Beat the Star, not just

Think of it as half-celebrity Krypton Factor. Not necessarily the Z-list celebrities that usually show up on anything with a ‘Celebrity’ twist, but one contestant is a celebrity, and the other… less so.

Tonight we meet a bloke called Glenn, who hasn’t done anything of note in his pathetic life.  He’s up against England rugby legend (they have legends in rugby, apparently) Austin Healey, who, awesomely, shares his name with a car.  It’s like Mr. and Mrs. Focus calling their son Ford, or the Cooper family having a girl called Mini. What were they thinking?

Vernon “£3k cheaper than Peter” Kay is in full parody mode as he presents, managing to hilariously lampoon other cheesy hosts, while punctuating every sentence with an over the top cheeky wink and a flash of his whiter-than-white teeth.

Eight rounds of pointless competition follow, starting with climbing-the-inside-of-a-perspex-pipe.  Followed by driving-a-dirt-buggy, which civilian Glenn can’t cope with, ploughing into a tunnel like a modern day Princess Diana. Austin takes the piss out of the production team brilliantly, deliberately incurring a five-second penalty for not bothering with a 360 spin round a pole – and still coming away with his fastest lap.

Holding up the HIGH OCTANE pace of the show, on to spelling-words-backwards.  E-K-I-B.  F-R-A-C-S. noisivelet suoidet yletulosbA. Next, from the low-budget Saturday night school of parlour games, it’s cutting-a-sausage, which Vernon enjoys with saying sausage in a way that makes it clear he’s talking about a knob, which means he wants to cut his own willy off or something.

Eight thrilling, exciting rounds later (including standing-on-a-pole and throwing-a-basketball), Glenn manages to balls up a 14-1 lead, to lose 14-22.

Beat the Star is like an ITV executive watched a 30-year-old Generation Game tape, decided to ramp up the cheesiness by getting Vernon Kay to grin his way through the recording and slashed the budget. Seven cheap and easy rounds and an ATV race, all filmed in front of a gurning crowd of morons high on E numbers, make it the ultimate ITV show: Cheap, shit and featuring a celebrity.

Later in the series: Marvel as Dean Gaffney tries to fit as many mini babybels in his mouth as he can, Toadie from Neighbours makes a domino rally, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor climbs a ladder.

You know who wrote this? Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows, that’s who. Thank him later.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Sharon recently quit ITV1’s X Factor because of something about money. She wasn’t getting her cut of the phone-in vote or something (just joking Sharon). Whatever, she left them, and it doesn’t look like she’s going back.

But then again she’s no doubt said that to Ozzy a few dozen times over the years. And yet, no matter how big the betrayal, she still remains by his side.

The poor fella – as if being a human vibrator wasn’t enough to live with without that over-opinionated ear-ache hanging about the place.

Actually, that probably explains why she stays put – they don’t have sex anymore, Sharon just straddles one of Ozzy’s wrists and focuses on a picture of Rhydian until her gushing, squawking, tinitus-inducing climax.

So, yes, Sharon has left ITV and looks set to leave her panel show days behind her.

God, we give you our heartfelt thanks. You really do look after us when it comes down to it.

Next time though, if you wouldn’t mind awfully, would it be OK if, instead of sending her to another broadcaster, you just sent her to somewhere like hell, for example? Just a thought – not that we want to tell you how to do your job or anything! Haha! But seriously, think about it. If you want to haggle with purgatory then, you know, we’re open to that prospect.

Rumour has it that, should Sharon get with the Beeb, she will join the cast of Strictly Come Dancing and – now for the best news of the day – it won’t be as a panelist! Woo hoo! Just a measly contestant.

According to The Sun, a ‘pal’ revealed last night:

It would make one hell of a TV battle, so don’t be surprised to see her hitting the dancefloor. Sharon has not fallen out with Cowell, not in the slightest. It all comes down to two things — money and Dannii. At the moment, she’s filming America’s Got Talent for Cowell and she’s concentrating on her US TV projects. Early last year, Sharon was meant to appear in Dancing With The Stars, the US version of Strictly, but she had to pull out to have an operation. She’s always wanted to do it, so what better time to put on her dancing shoes and go up against the X Factor than when the shows start again in September?

Which one are you gonna watch: X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing? You, like hecklerspray, are now wetting yourselves in anticipation. Has life ever been so exciting?

We just can’t decide and so, instead of watching either of them, we’re just gonna throw our TVs out the window and literally do something else more interesting.

Luckily, one poverty-stricken family in Hull will be getting that exact treatment. Minor royal and all-around annoyance Fergie is going to live with them to help shine a light on what life's like for the cruel minority who, for whatever reason, don't live in massive New York penthouse apartments.

Fergie's doing this for a new ITV reality show, of course, called The Duchess In Hull. It'll be broadcast in the summer, backed by an ITV2 spin-off show called Someone Get Me The Bleach, One Of Them Just Touched Me And I Don't Want To Catch AIDS.

Say what you like about ITV, but you can't deny that it loves its poor people. The Jeremy Kyle Show may as well be called Bad-Suited Pikey-Taunt Hour, while every couple of weeks there'll be a Tonight With Trevor McDonald special called I Sold My Baby To Buy Chips.

This could be because poor people are the only ones desperate enough to spend whatever pittance they earn texting ITV competitions to try and win one of the cash prizes that keeps getting dangled an inch from their face during GMTV and This Morning – but regardless of the reason, ITV has decided to rope in a minor royal to augment its celebration of poverty this summer.  

Fergie – not the knicker-wetting Black Eyed Pea Fergie but the middle-aged ginger woman who used to be married to one of the Queen's sons Fergie – has signed up for new ITV reality show The Duchess In Hull, where she'll visit Preston Road, one of the poorest communities in the country, trail a bunch of single mothers and tut every time they eat crisps as The Times reports:

She promised to use her experience of “eating disorders, low self-esteem, family conflict, financial crisis, divorce and bereavement” to help families on the estate to improve their lifestyle…Families in Preston Road have some of the lowest incomes in Britain, as well as high levels of teenage pregnancy, crime and unemployment. The estate has been selected for a £55 million regeneration scheme. The duchess said: “I do like being with people at street level, where I feel they accept me as I am.” … On her first day she was taken on a shopping expedition with fellow single mothers to Netto, a low-budget supermarket. The duchess picked out cream crackers and margarine.

Funny that, because if we were Fergie we'd hate for people to accept us as we are. That's because Fergie is essentially a needy overprivileged aristocrat who was briefly the most ridiculed woman in the country and seems to think that poor people will take to her because she's a single mother, even though one of her kids is on the cover of fucking Tatler this month and her mother-in-law is the sodding Queen of pissing England. Accepting us for what we are would be the last thing we'd want people to do.

Anyway, it seems as if Fergie's stay with the poor did the trick, because one woman she stayed claims to have lost a stone in a single week thanks to Fergie's intervention. Well, stamping your feet and screaming "I hate that stupid jumped-up cow!" non-stop does burn up a lot of calories.

Read more:

Duchess of York gives diet and debt advice to city’s poor families - Times