Back in his heyday during the 1970’s, Gary Glitter pumped out shedloads of crap records.

But then again, it was the seventies and at the time no-one really knew what was acceptable and what was absolute toss, so we can forgive him.

However, what the majority of the world can’t forgive Gary Glitter for is his antics in Vietnam where he was convicted of doing horrible things to children and spent some time in prison. And now Channel 4 is going to hang him for being a paedophile. Fictitiously. Still, it’ll make better viewing than Big Brother.

Believe it or not, this is part of a new season of programmes that Channel 4 is due to broadcast. Looking at capital punishment, it’ll examine various situations and ask whether or not it would be practical to bring back hangings and other forms of executions. If so, our place as village idiot has probably been benchmarked.

So what will the programme involve? Sadly, it isn’t won’t be 60 minutes of footage where people call Gary Glitter all the names under the sun and then burn his crappy records. Instead, it’s going to be done in a documentary style, subsequently making stupid people believe it really happened enough to edit his Wikipedia page accordingly.

In a faux-courtroom drama, we’ll get to see all sorts of ropey-looking footage chopped up whilst Gary Glitter pleads for innocence and offers a performance for everyone in the country as a way of forgiveness. So why cover something like this when it’ll no doubt upset everyone? Speaking to the Metro newspaper, head of documentaries and More 4 Hamish Mykura said:

“High-profile crimes against children often prompts calls for the return of the death penalty – this drama confronts the public with what many say they want. Putting a resonant figure like Gary Glitter into a fictional situation helps to engage the viewer as the drama unfolds.”

Interestingly, a Channel 4-commissioned poll showed that 70 per cent of the public think the death penalty should be reintroduced. So no doubt when the documentary is screened, people will be watching their TV with a cup of tea in one hand, and a pick axe in the other. Joyous times.

And after the human edition, we can swiftly move on to the animal version where we get to beat the shit out of seals.

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In the build up to the launch of vampire drama True Blood on Channel 4, hecklerspray’s Keith Emmerson caught up with the defiantly charming and ruggedly handsome Stephen Moyer (who plays Bill Compton) to discover the man behind the vampire.

We are also reassuringly told that he could kill Robert Pattinson if he had to. If you didn’t catch the first episode on Channel 4, it’s available on 4OD – watch it.

Video after the jump!

True Blood, Wednesdays, 10pm on Channel 4. For more information, please click here.

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Remember when you were a child and you went on holiday, you inevitably ended up making best friends with some other family, spent two weeks doing everything together and then promised to meet back up when you got home. And never did.

But what of the other berks you met out there: The beer-bellied, tattooed chap wearing Union Flags anywhere possible, drinking in English pubs and eating English food. While in France. Or the perma-drunks, slurring their complaints at the waiter, while not even bothering to learn a single word of Spanish? Or the wife-swapping tapas eaters that didn’t notice their daughter had been abducted? What if you had the power to make them bugger off back home and stop spoiling your week away from reality?

This is the premise behind Channel 4’s Coach Trip, a reality show that follows a handful of couples on a free holiday around Europe.

Each day is contained within an episode, focusing on the activities that they’re forced to enjoy: the sort of wine-tasting, tower-climbing, art gallery appreciating things that package holiday tourists are herded through like cattle every single day.

All this is presided over by Brendan, a tour operator so camp that even Butlins would have reservations about having him sing the YMCA. His comments should be rudely sarcastic, putting down anyone who doesn’t want to get involved or has a bit too much to drink, but because he’s so amazingly camp, it comes across like Kenneth Williams inviting you to a fight to the death.

At the end of each day, the couples stand around dramatically in a semi-circle, and vote each other off. Yep, that old Welsh couple that stand around in their cagoules moaning? Cheerio. Or the bloke who’s a little bit too competitive and hilariously shouts “shotgun” as he barges everyone else out of the way to get the seats at the back of the coach? Bye.

The voting process, unlike tamer reality shows like Big Brother, is done in front of the rest of the group, and hilariously edited so that the polite, public reason (which is always “we haven’t gelled” or “we’ve not really spoken to you”) is shown directly before the bitchy private one, filmed away from the group: “he’s a bit of an obnoxious bell-end, really”. The response is invariably a good old stoic, British, “well, that’s fair enough.” Before voting for them the following day.

The couple with the most votes earns a yellow card, shown in Schindler’s List style black-and-white with the card in full technicolour, making the whole thing seem far more meaningful than it actually is. TV would be improved if every programme were contractually obliged to do at least one scene in this style.

The following day sees the couple with a yellow card doing their best to be matey with everyone else, throwing around “no hard feelings”, while secretly plotting, stewing and going mad with the insecurity of being least popular.

A second yellow card and they’re off home, which is usually dealt with in the spirit of the show,with the dominant partner bitterly warning that “well, we didn’t really like any of you anyway. Not our sort of people, right Jean?” And Jean nods meekly in agreement with her ogre of a husband who has publicly humiliated her and ruined another holiday, but offers the security that stops her begging for a divorce. At least they didn’t have to do pottery in Lichtenstein.

Coach Trip is fun, doesn’t take itself seriously and there’s enough of a turnaround of people that everyone ends up facing someone they hate. And isn’t that the real essence of a holiday: being trapped in a cramped environment, being forced to enjoy yourself, with people you’d rather just get away from?

This was a guest blog by Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows. Other publications espousing the verbal abuse of cattle are available.

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The first film in the trilogy of screen adaptations is set in 1974 and follows the story of a young journalist returning to his native West Yorkshire. As a cocky and ambitious reporter he quickly becomes embroiled in a story regarding three missing young girls in a time when newspapers were printed on Hovis and diabetes was treated with an honest pint of bitter (you soft ponce). Ostensibly this book/screenplay is concerned with the widespread local government and police corruption, and the journalist’s struggle to maintain his integrity while preserving his personal safety.

The landscapes are as beautifully crafted as any Andrei Tarkovsky title. The director has created a bleak, stark and hopeless vision of life in the West Yorkshire of the 70s. This credit goes to Julian Jarrold who has a background in crime dramas such as Silent Witness and Cracker, but also more recently period dramas Becoming Jane and Brideshead Revisited. He is probably best known for his work on the gritty hospital drama, Children’s Ward.

Obvious comparisons will be drawn between this and Life on Mars. While the latter was a very successful series and in many ways superb itself, it cannot compare to the depth of and multi faceted writing of Red Riding. However you do still get the cool 70s cars and a soundtrack provided by one of the better rock producing decades.

Based on titles in David Peace’s brilliant Red Riding series of novels, a total of three films have been adapted by Tony Grisoni, a co-writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As such, the pedigree of writing is tremendous. It is still funny, despite excellent writing, how some previously profound proverbs seem to lose gravitas when they are said with a Yorkshire accent, “the devil triumphs when good men do nowt.”

Despite our occasional difficulties with interpreting the regional dialect, Red Riding boasts an impressive cast who portray their characters impeccably. One to watch is relative newcomer Andrew Garfield as the lead role, journo Eddie Dunford. It is rare to witness a production where so many of the supporting actors are they themselves capable of leading on their own. You only need to look as far as Sean Bean (John Dawson) and Warren Clarke (Bill Molloy) for proof of this fact.

This isn’t an especially easy piece of cinema to watch, it is slow moving to begin with but we’re of the strong belief that the small amount of work it takes to keep giving it your attention is well rewarded by the end.

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Now, we’re all aware that some ladies like to sculpt their tits into enormous coconuts for the delight of perverts everywhere. We can accept that. Sometimes we may even like that. Though mostly it does just look a bit silly. Sadly, Sunday night’s TV show – The Perfect Vagina – sunk to a new low on how desperate people are to tweak and mould their bodies.

Plus it had Lisa Rogers on it, which is never a good sign.

Granted, some of the ladies were having surgery on their lower regions to make them look better, if such a thing is possible. But there’s something about the sight of an overgrown mess of skin and pubes that made us want to be sick. It also put us off looking at dirty magazines where ladies “accidentally” expose themselves, which is a cardinal sin.

The show was pretty much dedicated to ladies being poked and prodded in that area. Could this very much be a new world’s biggest penis comment marathon thread with females telling us how big their black hole is? “Mine is so big I can hear the echo for five minutes.”

If you like programs full of stomach churning images of people randomly showing off their problems then this is for you! Just don’t watch it with a girl in the room – she’ll only get upset, cry and pay £35 (we’d say around $70 for our American friends) to a dodgy bloke claiming to be a doctor, so he can flesh out of her vagina with a bread knife like he would with a grapefruit.

We also assume that the excess skin was made in to poppadoms for Indian restaurants that couldn’t afford to buy them from Tesco.

We do love assumptions.

Thank God for Rex and Nicole. At least their arguments are keeping things interesting while the dullest eviction ever is played out.

While we’re waiting to see which of the beefcakes go – the one with the stupidity and the hat, or the one with the stupidity and the shaved nipples – why not have a look at the latest eviction odds on Paddy Power.

Dale is odds-on big style to go, of course. He will leave the house to the sound of tumbleweeds rolling across the Big Brother compound we should imagine. Since Jennifer left Dale has become the most pointless housemate in history; no wonder he is such a big favourite to go. Slap a quid on and you’ll win five pence. Wow, that’s a bet and a half – as pointless as Dale himself. Big Brother betting odds – 1-20

Stuart, the second most pointless housemate, is the best of this bad bunch – can two be a bunch? Eye candy for the ladies and probably some of the boys, at least Stuart’s yawns are slightly comedic. Has there been a clip this week when Stuart has been yawning? It’s sure to help his odds.

After making it clear to everyone that he wanted to be up for eviction and garnering their votes, while tactically voting himself into position too, Stuart is now in for a shock: the chances of him going are almost zilch. At 7-1, you could make a pretty penny if a miracle did happen and he was sent on the long walk up those BB stairs. But it ain’t going to happen. Seriously, it ain’t. Big Brother betting odds – 7-1

Let’s hope Rex and Nicole’s arguments continue to keep the interest going until this eviction is done and dusted. But, hang on, she was threatening to walk out last night – right there, live on E4, she said she wanted to go.

Don’t do it. Don’t go. Don’t leave us with another pining housemate. “If you go I’ll go,” said Rex. Yeah right.

We don’t believe that for a minute.

Tomorrow: we will see if she has walked and whether he has followed – and we’ll get to have another look at the fascinating lives of Dale and Stuart. That’s as long as they haven’t slipped into comas, of course.

Mind you, that might make them interesting. Kill your boredom with a look at the latest eviction odds at Paddy Power.

Story By Richard Hughes

Of course you have, we all have. And soon maybe we will. Channel 4 has poached crazy food scientist Heston Blumenthal away from BBC2 and given him his own show. Heston's first task? Turning around the fortunes of Little Chef.

It goes without saying that Heston Blumenthal has his work cut out, though – how is the revolutionary, three Michelin starred proprietor of one of the world's best restaurants going to be able to improve on an Olympic Breakfast, for christ's sake? It's an impossible task!

Although generally there's nothing worse than a TV chef, we have to confess a soft spot for Heston Blumenthal. He's brilliant – unlike Gordon he doesn't control his kitchen with fear, unlike Jamie he actually cooks stuff instead of just bellowing about poor little chickens all the time, unlike Worrell he doesn't have a shit little beard, unlike Delia he doesn't just cook some frozen potato wedges and pass them off as his own and unlike Nigella he doesn't prance about in tinfoil knickers. As far as we know. 

But that's not why Heston Blumenthal is so brilliant. No, Heston Blumenthal is so brilliant because everything he does is so very breathtakingly impractical. On his BBC2 show In Search Of Perfection, Heston Blumenthal proved that he couldn't even make beans on toast without flying round the world six times, cooking a billion different beans in imperceptibly different ways, building a scale model of the CERN atom collider in his back garden out of shoes and using an oven heated by a swishing griffin's tail first.

But there'll be no more of that self-indulgent waffle, because now Heston Blumenthal has decided to use his powers for good. Well, not good exactly, but he's going to teach ailing roadside cafe chain Little Chef to cook all funny and shit. The Telegraph reports:

Now Heston Blumenthal is to bring his peculiar brand of kitchen chemistry to the Little Chef chain for a Channel 4 series this summer. The experiment will see Blumenthal take over one of the motorway cafes and re-invigorate its menu, interior and service standards. His ideas will then be implemented in all 193 outlets. Cathy Stevenson, the marketing director at Little Chef, said: "Heston will be helping us with our menu, the restaurant interiors and our training and service standards. It will be a total re-brand."

Like us, this news probably stirs up all kinds of conflicting emotions. Little Chef is a British institution, as old as motorways themselves, and we've all got fond memories of golden childhood holiday journeys broken up by stops at Little Chef for an Early Starter or some Jubilee Pancakes. The last thing we need is for some crackpot ponce to waft in and change everything around until the menu comprises nothing but lavender-scented asparagus tips and thimbles of poached quail gazpacho reduction served by waitresses dressed like leopardskin astronauts.

Then again, at the same time, we haven't been to a Little Chef for about a decade and that's because last time we went the food tasted like balls and the waitress had a face like a slapped arse. So maybe Heston Blumenthal really can turn the fortunes of Little Chef around.

Or maybe he'll bugger everything up and destroy the company forever. We don't really care either way. Like we said, we haven't been to one for a decade.

Read more:

Heston Blumenthal to transform Little Chef - Telegraph 

But they're all old-hat, because Jamie Oliver wants to campaign for something more raw, something more visceral, something that'll frighten the general British public into never eating ever again. That's right – Jamie Oliver is going head-to-head with the battery-farmed chicken industry. In a one-off Channel 4 show – Jamie's Fowl Dinners – to be broadcast next year, Jamie Oliver is promising to graphically demonstrate the battery-farmed chicken's rearing process. Fingers crossed this will involve Jamie Oliver being shut in a tiny, airless, artificially-lit box for the rest of his life where he'll be forced to breath his own shit-fumes until a farmer cuts off his nose and mouth.

We don't know about you, but it'd certainly be the only way we'd learn.

Now that Delia Smith's back in the cookery business, all the other TV chefs have had to raise their game sharpish. Already, a fear-stricken Nigella Lawson has announced that all her shows from now on will be presented in her bra and pants, but just about every other TV chef on the planet has decided to go down the social-consciousness route in order to get the public to eat better food instead.

Next year Channel 4 is launching a Food Season, where all of its chefs stop joking around for long enough to deliver very serious lectures about how eating Pot Noodles from time to time makes us all worse than Hitler. Gordon Ramsay is making Cook-a-Long-a-Gordon, a live show where he'll cook some food and you'll all cook it along with him at home. Plus that creepy autopsy man is doing a show where he'll chop open a dead fat person's guts and crawl around inside them going "Urgh! Isn't he fat?"

If that's not enough, there's also going to be another show all about north-Pakistani Shimshal cuisine – one of the healthiest on Earth – which seems to have the exclusive purpose of making obnoxious Islington mothers screech "Well actually I only fill Noah's school lunchbox with mud oven-baked dildongi now," whenever they're around their equally hateful friends.

But the star attraction of Channel 4's Food Season will be Jamie's Fowl Dinners presented by Jamie Oliver and Hugh's Chicken Run presented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, both designed to make us realise that intensive chicken farming isn't the five-star dream holiday for chickens that literally none of us assume it to be. In the latter show, Fearnley-Whittingstall will try to create his own intensive chicken farm before, we're promised, bursting into tears at the humanity of it all.

But it's Jamie's Fowl Dinners that's got everyone excited, because Jamie Oliver loves a good campaign. Who can forget when Jamie Oliver tried to destroy childhood obesity by making schools only sell dinners that kids would rather starve to death than eat? Or when Jamie Oliver went to Italy to campaign for, um, pasta? Or something?

And Jamie's Fowl Dinners looks set to be Jamie Oliver's most shocking campaign yet, because in it he'll research battery-farming methods and then cook a gala dinner that demonstrates all the awful things that happens to chickens during it. And there's more – the gala dinner is for famous people, and you know that something's important when Martine McCutcheon wrinkles her nose at it, don't you. Channel 4's head of factual entertainment Andrew Mackenzie said:

"Jamie's simple message, in quite an overt way, will be, 'If you know what happens to a chicken before arriving on your plate, would you change the way you think about chicken. Would you still eat it?' Our standards are not as good as some in Europe. Even people who buy free-range chickens may not be aware that every time they eat cake, the eggs aren't likely to be free range, so they are essentially endorsing the battery hen."

Needless to say, a 9pm Channel 4 season about ethical farming practises fronted by Jamie Oliver is probably only going to attract the kind of smug, Smeg-owning, middle-class Jemimas who'd rather shit fire into their child's mouth than let it anywhere near a Monster Munch, while all the other fat lards watch Trinny And Susannah Destroy The Nation's Self-Esteem on ITV instead.

This is how it will be, because this is how it's always been. But while this fat-mouthed, self-satisfied, holier-than-thou sermonising couldn't be more annoying if Jamie Oliver personally jabbed you in the eye with his finger every other word, you can't deny that Jamie Oliver is doing something. And at least as celebrity campaigns go, it's a few hundred notches down the mental scale than endorsing rat milk to the world.