as between her and Ricky Butcher being removed from our televisons, we haven’t been this happy in a long time. Pete and Carla share some really unconvincing kisses and plan a secret hotel rendezvous so they can engage in some really mediocre sex acts. What they don’t know is that Frank has a private investigator following them, called Trish.  Trish?

Trish was always one step ahead.

Finally, despite the fact we haven’t watched Neighbours in 25 years, we’ll still tell you stuff as you obviously haven’t moved on.  First of all, Guy Pearce is a brilliant actor. He’s done really well for himself hasn’t he? Sadly he’s not in Neighbours anymore, but do you know who still is? Stefan Dennis, aka Paul Robinson.  This week he puts together his case to fight for Kate’s career. We don’t know who Kate is but you probably do so that’s all that matters. Emilia teaches Tash some Wiccan method called ‘grounding’ which hopefully involves her being buried alive somewhere and someone called Chris is gay.

It’s fair to say we’ve all learned something important this week.

Anyway, let us end this excuse for a feature with a video of a soap star doing something they should be particularly ashamed of.

Expect more of these.

This week’s Dancing on Ice was apparently Movie Week. Really, it was just dodgier outfits than usual, a few rubbish puns and some nicely manufactured drama. There were injuries! There were dangerous lifts! And there was Heidi Sugababe’s golden vadge! Her terrifying, terrifying golden ladybits.

Before old Bigface Sugababe assaulted our eyes with her genitals though, the rest of the skaters were subjected to injury and actual sexual assault. Like Jennifer Ellison, who has ruined her ribs, apparently. Which was INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC and caused her to change her routine at the last moment and look like she was about to die when she came off the ice.

We did not feel the required amount of sympathy. Although that’s maybe because we have no soul.

Trying to nab herself some non-existent sympathy was Charlene, who gatecrashed Jennifer’s ruined ribs party. She forgot to do the requisite crying and looking upset, but she did dress up as Marilyn Monroe. Which was frankly terrifying.

But not as terrifying as what happened to Rosemary Conley. Poor, sweet old Rosemary Conley. Her partner grabbed her by the ladybits and hoiked her onto his shoulder, which looked both uncomfortable and wrong. It was a bit like watching someone molest your gran. But with added lycra, and some extra sequins.

It wasn’t just the old who were being interfered with on live TV though. Jorgie Porter also found herself being touched inappropriately when she was made to do a “sit lift”. Which involved her quite literally sitting on her partner’s hand as he held her above his head and kept a tight grip on her pants. At least, he said it was her pants. We didn’t want to think about it too hard.

Whatever was going on in Jorgie’s pants clearly worked, as she found herself top of the leader board and pitched against the previous week’s skating master Matt. Who is more about actual assault than sexual assault; he dropped his partner AND crushed her in rehearsal. Which clearly scared the judges enough to make sure they gave him the same score as Jorgie. Which was just bloody boring of them, really.

Person least likely to assault anyone meanwhile was Sebastian, who needed to be reminded that he even had a partner at all. He and Brianne had been working all week to remember to be good with each other, which sort of kind of worked. A bit. Apparently Sebastian’s “style” was cocking things up a bit. Whatever his “style” is.

Down at the other end of the leaderboard, ITV was rubbing salt in the wounds of Corey Feldman’s failed career by making him skate to a song from his own movie, Stand by Me. He responded by announcing himself to be a great dancer. His only evidence seemed to be that he was friends with Michael Jackson. Clearly Michael was already heavily sedated when he told Corey that he was a great dancer though, because Corey was dismal. Really, really dismal.

A bit like Mark of Sam and Mark. According to partner Frankie he’s improved, but she doesn’t have a surname and does have an annoying face, so we chose to ignore her. They spent as much of their routine as possible off of the ice and then were the happiest anyone has ever been to make it into double figures. It’s good to know they’ve got low standards.

The other half of Sam and Mark, meanwhile, was trying his absolute best to kill his partner with a backflip. On live TV. He’d been cocking it up all week and throwing her off in seemingly random directions, but he annoyingly managed not to throw her onto her head in front of the entire nation. He did do some really embarrassing kung-fu dancing though. The poor bastard.

Also struggling with a move was Chemmy, who was scared of a lift. What she should’ve been scared of though, was the wrath of God. Because Chemmy started off dressed as a nun, and then did some stripping. The two of them couldn’t get it up though. The lift, that is. Because God didn’t want them to. Then Katarina Witt told Chemmy that she was a Big Woman, because Chemmy had insulted God, and so God told Katarina to call her fat.

It wasn’t just Chemmy’s costume that was playing silly buggers though. Chico got stuck trying to be romantic and passionate in that most romantic of outfits, the boilersuit. Andy got his hand stuck in his ridiculous Grease wig. And Heidi. Oh dear God. Heidi.

After horrifying us with shots of her golden catsuit throughout the show, Heidi appeared as the final skater. Because she wanted to maximise the amount of time she could horrify us for. Apparently the catsuit was part of her attempt to “sexify” a Bond theme. We definitely became very well acquainted with her anatomy, but it was more traumatic than sexy.

Still, somebody somewhere clearly liked it, because after being unceremoniously dumped into the skate off in the first week, she made it through. As did everyone except for Charlene and Mark, who were forced to skate again.

It turned out that Mark’s “improvement” wasn’t enough, and he got sent home, leaving poor Sam alone. Hopefully he’ll realise that life is actually better without Mark, thus leading to the end of Sam and Mark as any kind of televisual unit and making the world a far, far better place. We’ll be voting to keep him in. Because a world without Sam and Mark is something we’ll never stop hoping for.

Life is hard for many people for much of the time. But we all deal with it in different ways. Some people take solace in religion; placing their happiness in never seeing a ghost. They’d rather have a piece of toast and watch the evening news. Those people are idiots and mediocre ’90s pop stars.

Some people turn to alcohol or narcotics, like many a disgraced celebrity or role model. Would it surprise you to hear that a member of the hecklerspray bedsit likes to drink a bath of gin before singing the chorus from ‘I Know Him So Well’ from the musical Chess? Would it surprise you that it’s Matthew Laidlow?

Whereas some people get happy by watching television and seeing that no matter how hard life can be; unemployment is at record high, there’s cruise liners capsizing and you’ll never be good enough for your partner, but no matter how hard life can be, you’ll still be better than the people you’ll see on TV. Fat Pat carking it? You’re better than her. Not sure which of 12 potential men is the father of your child? You’re better than her. Women chef overcooked her souffles and is now having a massive breakdown? You’re better than her as well.

Allow us to show you the best things that is going on in the World of TV. Or not. Maybe you’d like to go back to having an awful life.

Perhaps you like feeling sorry for yourself.

Well we’ll not be having that, so be on your way. Read on if you want to be a happy and healthy individual, or entertained.

Friday

Paul Simon: Live At Webster Hall, New York, Friday, BBC Four, 9:00pm

Everyone has a soft spot for Simon & Garfunkel. Where would we be without ‘Bright Eyes’ instilling a fear of angry looking rabbits. Or ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ reminding us how completely awful Stephen Gateley’s solo career was. And ‘Homeward Bound’ being the theme tune to anyone’s long train journey home. Well the terrorists would’ve won wouldn’t they? And we don’t want that now do we. Simon and Garfunkel shaped the way that normal people view music, we wouldn’t have most of the folk output if they hadn’t been maudlin folk heroes.

This show, admittedly has 100% less Garfunkel than what we would like, but still contains 100,000% (that’s Jeremy Kyle maths there kids) of Paul Simon. Recorded in June 2011, just seven whole months ago, following his ‘So Beautiful or So What’. Expect lots of songs that you’ve not heard before, but at the same time some of the biggest hits that Simon has pumped into the public consciousness, like a giant vacuum of fart. Will Ladysmith Black Mambazo appear? Like we’d spoil that for you. What do you think we are? Monstrous layabouts with nothing else to do but tell you the current whereabouts of Ladysmith Black Mambazo?

If you like that sort of thing, BBC Four has a whole night dedicated to the giants of folk as well.

Al Murray: Giving It Both Barrels, Friday, Dave, 9:00pm

Enjoy having your intelligence insulted by an overweight man who takes on the persona so unpleasant that even Jeremy Clarkson would be calling the Daily Mail in complaint, after asking everyone “What do you call and Indian with bacon on his head?” Do you like people who make jokes about being the slightest bit effeminate? Or liking drinks that aren’t created from some horrible yeasty nonsense? No, us either.

But if you do want to sit, staring incredulously at the screen for an hour and a half and think “Christ on a trike, isn’t this dated” then this is definitely for you. Listen to Al Murray as he dusts off his tired persona of the Pub Landlord and shouts at people in the audience, while drinking something called stout and talking about how Britain is different from what it might have been a few decades ago. Watch as the realisation that he’s never going to find a career peak as high as this never dawns over his face. Smell the awful beer farts and Lynx Africa from the losers in the audience.

Saturday

The Magicians, Saturday, BBC One, 6:35pm

We at the Hecklerspray bedsit, love magic. We spend literally hours trying to make coins disappear behind each other’s ears. It’s got to the stage where otorhinolaryngologists at our local A&E know us each by name. We love it so much that at a Christmas party, a magician stole our watch from right under our nose and we let him keep it as a thank you. The trick was that the watch was stolen all along. Take that Magic Mick!

So as you can imagine, we have been thrilled with all these magic based entertainment shows that everyone has been ramming down our throats. But The Magicians is slightly different because it isn’t just a vanilla trot-out-make-a-girl-disappear-who-then-turns-up-dead-in-a-canal-later-that-night. This one has professional magicians (apparently there’s more than Paul Daniels and Dynamo) taking celebrities under their wings and teaching them to do tricks of their own. Sounds like something The Magic Circle would get their removable knickers in a twist, but whatevs. This week there’s one half of Mel & Sue, Mel, David Haye and Kimberley Wyatt, who we’re reliably told used to be in the Pussycat Dolls, but obviously she’s not Nicole Sherzinger so no one cares.

The Jonathan Ross Show, Saturday, ITV 1, 9:15pm

Like him or not, Jonathan Ross is still going strong after his misdemeanors with Russell Brand and David Cameron, and has had success with his ITV chatshow. Tonight’s show has Famous Harry Potter Penis, Daniel Radcliffe spouting various guff about the theatre and how it’s a living, breathing organism as well as ‘The Woman In Black’ which is the new film he’s peddling; Noel Fielding talks about his new show ‘Luxury Comedy’ and David Attenborough blows a kidney telling everyone that the scenes from Frozen Planet which everyone got into a right tizz about might have been faked after all, but that’s alright because it’s the better alternative than being ripped open by angry polar bears.

Sunday

Hugh’s Three Hungry Boys, Sunday, Channel Four, 7:00pm

What’s worse than a self-opinionated nancy chef advocating oven-dried tomatoes and pallet squashed chicken? Three of that chef’s proteges. Which is precisely what this is. Following the progress of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s three friends, Thom, Tim and Trevor Whittington Smythe Rara Oopsilon the Third, Fourth and Fifth, as they travel around South West England, foraging off the ground that they walk on, and probably own. Unashamedly scripted, and not even that convincing, the rise of faux-danger is making cooking programmes into one homogenous blur, presented by the same person but with different haircuts. “Will they get the sourbread to the Orthodox rabbi by sundown?” “How is she going to manage to make twelve scones in three hours, while balancing on a thin strip of rope and reciting Pi?” One time Mary Berry defeated a whole ship of ravaging pirates, and still managed to deliver a chocolate truffle torte to the head of Westminster’s WI.

Ben Elton: Laughing At The 80s, Sunday, Channel Four, 11:40pm

Have you seen the awful one off comedy shows on BBC One that are attempting to remind people that Lenny Henry, Jasper Carrott and Griff Rhys exist still? They’re very bad indeed. But those cheap one off specials do remind us of one thing; comedy in the 80s was sometimes really fantastic. Which is just what this documentary looks at. Which you can probably tell. You’re not stupid are you?

Presented by Ben Elton, who obviously co-wrote The Young Ones and Blackadder, who meets some of the biggest names in alternative comedy, so expect to hear funny things from Harry Enfield, Jimmy Tarbuck, Rik Mayall, Victoria Wood, French and Saunders and maybe some seagull noises from Lenny Henry. Has anyone figured out what that’s about? No wonder Dawn French wants nothing to do with him.

You geeks are more than aware that Sherlock Holmes fell to his death in the closer of series two of the stupid BBC adaptation that stars Martin Freeman playing Tim From The Office Again and Benedict Cumberbatch as quirky Sherlock Doctor Who Holmes. And there’s going to be a third series.

Right?

And of course, the internet is filled with theories about what happens, what will unfold and all that junk. Really, you pondering bozos should’ve just come to us because we have all the answers AND we’re going to tell you all about it. Mainly because people don’t care about spoilers anymore do they? They’re more than willing to blurt out plots to shows and films on Twitter and Facebook, so why shouldn’t we join in?

So where are we? Well, Sherlock got famous and Moriarty allows himself to be captured and put on trial. After a ‘not guilty’, he blackmails Sherlock and taunts him with a “final problem” to solve.

How edgy and brilliant, eh? Then, Sherlock and Moriarty plunge to their deaths and every single nerd on the planet moistened with excitement and thrill. The dry-cleaning bills must have been astronomical.

Either way, Holmes faked his death and that’s that. See, the show will detail how Watson becomes the go-to dude for crime (like when Lewis got his own series after Morse died), but alas, an elderly deformed book collector ends up transforming himself into Sherlock Holmes! EVEN THOUGH EVERYONE THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD!

See, Holmes flung Professor Moriarty to his death and climbed up the cliff out of view, so that everyone would think he’d snuffed it too. Alas, some dude called Moran threw rocks at Holmes’ head while he was trying to climb up the waterfall and he ends up running for his life so hard that he ends up travelling Tibet for years.

Like a filthy student.

Colonel Moran, shoots a dummy of Holmes in his room at Baker Street and gets apprehended and it all goes horribly wrong for him. Very nice.

And you know how we found all this out?

By reading the bloody books, you nitwits. Seriously. You’ll read Harry Potter, but not Sherlock Holmes. You’re scum, that’s what you are.

Anyway, no point watching the third series of Sherlock Holmes now is there?

CHRIST ON A BIKE, it’s been a whole week since we’ve been here! Can you believe it?!! That was rhetorical. Shut up. Now that Pat has been airlifted out of this world to the tune of Sweet Caroline, it’s time to get back to the real world, and by real world we mean an entirely fictitious one, created to make you waste several hours of your life when you could be saving kittens or learning to read.

Ready?

First this week it’s Eastenders, where the Bianca and Ricky saga continues to bore the living shit out of everyone as it’s now been running since 1993. They’re back together. No wait, they’re splitting up. Oh hang on they’re back together. OH JUST DIE. LEAVE. TOGETHER. OR SEPARATELY. WE DON’T CARE.  Want to know what happens? Just YouTube Eastenders from 1998 and save us the agony of discussing it any further.

Other characters do stuff too! The new Lucy now officially hates Mandy and decides to set her up by scoring some pills from her and then craftily arranging it for Bobby to find them.  Then off she pops to befriend Dr Death’s daughter Afia and lead her astray whilst homosexual husband stalker Amira scowls at her with her long face.

Rubbish crime fighter DCI Marsden is sniffing around Ben, hoping that the little weasel will tell her everything about Phil’s involvement in The Cut and Shut of  2008 or The Great Train Robbery of 1903, or that time he walked out of Tesco with a Twix in his trolley and didn’t pay for it; it’s all the same to her. She wants him GAWN and quite frankly so do we.  Of course Ben feels rejected by Phil once again and tells Marsden he wants to change his statement, opening the fiery gates and unleashing another 75 weeks of ‘Will Phil Mitchell Get Away With It?’ storyline hell.

In other news, Lauren is annoyed at being grounded. That’s cutting edge stuff right there.

Next up we trudge over to Coronation Street where we’re hoping that Becky has dropped off the face of the earth. Sadly we find out this isn’t so and she’s been busy trying to clear her name and demanding answers from Deirdre, who should still be in prison for overacting and thinking that she could ever bag a pilot.

To cut a long tedious story short, Tracy had a miscarriage the day before Becky pushed her down the stairs and is therefore a big stinking liar but you already knew this. Danny then stuns Becky, not with a taser unfortunately but with a proposition. He wants her to go to Barbados with him for ever. And ever. And ever. Let it be good news this time.

Kevin receives his divorce papers and commiserates with Tyrone and it looks like the world’s most uninspiring friendship could be on the mend.

SHOCKING STORY LINE OF THE WEEK!!!

Owen hits Faye because she was responsible for killing the fish. We don’t even know who Faye is but she sounds like a complete prick.

Faye had been planning this for weeks.

Finally we run at full speed towards Hollyoaks because it’s very likely that someone will take their top off and we won’t care what happens for at least three minutes or possibly even six minutes if we light some sexy candles first. It seems that Dennis faces a DILEMMA SO HUGE we had to use capitals- He can either take his dream job in Dubai or stay and declare his love for Leanne. Callum with the drawn on beard is concerned about George for reasons we didn’t bother looking into and  Lynsey persuades Cheryl not to give up on her dream. Of going to Uni. Really?

That’s it. What more do you want?

Once again. Shut. Up.

Head Judges. Every reality show has one, even the ones where they can’t quite work out who the head judge is (yes, we’re looking at you, X Factor). And on Dancing on Ice, that privilege lies with Robin Cousins. Unfortunately for everyone else though, it seems the producers forgot to explain the show to him.

Robin Cousins, you see, has pretty much entirely missed the point of the show that he presides over. Which is a competition to find the celebrity that is best at skating round in circles and doing a bit of twirling. According to Mr Cousins, though, the celebrities only have to compete with themselves. Get that?

They’re not competing with each other, just themselves. Which makes for a pretty shit show unless ITV have been cloning celebrities in some kind of spectacular reality-meets-unnatural science experiment.

Oh, it seems that they haven’t. The idiots. So we just had the normal celebrities going round in circles.

Really taking the “competing with yourself” words to heart was some bloke called Sebastian, who apparently leaps about a bit and was once in Casino Royale. He was so busy competing with himself that he forgot about his partner, and just went around on his own being all spins and leaps and speed and spangles. If this were a competition he’d be a contender. But it’s not a competition.

Also focussed on herself was Jennifer Ellison, who apparently has self-esteem issues. She should come to the hecklerspray bedsit. We’ll show her some low self-esteem. Young Jennifer though decided to get her confidence back by skating about in a leotard and doing the splits a lot, thus ensuring that a lot of teenage boys will be focussing on her as well. Well… aiming.

Just when it looked like everyone in the entire show was a self-centred knobjockey, along came Rosemary Conley. Who has been learning to skate for two years and yet is still the slowest thing on earth. That’s OK though, because she’s also lovely and grandmotherly and takes tea to practice. She’s so very nice that her partner even felt compelled to save her from falling over when she nearly stacked it at the start of her routine. Because he loves her more than the audience. Not because it’s a competition. Definitely not.

The competition was so non-existent that not even Sam of the appalling freakshow that is Sam and Mark could be arsed. The producers tried to make out that there was a rivalry between the kids TV cretins, but neither of them seemed to really care. Which reduces the chances that one will a little bit maim the other with those sharp skate blades. Which is a real shame, especially as Sam was the one most likely to be maimed since he’s much, much better than Mark.

Considerably more likely to snap and maim someone is former childstar Corey Feldman. He doesn’t care what people think of him. He just doesn’t want to hurt himself. Unfortunately for Corey though, he’s pretty much entirely useless and spent his entire routine looking quite a lot like he was going to fall over. It’s ok though, because his partner has clearly found a time machine which has brought her straight here from the 80s, so she can take him back in time and give him a few more rehearsals. About five more years should do it.

That time machine could also come in handy for Laila Morse, who managed to hurt herself back before the show had even started properly. She had the audacity to injure her shoulder off-camera, which was just selfish and boring of her as we didn’t even get to laugh at her pain. Still, who cares about her shoulder; apparently she’s Gary Oldman’s sister. Gary Fucking Oldman. How the hell did we miss that?

Last-minute replacement Chico, meanwhile does not have stability or balance. We weren’t sure if they were talking about his skating or his life in general, but either way it wasn’t going to be a problem, because Chico had the power of Chesney Hawkes behind him. Which is clearly very, very strong, because Chico matched Jorgie’s crazy high score from last week.

It looked briefly like Chico was going to end the night on top of the leaderboard, but unfortunately for him some bloke called Matthew from Emmerdale did remember it was a competition. And Matthew wants to win that competition and beat everyone else into a pulp. So he set ridiculously high standards, swore at himself a bit and put on some pleather. Because apparently that’s how you win a competition that isn’t a competition. By dressing like a ridiculous gimp. He got a huge score though, so clearly the judges liked it.

At skate-off time it turned out that Corey’s time machine clearly wasn’t working all that well. He joined Laila-secret-brother in the bottom two, where the judges all booted Laila off “for the sake of her health”. Not because she was old and rubbish, but because she was competing with herself, and herself – in the form of her shoulder- had won.

So there you have it: Laila misses out on next week’s Movie Week extravaganza, where we expect the time machine and cloning that were hiding out the back of this week’s show to really be put to better use. Or, y’know, some celebs might skate round in circles a bit. It’ll probably be the circles.

We look forward to that.