“Who is your daddy, and what does he do?” asked

If the bumstains on Young, Dumb and Living off Mum were to answer, they’d say “daddy is the best, he does what I tell him”, and then run off to cry because their new Porsche is the wrong shade of blue.

YDALOM is a reality show following eight spoiled, lazy buggers as they’re forced out of the comfort zone of being pampered by mummy, and into a house together. Like Big Brother, except with feckless young idiots. Each week, they perform a task, and at the end, one of them is evicted. Nothing at all like Big Brother.

As you might have gathered from the title, they don’t really have a lot going for them upstairs, so even the act of flushing the toilet is too much for someone, leaving a big skiddy mess for the rest to point and laugh at. A trip to the shops is an emotional journey. Washing up is worthy of an all-out screaming assault.

Biggest poohole of the lot is the ridiculously named Dogan, an Essex wankah whose dad owns an empire of gaudy nightclubs. Being rich entitles him to be a patronising, condescending gimp to people who aren’t miwwyonaires. i.e. Everyone. Clearly, he’s been taking lessons from those other cockends on Dragon’s Den.

The real comedy comes about when they’re set to work, having to actually prove they can be competent at, uh, anything at all. Pie-botherer Nikki (25, “jobs depress me”) spends her day on a farm getting further and further wedged into some mud. Shamefully, the others help pull her out, much to the displeasure of the poor farmer that was conned into allowing them to ‘help’.

At the end of each episode, the parents get together to watch the week’s footage and decide which of the halfwits has been the rubbishest, sending them home. If there were any justice in the world, voiceover guy Robert Webb would bundle into the room at this point with a massive sign saying “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT. LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE RAISED.”

Will the parents learn an important lesson about raising their children? Will the teenagers manage to hoover a carpet without descending into all out warfare? Doubtful, but it’s bloody funny to see them try.

This was a guest blog by Nik Johnson from the frankly stupendous Shouting At Cows

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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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Gosh, women, eh? What with their rubbish driving, bitching and other stupid stereotypes.

None of them true, of course, apart from the one about being self-obsessed weirdy Jordan-a-likes. All of them. Wouldn’t it be great to give the especially mad ones a chance to run around on TV for a bit showing off, and then scrub them down to try something different? Yes? Yes, you say? Excellent, what you need is Snog, Marry, Avoid?.

The “?” in the title is purely there to make your sentences looks weird when it sits at the end. Should it be “?.” or just “?” or get rid of it completely?

Based on the kids’ game ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill’, with a Radio Times friendly name, SMA is desperate to tell you it’s not a make-over show. No way. It’s a make-under (because they’re reining the girls’ style in), a semi-joke that they’re so pleased with, that they repeat over and over and over, like it a Tourette’s-addled poor joke machine. In other words, me.

The premise is simple: Take an attention whoring idiot, the sort who goes out in their local town wearing a piece of material so skimpy that you can see pubic hair hanging out. Watch as they cover themselves in enough face-paint to re-colour Balamory, and try not to act disgusted as they cover their legs in fake-tan, a sort of weird brown colour that gives them an air of having continence problems. The common theme is a love of attention – whenever they walk into a club, every head turns their way. Well, yes love, but they would if John McCririck or John Merrick walked in too, and there’s no mak-eunder shows to get you to look like the Elephant Man.

Hundreds of different creams, colours and shades are thrown over their faces, like a rainbow bukkake. Who knew you could put so many things on your lips? Lip gloss, lip liner, lip stick, lip balm, lip up fatty… Everything is fake: Fake eyelashes (fake eyelashes, really?!), fake nails, fake hair, fake tan, fake tits. Underneath all this is the hollow shell of a girl, who just wants to be loved.

Here’s where the title comes into play. A bunch of strangers are shown footage of the girl – who generally looks like a bad drag act – and asked whether they’d ’snog’, ‘marry’ or ‘avoid’ her. Clever, eh? Of course, this being television-land, it’s always ‘avoid’, although some look like they want to add, “and then burn her, just in case I catch something through the screen”.

After being shocked that they appear to resemble a cross between Lily Savage and a low-rent hooker, the girls are asked if they want a make-under. That’s make-UNDER. Because they’re wearing less make-up. But more clothes.

Occasionally, they’ll say no, they like their own style – such as it is – and just go home again, making the whole thing a little bit pointless. Like an episode of Grand Designs where they decide to just live in a flat.

For those that do undergo the make-UNDER, inevitably they end up looking better than before. More strangers are shown the new look, and amazingly the response is overwhelmingly positive. TV, eh, helping self esteem since 1938.

We even get the bonus of a Revisited-style end-bit where presenter and all round lovely Jenny Frost checks out whether they’ve gone back to their bum-out, orange ways, or are sticking with the understated niceness. And usually, they go for it. Which is good, because we’ve all done stupid things with our hair or clothes – awesomely, I had a step haircut with an undercut in the 90s – but luckily most of us only have a couple of photos as a reminder. Not an entire show to point out what twats we were.

Snog, Marry, Avoid? could be written off purely for the rubbish title and because it’s on BBC3, but it’s actually very watchable and the transformations are staggering. Sometimes it’s difficult to believe it’s the same person underneath.

Since it’s on Digital TV, SMA can probably be found every night, in between episodes of Two Pints of Bloody Lager.

This was a guest blog by Nik Johnson out of Shouting At Cows. Hooray, etc

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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.

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“Age ain’t nothing but a number,” sang the grammatical illiterate Aaliyah.

And with that double negative, she agreed with the production team behind Ten Years Younger: The Challenge. See, age is more than a number, it’s a bloody great stick that can be used to beat a drab, middle-aged lady into agreeing to have her nose caved in and sanded down all in the name of entertaining you. You turd.

People have different priorities that consume their entire life, depending on which TV show they’re on. The army of bell-ends on The Apprentice are all about making money (or they were until the financial world crashed down around them) and Jeremy Kyle’s guests want everyone to know that she’s just a slag and not good enough for their son.

The Ten Years Younger crew have one admirable priority: They want strangers to bellow estimates of their age, and then hack, slash and slice at various bits of them until that number goes down.

As it happens, people are ridiculously terrible at guessing age, clearly thinking, “she looks a bit haggard, I’ll aim a bit higher” – and they almost certainly edit out the childish guesses of “12″ or “98″, which would seriously ruin the average.

Even more embarrassingly, they’re then compared to other women the same age – in this case, 44-year-old Lisa Kudrow – who astonishingly is more attractive. One of them is a millionaire who doesn’t spend eight hours a day at work and can’t leave the house without trowelling make up on in case some twat photographs her for Heat magazine. The other is a single mother who has had a tough time of it, losing her teeth at 18 and her hair in her 30s. How dare she not look as good, the selfish bitch.

So, with our brave participant suitably humiliated by the no-holds-barred commentary from the idiot public – sample comments, “she needs to sort her saggy face out” and “hahaha, she looks like she’s 70″ – it’s time for improvement.

What follows is a bizarre mixture of What Not To Wear and Cannibal Holocaust. Dowdy clothes are mocked and thrown away, replaced with jackets, dresses and shoes way outside of the victim’s usual budget.

Then it’s surgery time. Because God knows, the only way to have strangers accurately estimate your age is to have bits of face bone shaved off, stomach hacked away and skin pulled so tight that you can’t pull any expression other than vague shock. Which is helpful after seeing – and worse, hearing – those surgical procedures.

Finally, after the substantial bruising has subsided, it’s make-over time, where a team of professionals paint the unfortunate Dot-Cotton-a-like up like a clown that’s fallen into a make-up factory and then been attacked by a paint-truck.

Back out on the streets, surprise surprise, the average age estimates are much lower. Probably because people are thinking, “well, I suppose she’s made a bit of an effort…” Because almost without exception, the awkwardness, the unfamiliar clothes and crazy make-up mean the victims end up looking like men in drag. At least they look 10 years younger.

This was a guest blog by Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows. Hooray.

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You might think that creating a TV programme off the back of a song by a guitar-based pop group was a bad idea, and you’d be right, mostly.

All the Small Things won us over quite early on with a choral rendition of Bond theme Nobody Does It Better. It is a shame that the rest of ATST didn’t quite live up to the high bar they’d set themselves.

If we’re honest, we’re getting bored just dragging the show to the forefront of our minds, so we’ll keep this brief.

It revolves around the plight of a choir who are led by Neil Pearson of Drop the Dead Donkey and Bridget Jones. He is in a seemingly blissful marriage with Sarah Lancashire who used to be in Coronation Street, much happier times. But what do we know about contentment and happiness, TV fans? You got it in one, it never lasts.

Sarah Alexander is responsible for smashing the status quo in this series. If you’ve never heard of her, she’s the one who looks strangely like an alien yet still very attractive and used to be in Smack the Pony, Coupling and Green Wing.

Richard Fleeshman is the son of Neil and Sarah’s characters; he likes Blink 182 a lot, excessively so. It is really very funny/alarming just how much his character worships Tom DeLonge until you realise that he has a mental illness, possibly autism, we’re not psychiatrists.

Richard is also from the Cornonation Street melting pot as the kid who suddenly turned into a fancy dress shop goth. He still looks like that, and throughout the programme he incessantly hums or sings that ominous Blink 182 song to the point where we want to pull each of his eyelashes out. That or ask him politely to stop, we’re easy.

It might be worth seeing how this family separation-cum-choirgeddon-cum-guitar drama develops, but we’re not holding out much hope.

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No, people are literally the worst things ever. In the olden days of TV, when everything was rosy and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps was but a twinkle of a fart in the brain of a five-year-old, there were people called “writers”, who would sit down and put words into other people’s mouths. This was “scriptwriting” and involved planning a TV programme out in advance.

In the Current Economic Climate, luxuries other than cocaine are out of the reach of most TV networks.  Seriously, check out the credits of a proper TV show, and you’ll see loads of people who do jobs that you don’t really need. Art Direction? Post-production supervisor? Rigging gaffer? Pah to all of them.

In fact, you only need two people to create quality television:  One to hold the camera, and one to provide voiceovers afterwards. Because it’s really, really easy to grab a camera and follow people around. Try it. I do it all the time.

Booze Britain is yet another documentary poorly pretending to be about something it isn’t. You know how Bodyshock: 500 Stone Mum and The World’s Hairiest Babies are really about pointing at the freaks, or those shocking exposés of lap-dancing clubs on Channel 5 are a cunning excuse to show tits. The programme claims to be about the dangers of binge drinking, illustrated by showing a group of people going out on the piss and having a good time.

We do get to see members of the ambulance service dealing with drunken teenagers that have had a mouthful of pissy lager and now can’t stand up. Then off to see an aggressive, confused numpty that’s mouthed off to the wrong person and been smacked in the eye. Remember: If you’re already a gobshite, booze will make you 100 times worse. But these bits are really all about looking at the blood, sick and falling-downness that we’ve all tried.

Faintly Disgusted Voiceover Guy offers an ironic commentary, strongly pointing out that the youngsters have drunk three times the weekly recommended allowance in just 20 minutes, while one of them pretends to have sex with a skip. It’s hardly ambiguous about the idea that the medical advice is bollocks, so go on – have another pint, what’s the worst that can happen?

The worst that can happen, apart from boring stuff like alcohol poisoning, getting seven bells kicked out of you by a bored bouncer or wandering aimlessly in front of a bus, is that you turn into a massive bullshitting twat, full of idiot bravado.

The invisible person behind the camera asks one of two questions to the goons wandering the streets of our towns in the middle of the night: Why are you out drinking in [your town here], and how much have you drunk tonight? There’s only one answer to the first: “To get pissed and pull some birds. Wahey!!” The second is answered based on a simple formula:

Take the number of drinks you’ve actually had, multiply it by three, add a little bit on and then shout it out while hanging onto your mate.

“I’ve had… 9 pints, three Jack Daniels, half a bottle of wine, loads of shots and three treble vodkas”

By the end of the night, the cheerful bunch will have aruged with each other, sabotaged each others’ attempts at pulling the birds (Wahey!) and if they’re a sports team, will have done something incredibly homoerotic, but not in a gay way. Birds, remember? Wahey!

I bloody love Booze Britain, as it serves as a reminder of what we were all like – only nowhere near as bad – when we were young. And it’s a great advert for avoiding town centres and staying at home. Er, watching Booze Britain.

This was a guest blog by Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows. He is rad to the power of sick.

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Is there anyone who is even faintly impressed by Piers Morgan?

Anyone that sees his name and knows that his involvement is going to be a mark of quality? ITV seems to think so, and has thoughtfully brought us Piers Morgan’s Life Stories. It’s a tabloid TV show in the vein of his tell-all Daily Mirror interviews, where celebrities are invited on to shout their brains (or not in the case of this week’s guest, Ulrika Jonsson.)

Hosted in a blue-lit studio eerily reminiscent of a low rent strip club, Piers and Ulrika perch awkwardly on chairs in front of a giant picture of Ulrika’s gormless face, while a grinning audience applaud like seals at every terrible joke. Gladiators were fighting with giant cotton buds, you say? It’s like observational comedy. From 1992.

Plunging the depths of Ulrika’s life, the production team have left no stone unturned in tracking down anyone with the most tenuous of links to her. One of the Gladiators (but not the one she screwed), a friend of her mum’s and a bloke who once watched her buy a newspaper in Spar all offer their thoughts.

Oily, grimy Piers draws on all his newspaper experience to give the guest enough rope to hang herself with, asking leading questions – and getting a round of applause from the audience of hateful, hateful idiots for asking if she came close to sleeping with Prince Edward.

If you’re interested in every tedious facet of Ulrika’s childhood, then you should definitely watch the opening segments. But, if like normal people, you couldn’t care less about the intricate bickering and petty squabbling of two strangers going through a divorce, then congratulations. You’re right.

On a lighter note, Ulrika describes the time she was date raped, which is genuinely uncomfortable to watch. Hearing this account, coupled with horrible shots of Morgan, ensure a Clockwork Orange-style torture that even the most hardened Guantanamo Bay guard would have reservations about employing.

In yet another fun incident, Ulrika was kicked to the floor by notorious dogger and occasional footballer Stan Collymore. During this bit, the camera zooms unnervingly on her, showing every bit of make-up that’s been lovingly trowelled on her fragile face. But just try looking at her mouth without thinking about which bit of Sven has been in it.

Grimness over, we’re treated to an almost literal blow-by-blow account of Ulrika’s many, many, many, many, many lovers. A Gladiator, a footballer, a cameraman, an international manager in comedy specs, reality show contestant (called fucking Lance, of all things) – it’s like she got the I-Spy book of occupations and misunderstood the requirements for ticking them off.

Morgan’s interview technique actually helps the programme, and Ulrika has obviously been paid well enough to be open and candid. So, if you’re really, really interested in the banalities of her life and can’t muster the brain-power to read all 400 pages of her book Honest, then it’s a decent summary. But who the hell cares about Ulrika in that much depth?

The highlight of the entire hour is, incidentally, finding out that her mum is called Gun. How cool.

This was a guest blog by Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows. His Twitter avatar is a Muppet, you know.

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Chris Moyles. A man so smug and unjustifiably self-satisfied that he cannot ejaculate without hearing his own name.

Despite his previous attempts at TV – Live with Chris Moyles and The Chris Moyles Show – drawing about 12 viewers, he’s been allowed to complete his hat-trick of programmes with his own name in.

Chris Moyles Presents a Chris Moyles Production of Chris Moyles’ Quiz Night is an all new Channel 4 quiz show. Actually, it’s just Chris Moyles Quiz Night, and if the lack of apostrophe doesn’t bother you, then frankly you’re worse than him.

While the BBC bring you yet another series about nature, ITV make a hash of something and Channel 5 show you a thinly veiled documentary about tits, Channel 4 have pulled out all the stops to bring you the quiz show that the nation has been holding their collective breath for. With Chris Moyles.

Wearing a suit that’s too tight for his neck, Moyles’ bulbous head looks like a comedy balloon that’s been badly over-inflated.  Hopefully he’ll get redder and redder through the series and end up looking like Steve McFadden.

Radio 1’s Chris Moyles from the Chris Moyles show presents the programme, but doesn’t actually ask the questions, as reading aloud and pronouncing things like ‘Tasmania’ are beyond him.  Instead he takes on the Alan Davies QI role and is Guest in Chief. He wants to host, participate and interview, but ends up doing nothing particularly well. His inherent dislikability combined with being his own number one fan leave him looking really pleased at nothing in particular, and grinning like a Cheshire twat.

This week’s host is the irritating Sharon Osbourne, who can’t even be bothered to show up in the studio and appears to be in a cheap dressing-room backstage somewhere. Given her history with guest Louis Walsh, it’s probably for the best.

Each round is pointlessly opened with Moyles interviewing one of the guests with his banal observations and forced attempts at banter – Barbara Windsor is common, and Dot Cotton, in real life, isn’t. Who’d have thought? Or cared? Rather than having the guests all in the studio with him, one is questioned a bit by Radio One DJ Chris Moyles while the other two sit awkwardly behind a desk on a video screen.

Proving what a wit and intellect he has, Christopher Moyles decides – get this, this is a wheeze and a half – to deliberately – wait for it, it’s joke of the century – answer questions incorrectly and preposterously! A Michael Jackson song that’s an anagram of ‘GREATNOSH’?  Why, it must be Wanna Be Startin’ Something. See, it’s got far more letters, and doesn’t even really match up.

Remember, this is the guy who genuinely thinks that Comedy Dave (who appears with Chris Moyles on the Chris Moyles show, sycophantically laughing at every sexist, homophobic fart that comes out of Chris Moyles’ mouth) deserves that nickname, so maybe expectations shouldn’t be too high  Earth Song, by the way.

Barbara Windsor is enthusiastically applauded by the audience of morons for accidentally getting a multiple choice question correct  Louis Walsh awkwardly laughs along in a way that makes you unsure whether he’s incredibly self aware and enjoying himself, or has no idea what’s going on and is laughing because he doesn’t know any better. Mark Ronson, rounding out the trio, doesn’t really ‘get’ the show, which should endear him to you a little. Just a little, because he still agreed to appear.

As a challenge to you, dear reader, I’ve prepared four questions. Three are from University Challenge, and one from Chris Moyles Quiz Night. See if YOU can spot the odd one out, and thereby feel smarter than anyone who participated in this show in any way, shape or form. Including me for watching it.

Q: A taco terrier is a cross between a toy fox terrier and which other breed of dog, originating in a country of Latin America?
Q: If a tap leaks a millilitre of water every second, how many 10-litre buckets will it fill completely in a day?
Q: What everyday concept did Iris Murdoch describe as “… the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real”?
Q: How many “DUFF DUFFS” are there before the EastEnders theme music starts?

Jesus, Sky+ is saying 22 minutes left, and Moyles has just sung “my cock is fine” in response to a question about Viagra. Go on, shake that mental image out. Moyles’ fat, gurning face bearing down on you while he whispers seductively in your ear, “my cock is fine”.

How cool is the “got my legs, got my toes, got my arse, got my nose” song in the Muller Light advert?

Brilliantly eschewing any sort of modern technology, the answers are written down on a bit of card, and the guests, in true family games night style, even have to number the answers themselves.  When they hold up the answer for question one, you can see how they got on for the whole round, robbing you of even the slightest bit of tension and enjoyment from the drawn out answering bit.

The show closes out with the loser (and really, there are no winners) singing something topical – tonight, for Mother’s Day, it’s an hilariously inspired choice, Abba’s Mama Mia. And in keeping with the rest of the show, performed without a hint of irony, it’s absolute, unadulterated, shit.

This was a guest blog by Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows, which is spectacular.

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Essentially it is a cross between Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and one of Jamie Oliver’s ‘only I can save Britain’ missions.

Blumenthal is, as the narrator points out, probably the most unlikely celebrity chef anyone would have thought of to fix Little Chef. He does have a very big BMW however, and the viewer is reminded of this in pretty much every other shot.

The big cheese at Little Chef is Chief Executive Ian Pegler; a man who seems mildly cretinous thanks to his insistent level of false perkiness. Added to this is his attempt to fake the possession of some charisma, which, unfortunately, begins to grate quite quickly (big cheese/grate… no?).

Then along comes Michael, the manager of the restaurant picked to pilot Heston’s new dishes. This is a man who has been with Little Chef for 25 years. Understandably this appears to have left some visible damage in both his physical appearance and mental condition. Joining the company as a dish washer, Michael is incredibly precious about Little Chef, and quite temperamental in his conversations with the Fat Duck head chefs.

The problem, which runs throughout the first episode, and no doubt through the rest of the series is that the Chief Exec wants Blumenthal to create a dramatic new menu which supplies a ‘taste explosion’. The problem with this is that he also doesn’t want to alienate the 11 million strong customer base who enjoy tasteless tripe. Something about having cake and eating it springs to mind.

That figure of 11 million does seem far-fetched – we don’t know anyone who eats at the chain, and struggle to think of the sort of demographic which does. We can only imagine it is elderly drivers, people who used to shop at Safeway and insist they still do, generally simple people, and those with excessive hair growth on the back of their hands.

Nevertheless, some of the customers who were asked about the pilot menu did come across as vaguely articulate and made fair points about a motorway food outlet not being the right environment for outlandish food, or ‘poncy’ food as one eater put it. Though to them, poncy is probably eating food with clean cutlery.

A trait of Pegler which comes through very strongly is his inconsistency and hypocrisy, something Blumenthal is at pains to allude to throughout. In Heston’s defence, Pegler is VERY irritating, and manages to use the term ‘blue sky thinking’ no less than three times. He also hangs up on the experimental chef when pressed for details on his profit margins. Low grade food perchance?

It’s going to be an entertaining series if this was anything to go by. And, man, that Olympic breakfast looked good.

[story by Keith Emmerson]

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We must admit to a little excitement to see Adrian Lester revive the Mickey ‘Bricks’ Stone character after an absence, and to see the long overdue removal of the So Solid Crew man; clearly we are suckers for BBC trails (well apart from the Life of Riley one obviously).

The first in the series finds Mickey Stone looking up his old crew members in hope of a reunion, but with Marc Warren and Jaime Murray now working on other film and TV projects, Robert Glenister and the venerable Robert Vaughn are all that remain from the original group of lovable rogues.

Joining the regulars are Matt Di Angelo of ‘annoying guy from EastEnders’ fame and Kelly Adams, whom some of you may recognise as Mickie Hendrie from Holby City – she scrubs up well. But by far the nicest surprise was a cameo from Bill Bailey as a fried food eating informant called Cyclops (he wears comedy glasses).

It is always a pleasure to witness Jordan’s excellent recreation of natural and flowing dialogue, though there did appear to be one exception with Robert Vaughn’s unconvincing “I know everything” line.

That aside, the Jordan signature plot twists were a delight, as was the photography and the overall opulent feel of the programme. It is reassuring to see that the beeb isn’t tightening its belt too much at the cost of quality content. And fear not, the walking in formation is still ever present, which seems to be a trademark of Kudos productions (see Spooks).

This series is definitely worth watching, even if just to see Matt Di Angelo’s character receiving some punches as he did towards the end of the first episode.

[story by Keith Emmerson]

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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.

In this week’s episode the Israelis airstrike a school located on the Gaza Strip, and while it isn’t really clear why that happened or why it involves the British, it just does. Events do seem to be created on the hoof in this episodic window on the fictional offices of MI5. For instance, the Venezuelans of all people randomly sent a coded message to our boys via the medium of Beethoven’s 7th. This Mighty Boosh-inspired idea was promptly resolved by Adam Carter (Rupert Penry-Jones) and team by replying with Pomp and Circumstance. Perhaps everyone will start sending messages using the songs of Steps instead of texting in future.  

Regular viewers may have noticed the absence of Zaf (Raza Jaffrey) throughout the latter part of this series. Any speculation as to his health was finally laid to rest tonight when in quite a blasé fashion he was declared definitely probably dead.

Our favourite character, Connie James (Gemma Jones) soon cheered us up with that vacant look on her face of someone trying to remember if they left the gas on. It was also nice to see some use being made of recent addition Jo (Miranda Raison). Previously a filler character, she finally got her BAFTA moment in tonight’s cliff-hanger when the ‘Redbacks’ mercenary group, who seem to have an uncanny likeness to the creators of Google, kidnapped both her and Adam.

This left Jo begging Adam to kill her, using the analogy of humanely killing an injured bird. The fact that she was neither a bird nor injured didn’t seem to come up.

In the meantime, poor Harry (Peter Firth) was left to single-handedly deal with a school attack, the assassination of the Venezuelan president, and the kidnapping of two of his most photogenic agents. 

Last night's Spooks neatly wrapped up the series plotlines, albeit briskly, including that of the double-crossing American agent; we didn’t see that coming… never.To find out if Adam killed Jo before the big rescue, or if Connie left the gas on, you’ll have to wait till next year.

[story by Keith Emmerson]