As of March 2013, I’m now the Sunday People’s TV critic, so future columns can be found in that fine newspaper every week.

Some of it will be going here too: http://www.mirror.co.uk/authors/adam-postans/

And if you’re in the neighbourhood of the Western Daily Press, South Wales Argus, Sunderland Echo or Shields Gazette, I remain their TV columnist.

Cheers folks

Adam

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There were two major new television dramas this week.
ITV launched child-murder mystery Broadchurch, while BBC1, as you’ll no doubt be aware, went for the ridiculous – Ian Beale and Denise Fox’s blossoming romance on EastEnders.
But it also gave us Mayday which was, in complete contrast to ITV’s offering, a child-murder mystery that turned out to be, let me assure you, no less ludicrous than events in Walford.
Five hours it lasted, over successive nights, making The Return of the King, the extended director’s cut, feel like a shortened episode of Peppa Pig.
You may have ducked out after episode one last Sunday night, so allow me to recap very briefly.
A teenage girl who’s “fed up with being the local saint with the little halo on” is abducted on her way to a May Day parade and murdered in the woods.
Everyone in the community is a suspect and, as events unfold, most are revealed to be hiding a dark secret.
In other words, it really wants to be Twin Peaks, minus the surrealism and damn fine coffee, but falls a country mile short primarily because, in comparison with the underbelly of David Lynch’s television masterpiece, the characters and their personal demons are, well, how shall I put this?
Just a bit rubbish.
There’s a secretive widowed dad who could be a hitman hiding the girl’s body in a cupboard and jet-washes his car suspiciously that suggests it might recently have been a bit muddy, but is actually an ordinary bloke who can’t overcome his wife’s death, yet we’re supposed to square this with him sleeping with every female in the town between the ages of 16 and 25.
A man named Steve is in a disagreement with the mother of his son over child access, while his brother likes to live in the woods and burgles houses to steal kids’ teddy bears, presumably to answer that age-old question about bears’ toilet habits in heavily forested areas.
And if that isn’t rock n roll enough for you, most of the early exchanges involved closet peeping Tom and property magnate Malcolm’s unsuccessful planning application for a housing development on greenfield land.
Edge-of-your-seat stuff, isn’t it?
Between an okay-ish opening episode and a neat twist 20 minutes before the end of the finale that I didn’t see coming, there were 220 minutes of dead airtime, with the exception of Lesley Manville who deserves accolades for her superb and increasingly comedic performance as Malcolm’s wife Gail.
It took 3hr 21min before the dead girl was finally found – around the same time in the third Lord of the Rings movie that Frodo was considering getting on that ruddy boat – by which point I would have gladly volunteered my own body.
The fact is that if you’re going to ask an audience to devote five nights on the trot to a television drama, it’s got to be outstanding with a pace as rapid as Channel 4’s brilliant Homeland.
That hasn’t happened with a British show since BBC1 Iraq war drama Occupation four years ago, coincidentally made by the same production company as Mayday, and crucially lasted just three successive nights.
This week’s series well and truly jumped the shark midway when it went all new-age druidism nonsense with whispering trees, and the lines got cornier as it went on.
“I couldn’t have harmed her. She was an earth spirit, and the woods wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“If my parents found out, they would hate me. I would basically be an orphan through loathing.”
I can’t deny, however, that it didn’t get one thing bang on – the programme title.
Mayday is, after all, the international distress signal.

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Channel 4, Thursday night, What Destroyed The Hindenburg?
A massive, massive fire.
Next?

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This week’s Couch Potato Spudulikes go to:
Ant and Dec’s Jeremy Kyle USA prank on Saturday Night Takeaway.
Lesley Manville salvaging what she could on Mayday.
Saturday night TV hero Richard Osman hailing contestant Ben Miller as the comedy half of Armstrong and Miller, telling host Alexander Armstrong: “When Ben’s on I’m laughing, I’m doubled up, and then you’re on and I think here he is, the comedy grim reaper.”
All-Star Family Fortunes having the nerve to ask Penny Lancaster’s team the question: “Name a bird that has very long legs.”
Sky1’s excellent sports panel show A League of Their Own’s series highlights show that aired immediately after BBC1’s dead-horse sports panel show A Question of Sport: 1,000 Not Out.
And Vanessa Feltz as Cher (mutton dressed as Spam) on Let’s Dance For Comic Relief, with judge Arlene Phillips telling her she was: “Channelling the 80s.”
She could have carved the Channel Tunnel dancing like that.

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Father of 11 Mohammed Salim on yet another C4 shock-documentary 16 Kids And Counting: “I think I just followed what it says in the Bible: go forth and multiply.”
I have similar sentiments for the same-old, shock-doc battery farm, one-trick ponies at Channel 4.

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This week’s Couch Potato Spuduhates go to:
The BBC axing voice of cycling Hugh “lit up the burners” Porter.
Rolling news channels believing Justin Bieber apologising for being slightly late for a gig is “breaking news”.
Sue Perkins’ pretentiously right-on Heading Out failing to deliver a single laugh in two episodes.
The Deal Or No Deal banker bribing a reluctant groom-to-be £5,000 to propose to his fiancée on the show.
Dancing On Ice’s Gareth Thomas suffering “motion sickness and memory loss”, when I’d give anything for those symptoms at 9pm on a Sunday night.
Animal Antics threatening a second series.
Phillip Schofield on Wednesday’s This Morning: “Forget Gangnam Style. Today it’s all about Rylan style.” Isn’t it flippin’ always.
And David Tennant saying Chris Chibnall’s Broadchurch script has: “Great humanity. Chris shows immense understanding of the human condition.”
Just a pity, then, that the immense understanding of a Dorset accent was from the Norfolk area.

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Name change required for BBC1 technology show Bang Goes The Theory, with new presenter Maggie Philbin.
Yesterday’s World.

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Yet more diagnosis expertise now from those medical fonts of all knowledge at Embarrassing Bodies.
Dr Pixie McKenna: “Let’s get you seen by a specialist.”
Dr Christian Jessen: “Let me send you off to have a chat with someone.”
Dr Dawn Harper: “The best thing for you is to see a specialist. I think it will make it a lot better.”
And Dr Dawn again: “I think it’s worth going back to your GP and asking them about a possible referral to a surgeon. Glad you came in?”
He doesn’t know what he’d do without you, Dawn.

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Rarely is Hollywood’s biggest night of the year an unpredictable affair.
But with the most wide-open Oscars in ages, there was really only one big talking point at the 85th Academy Awards.
Over to Sky Living’s Alex Zane: “There seem to be a lot of beards on the red carpet.”
Yes, beards. And it sparked quite the debate among his studio guests, I can tell you.
Fashionista Antonia O’Brien: “Look at Clooney. He’s working a long grey beard. Hugh Jackman is the current king of the beard, alongside Ben Affleck. Do you think he kept his so he’d be taken seriously in the film industry this season?”
Heat magazine’s Boyd Hilton: “It adds gravitas, doesn’t it?”
Zane: “I think we once had a conversation and you didn’t have a beard and I sort of zoned out halfway through…”
I know how the man feels. It was only the 17 cups of Kenco that kept me going, around the midnight hour, last Sunday night.
That, and a sweep stake I had with myself about how long Alex Zane would maintain the pretence that his “rooftop terrace here in Hollywood” was inside a London television building.
Only up to the point, it transpired, that he announced: “Let’s hop across the pond now to Hollywood,” where Sky News reporter Lucy Cotter confessed: “All your dignity goes out the window on the Oscars red carpet.”
She wasn’t kidding. What unfolded was a Tinseltown brown-nose operation, courtesy of pooled US network coverage, that made me long for the chaotic, warped days of Fearne Cotton and Angela Griffin abandoning any shred of self-respect interviewing the stars pre-ceremony.
In their place, outside the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, was a height-obsessed, 4ft 11in Broadway midget named Kristin Chenoweth who opened by revealing: “The red carpet is about 500ft long. That’s about 2,000 of me.” Which, by my calculations, makes her roughly three inches high.
She had one line of questioning, asking Jennifer Lawrence, Adele, Bradley Cooper’s mum Gloria how tall they were.
But I’ve no intention of dwelling on an American I’ve never heard of, not when the UK provided its own dignity-shedding, Oscars after-show party TV trolls on Monday morning.
Leading the charge, as ever, Daybreak’s Ross King at the Vanity Fair bash: “Who have we got behind me? It’s Taylor Lautner. Hello Taylor. Taylor! Hello Taylor! TAYLOR! We’re live on British television!
“And that’s enough to make him run away.”
If I say he fared better than BBC Breakfast’s Tim Muffett, merrily ducking and diving a TV camera that was sparring next to his right temple in the media pen, you’ll have some idea how poorly the Beeb’s man coped in the scrum for A-list sound bites.
It didn’t help that Muffett was making very little sense: “Daniel Day-Lewis broke history by winning his third best leading man actor.” “Everywhere you look there are incredibly famous people. Just like the Isle of Man.” (Say what?!)
The on-screen caption writer wasn’t doing him any favours either, suggesting during his interview with the triumphant British team behind best documentary feature Searching For Sugar Man that he was chatting to “Simon Chin”.
The only problem was it wasn’t Simon Chin. Nor was it Simon Chinn, the film’s correctly spelled producer, but executive producer John Battsek.
At least John Travolta, among the late stragglers, was unmistakable. Unfortunately for Muffett, by this stage in the day, the actor had clearly had enough of the endless red-carpet exchanges he was duty-bound to endure and ignored the question: “Hi John, you’re live on the BBC, what did you think of this year’s Oscars?” choosing instead to put on a London accent, straight from the Dick Van Dyke school of Cockney, and pretend to be a TV reporter. No one knows why.
The all-round shambles demanded a fittingly shambolic finale. And up stepped Breakfast host Susanna Reid: “Well, that’s almost all the time we’ve got time for.”
Just roll end credits. That’s a wrap.

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This week’s Couch Potato Spudulikes go to:
• From Romania With Love.
• ITV’s extraordinary, shocking, provocative and, most of all, agenda-free HMP Aylesbury.
• The flag-waving, just-glad-to-be-there Bradford City fans watching their side’s 5-0 drubbing to Swansea in the League Cup final.
• The welcome return of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.
• Celebrity Juice playing a clip of 1996 ITV game show God’s Gift featuring a floppy-haired goof going by the name Paddy McGuinness (let the Micky Flanagan lookalike see the embarrassing early TV work).
• Phillip Schofield, during This Morning’s Fertility Week, telling a man named Craig, who was there for a sperm test, ahead of his intimate moment behind the scenes with a cup: “Right, you’re going to go and, erm, and do that.”
• And, on Let’s Dance For Comic Relief, Kim Woodburn and Rosemary Shrager as Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell but looking more like Marilyn Manson and Ken Russell, and One Direction’s emotional Ghanaian children’s hospital film, in which Harry Styles openly wept: “This little boy is three and has malaria. No movement, too weak to even cry. Watching Kofi and his mum is simply heartbreaking.”
Back in the studio, Alex Jones: “You will be glad to know he made a full recovery and was discharged from hospital.”
No word yet on Kofi though.

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BBC2’s Jo Rowsell, speaking of Becky James’s preparations for the women’s keirin final at the World Track Cycling Championships: “She won’t want to warm down too much and then have to warm up again, so she’ll just be keeping the muscles warm, maybe putting on the hot pants we used at the Olympics.”
I’m fairly certain those were only used in the beach volleyball.

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Take one pinch of Great British Bake Off, a dollop of Gino D’Acampo’s There’s No Taste Like Home, a soupcon of This Morning’s People’s Pizza competition, and serve generously with a massive slice of Channel 5’s 2008 home-cooked ready-meal series Breaking Into Tesco, and what have you got?
The biggest cookery show rip-off ever seen, that’s what.
Or, to give the ITV programme’s official title, Food Glorious Food, slopped smack bang in primetime because it’s made by Simon Cowell’s production company Syco.
And as you’d expect, The X Factor influences were everywhere – comedy no-hopers, sob stories (“Last year I was quite overweight”), sore losers, certifiable fruit-loops, four judges championing their chosen contestants, even a “Judges’ HQ” stage, which of course is nothing whatsoever like Judges’ Houses.
Wednesday’s opener featured a barefoot cabbage-stamper, a mother and son who go about their teashop business in Victorian period costume, a woman who calls her peppers “Roy”, and an oatcake obsessive who’s campaigning for a national oatcake appreciation day and has somehow persuaded some celebrities to pose for photos holding a “I support oatcakes” sign, including Slash, from Guns N Roses, and Jimmy Carr, “from Ricky Gervais”.
But you only have to look at Red Or Black to realise Syco is a one-trick pony.
In the end, it all comes back to The X Factor.
So, “the pressure” was on, Loyd Grossman was spewing: “It’s a no from me,” and fellow judge Stacie Stewart was “looking for the wow factor”.
And, after two Welsh lamb cawl dishes were rejected in week one, I suspect I know what will happen next time.
They’ll both be invited back to join two other cawls to create one cawl supergroup.

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ITV2’s Keith Lemon introducing the new Celebrity Juice maternity-cover team captain Kelly Brook: “Holly Willoughby is really jealous because she’s got the second best boobs on the show.”
The third best, if you include the one hosting it.

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More diagnosis expertise now from those medical fonts of all knowledge at Embarrassing Bodies.
Dr Pixie McKenna: “We need to get you in front of a surgeon to have a look.”
Dr Christian Jessen: “You’re going to have to get yourself down the clinic to get tested.”
Dr Dawn Harper: “We will get a specialist involved and you can come back and show me when you’re feeling a bit better.”
It’s quite the invaluable service, eh?

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Sue Perkins’ BBC2 sitcom Heading Out?
Well, there’s no point staying in for that.

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This week’s Couch Potato Spuduhates go to:
• Channel 4 swallowing Ricky Gervais’s delusion that Derek deserves a Making Of documentary. (Don’t be ridiculous.)
• ITV airing the most obviously daytime show ever made, Food Glorious Food, at 8pm just because it’s a Simon Cowell project.
• Delia Smith lying through her teeth on Thursday’s The One Show: “We still need all the food programmes on television.”
• Piers Morgan, on Daybreak’s Oscars red carpet coverage, delivering what Aled Jones branded: “The most gratuitous plug I’ve ever seen in my life,” for Friday night’s Life Stories with Lorraine Kelly.
• And Steve Jones showing the sign outside Let’s Dance For Comic Relief’s pub Shenanigans that had the Six Nations result as: “Wales 26, Italy 9,” when the match was played in Rome, not Cardiff.
That might be how they do things in America, Steve, but you’re not there anymore.

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All-Star Family Fortunes question of the week: “Name something you might switch off when you go to bed.”
TOWIE. Cause and effect.

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You can imagine the panic, at ITV, ahead of Wednesday night’s big pop bash.
The network’s unofficial patron Simon Cowell would be there, along with his biggest X Factor success story, One Direction.
But looking down the list of winners, it seems the five bright young lovable pains in the neck have been overlooked for a gong.
“No matter,” thought ITV, “let’s get the organisers to make one up and give it to them anyway to keep Simon sweet. Call it, I don’t know, Global Success award.”
And thus it unfolded, at The Brits, a lifeless occasion which started with ITV2’s Laura Whitmore tempting fate: “There’s always something controversial that happens every year.”
The big controversy this time around, of course, was that precisely nothing controversial happened throughout the two-and-a-quarter-hour duration.
George Michael didn’t show up slurring his words, nobody stormed the stage, and host James Corden, dressed like a 15-year-old at his first end-of-year prom and armed with a terrible script, spent the evening making jokes about Harry Styles fancying older women and sucking up to the stars:
“It’s the beautiful Miss Taylor Swift.” “The mighty Robbie Williams.” “The super, super talented Ed Sheeran.” “The dynamic and effortless Emeli Sandé.”
The grovelling James Corden, if you ask me, who caught a dose of “incredible” Tourette’s mid-show, of which I’ll spare you the details.
Likewise his constant references to the elephant in the room, Adele’s speech he cut short last year, firing away at it like a big-game hunter with a
blunderbuss.
And the way he was squeezing information out of the acts about their forthcoming concert tours, they might as well have just gone the whole hog and hired Dermot O’Leary instead.
The sparse moments that tickled amounted to guest presenter Rafe Spall’s room-clearing request for the crowd to applaud the host, tongue-tied Corden announcing Robbie Williams as “Whoopee Williams”, and his introduction of Jack Whitehall: “To present the award, the unfunny one from A League Of Their Own.”
Hardly fair, James. He’s also the unfunny one from Fresh Meat and Hit The Road Jack.
I’d had more than enough long before the five Best Album nominees disappeared up their own backsides.
Mumford & Sons: “This album is us harnessing each of our different creative outputs.”
Plan B: “Ill Manners is more important for what it’s saying as a social comment on the society we live in. It’s the music of the environment.”
Paloma Faith: “This album is about love and observing the human condition.”
Emeli Sandé: “Our Version of Events is our truth and at the end of the day that’s all we really have.”
Alt-J: “We focus on the power of the track, not the ego of the band.”
So it was over to ITV2’s backstage after-show which turned out to be an unpredictable shambles, and therefore far more entertaining than the ceremony.
Hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks were on interview duty and quickly established they’re no Ant and Dec, talking over each other, sounding like an impregnable wall of verbal diarrhoea, and jumping an increasingly flappable Laura Whitmore’s autocue lines to the point where she ended up out of her seat screeching: “Don’t read my line! Don’t read my line!”
But it wasn’t until a segment called “Brits rules” that the lunacy spiralled out of control, with a Mumford & Son saying: “Rule number one about awards shows is take a hipflask.”
Rule number two? Spell the ceremony presenter’s name correctly on screen (it’s Corden, not Cordon, ITV2).
I’m left, though, with the memory of the host telling Rizzle Kicks the secret to his job: “Try to be fun, not funny. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Mission accomplished, James. Not funny at all.

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Holly Willoughby with This Morning’s “hot topic” on Tuesday: “Jeremy Irons has caused a commotion with his recent comments about his love of touching people, which has got us thinking.
“Is it acceptable for a man to touch a woman’s bottom? Is it old fashioned to frown upon a flirty bum-pinch? Or is it downright rude and offensive?”
No doubt about it. It’s rude, offensive, and most of all, sexist. Totally sexist.
They’d go mad at you for interrupting all their ironing and washing up.

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This week’s Couch Potato Spudulikes go to:
C4’s The Fried Chicken Shop: Life In A Day.
ITV’s HMP: Aylesbury.
ITV2’s The Big Reunion.
Saturday night TV saviours Ant and Dec’s interview on The Jonathan Ross Show.
Ed Leigh’s nod to a classic R&B track while discussing the giant slalom world champion on Ski Sunday: “I like the way he works it. Ted Ligerty.”
Eric Clapton’s 20-second gig and Lewis Hamilton obliterating the F1 Star in a Reasonably Priced Car lap record on Top Gear.
Soccer Saturday hero Jeff Stelling outwitting the host and her army of seven writers on The Sarah Millican Television Programme.
The unintentionally hilarious and properly barking mad séance, on ITV’s dreadful Mr Selfridge, by a spiritual medium friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (ele-mental, my dear Watson).
And the leg-crossing moment buck-toothed, thumb-sucking Embarrassing Bodies patient Nicole recalled a, ahem, nasty accident during an intimate moment with her boyfriend.
I’ve no desire to go into it, but let’s just say he can now sing Stayin’ Alive pitch perfect.

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Dom Joly on Daybreak: “I’ve written a guide to how to be funny.”
Try reading it, then.

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The One Show research of the week, courtesy of Matt Baker who asked Danny DeVito about working in his sister’s beauty salon years ago: “I read somewhere that you can’t help but look at people and tell them their hair works or doesn’t work. Is that right?”
DeVito: “I don’t do that.”
Bring back Bruce Willis, eh Matt?

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This week’s Couch Potato Spuduhates go to:
BBC2’s Sarah Millican and her army of seven writers regurgitating the old “Kate Adie in a warzone means the soldiers are in trouble” gag, 23 years after it first appeared in a newspaper cartoon during the First Gulf War.
The BBC choosing the wrong show to introduce free voting on the internet, Let’s Dance For Comic Relief, and on the same show, One Direction’s Zayn keeping his stupid baseball cap on while visiting desperately ill children in Accra.
Show some damn respect, son.
And The Fried Chicken Shop: Life In A Day’s final edit not cutting out a pair of actors with a wicked sense of humour who pretended to have learning difficulties for comic effect, only to fail spectacularly.
I mean, imagine Channel 4 showing an actor with a wicked sense of humour pretending to have learning difficulties for comic effect, only to fail spectacularly.

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C4’s continuity man, Monday afternoon: “Now on 4, Phil Spencer hosts a brand new quiz where you find the link between two words.”
For example, if the two words are “Phil” and “Spencer”, there’s an obvious link.
Both are utterly unsuitable to host a TV quiz show.

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There are two certainties when a much-loved celebrity dies.
Twitter users will wait at least 0.7 of a second before doing a joke about it.
And ITV’s Loose Women will turn the topic of conversation inexorably towards their second favourite subject after their loathing of men – to themselves.
So it was, the day after national treasure Richard Briers passed away.
Denise Welch: “We know he smoked too many fags. I’m guilty of that myself.”
Jane McDonald: “I did take my foot off the accelerator for a while about two years ago. I decided to pack it all in. I loved the rest, I got to know my garden, I started to bake and cook, and then I realised there was no money coming in.”
Carol Vorderman: “In 2007 I moved into a tiny flat and it was the kids, me, and my mum and I was so happy. I had one wardrobe for the first time in my life.”
Welch again: “Lincoln and I were on a cruise and I had my little rail of clothes, one for each day, and Lincoln and I are so happy in each other’s company.”
Carol McGiffin: “I have a really good life but it’s actually quite a simple life. I don’t have a big house, I have a small two-bedroom flat for me and Mark.
“Yesterday it was my birthday and I went out shopping.”
It’s what Richard Briers would have wanted.

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Diagnosis expertise now from those fonts of all medical knowledge at Embarrassing Bodies.
Dr Christian Jessen: “If it’s going red and a bit oozy then you need to see a doctor.”
Dr Pixie McKennya: “Let’s get you to see a dermatologist who can take a look.”
Dr Dawn Harper: “If it’s worse tomorrow morning then you need to get into hospital.”
I don’t know where we’d be without them.

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This week’s Couch Potato Spuduhates go to:
Every newsreader over-pronouncing “Les Miserables” like the English policeman from ’Allo ’Allo.
C4’s My Big Fat Gypsy Valentine having nothing whatsoever to do with Valentine’s Day.
Bafta host Stephen Fry failing to conclude Spielberg’s Lincoln movie show-reel, featuring Tommy Lee Jones, by announcing they’ll be searching every “warehouse, armhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse,” in Lincoln to find him.
Fluff-filled Daybreak demonstrating its complete inability to deal with breaking news, going from a Valentine’s Day feature at “Britain’s most romantic workplace” straight into Ranvir Singh’s news bulletin: “Reports in South Africa claim Oscar Pistorius has shot dead his girlfriend after mistaking her for a burglar.”
And ITV failing to realise comedy and organ donation aren’t necessarily natural bedfellows on From The Heart, which included this question from BBC4 sitcom Getting On’s Ricky Grover to Jo Brand: “Have you got anything for a pain in the neck?”
Yes, shove her off the 10m platform in the next series of Splash!

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Bafta best actor Daniel Day-Lewis paying special tribute to the director of Lincoln: “We weren’t in a rudderless boat. Steven Spielberg was the rudder, the helm, the helmsman, the boat builder, the boat, and the sea we float on.”
Hmm. Sounds like Eddie Redmayne isn’t the only one hallucinating from food poisoning.

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Eamonn Holmes, on Monday’s This Morning, discussing a report that claimed smart-phone and tablet users check their devices as frequently as once every six minutes: “I walked into my kitchen last night and there was my son and my wife, they were both doing this. I was invisible.”
Invisible, right up until the point he turned sideways.
They couldn’t miss him then.

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This week’s Couch Potato Spudulikes go to:
ITV2 in decent show shocker, The Big Reunion.
BBC2’s Ski Sunday’s breathtaking coverage of the biannual men’s downhill world championship.
Guest presenter Billy Connolly’s address at the Baftas: “I’m overcome with joy, I’m awash with bliss at the very thought of presenting an unsuspecting stranger with a death mask on a stick.”
EastEnder Perry Fenwick’s humble and loving trip back to his childhood home, on The One Show, where his nickname “Pel” which he carved on the outside porch wall when he was knee-high to a grasshopper remains today.
And, continuing The One Show theme, Anita Rani asking Michel Roux Jr: “Why bring back Food & Drink after 10 years?”
Good blummin’ question. Yes, BBC2. Why? WHY?!

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Loose Women’s Andrea McLean, in a fit of giggles after the first ad break on Tuesday: “I’ve just been explaining to Lisa (Maxwell) that my daughter Amy, who’s six, thinks that I go ‘Loo Swimming’ every day. Swimming in a loo. No, it’s ‘Loose Women’.”
Having watched the show for longer than I care to mention, I’d tend to side with your nipper, Andrea.

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Biggest personal disappointment on Bafta night? Without question The Muppets director James Bobin losing out on outstanding debut by a British writer, director, or producer, whose shortlist of nominees as read out by voiceover woman were:
“Bart Layton, Dimitri Doganis, for The Imposter. Experienced television documentary producers Bart and Dimitri’s first feature is a dark and stylish mix of interviews and reconstructions telling the story of a young Frenchman who successfully posed as a missing American child.
“Tina Gharavi, for I am Nasrine. I am Nasrine explores a modern Iranian refugee’s journey and the challenge of trying to fit in to an ever-changing world.
“David Morris, Jacqui Morris, for McCullin. Brother and sister David and Jacqui created this intimate portrait of revered photographer Dan McCullin, gaining unique access to his incredible archive.”
Yeah. Whatever. Give it to The Muppets.

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Unless my eyes deceived me last Saturday evening, an interior designer, the slimy barman from Benidorm, and a retired ski jumper-turned after-dinner speaker emerged into a leisure centre dolled up like WWE wrestler “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, to the strains of Rihanna singing: “We found love in a hopeless place.”
Or “Luton”, as it’s otherwise known, venue for the final of Splash! which, I’m flabbergasted to say, has been awarded a second series this week.
Through ITV’s eyes, it’s a ratings hit that’s kept its healthy audience of around 5.5 million.
Through mine, it’s one of the worst television shows you’re likely to see whose inflated viewing figures can be easily explained as a sordid desire to witness a car crash.
Yet for that very reason, I confess, I’d miss it if it went.
It hasn’t broken through the so-bad-it’s-good barrier – it undoubtedly remains so bad it’s bad – but it’s also so bad it’s strangely compelling.
And believe me, it is bad. From the moment the phone lines opened before anyone had actually dived, to Gabby Logan making way too much of Linda Barker’s age just because she’s a woman, despite having only a two-year gap on Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards, the series final was riddled with reminders of why almost every aspect of Splash! is loathsome.
The talent-show copycat catchphrases were out of control.
Gabby: “You’ve upped your game again, Eddie.”
Vernon Kay: “Everyone has really upped their game.”
Linda Barker: “I’m out of my comfort zone.”
Leon Taylor: “You absolutely smashed it tonight.”
Andy Banks: “He absolutely smashed it.”
Jo Brand: “You nailed it.”
And yes, more celebrities “delivered” than a posse of postmen with ADHD.
There was even a “journey” or two in there for good measure, while the finalists’ synchro dives with Tom Daley were the equivalent of X Factor’s mentor duets.
The brief moments when the presenters, judges, and contestants weren’t regurgitating clichés was like listening to Victor Meldrew impersonating South African swimming dad Bert Le Clos.
Gabby: “The pressure is unbelievable.”
Vernon: “It’s been unbelievable.”
Leon: “Truly unbelievable.”
Jo: “I thought it was unbelievable.”
Eddie Edwards: “It felt absolutely unbelievable.”
Tom Daley (the one good thing going for this programme): “I can’t believe it.”
Aside from changing the record, some urgent changes are required, seeing as we’ll be getting a sloppy second helping of this show.
Jo Brand must go. Vernon Kay, who began the series in shorts and plimsolls like a 1980s Kays catalogue beachwear model and ended it in a suit, tie and waistcoat ready to break off against Marco Fu at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, needs to stop getting the phone line numbers and the divers’ scores wrong.
He’s also got to stop overegging the pudding when introducing judges Andy Banks, whose London 2012 Team GB diving haul was a grand total of one bronze, as: “The man who knows how to create a winner,” and Leon Taylor as: “The man who knows how to win,” when his career tally is an Olympic silver, world bronze, European bronze, Commonwealth silver and bronze, but no top-level golds.
The most pressing change, however, is moving the show away from the undisputed spiritual home of diving, Luton, to its rumoured new home next year at the Olympic Park where the celebrities, with any luck, will be upping their game, not by diving in the London Aquatics Centre but from 115 metres up the Orbit tower.
That would be… what’s the word?
Unbelievable.

=================

All-Star Family Fortunes question of the week: “Name something your passport reveals about you.”
If it’s rubber-stamped with dozens of exotic locations for no apparent reason, you’re probably Kate Humble.

=================

Over in the green room at The Jonathan Ross Show (sponsored by Jacob’s Creek and stranded, judging by the woeful ratings, up a certain other creek without a certain paddle), Sir David Attenborough got an almighty round of applause during Russell Brand’s interview by admitting: “A lot of his jokes, I don’t appreciate.”
So let’s give him a chance, shall we?
Brand: “I’ve got a tattoo on my hand of a kundalini snake etched by the eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung who was also a very mystic man.
“This represents the energy of our core, being taken up our body so that our primal consciousness can connect with our divine consciousness.
“This tattoo is Krishna, lord of the seen and unseen universe. Seventy per cent of the universe we cannot ascertain with our senses, yet Krishna rules it all.
“And Ganesh, with his infinite compassion, removing the obstacles between us and our higher selves.”
Hmm. Nope, me neither, Sir David.

=================

This week’s Couch Potato Spudulikes go to:
Eddie The Eagle’s perfect two-and-a-half somersault with tuck from the 10m platform en route to his chokingly tearful Splash! victory.
The brilliant Pub Landlord Al Murray making The Alan Titchmarsh Show watchable on Wednesday.
The unsung hero of Saturday night TV, Pointless Celebrities’ Richard Osman, mercilessly tearing several strips off Stuart Baggs “The Brand” after The Apprentice chump boasted: “I’ll have your job by the end of the show.”
Osman: “You don’t have a good history of getting other people’s jobs, to be fair.”
Sir David Attenborough “having a little chat” with a blind baby black rhino in a moving and glorious piece of television on BBC1’s Africa.
And these extraordinary words from Carol Vorderman on Loose Women: “I celebrated my blood test results yesterday – I am not menopausal!”
So what the heck are you doing on this show?

=================

ITV football commentator Clive Tyldesley, talking about Brazil during the match against England at Wembley on Wednesday night: “It’s warmer there than it is here tonight.”
Certainly puts Kenneth Wolstenholme’s “They think it’s all over… it is now,” in the shade, doesn’t it?

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This week’s Couch Potato Spuduhates go to:
BBC2 thinking that what it needs to bring back more than anything is Food & Drink, but not its best comedy series of the last decade, Shooting Stars. Because you can’t have too many flamin’ cookery shows, apparently.
Infuriatingly slow 1930s jazz drama Dancing On The Edge, which looks amazing, sounds amazing, and I can only imagine how good it would be if anything actually happened with a frequency higher than the current rate of once every two-and-a-half hours.
Dancing On Ice rendering the “save me” skate-off utterly pointless by putting through the series favourite despite the fact he performed an impression of a hopelessly sprawling Bambi.
Bruce Willis muttering to himself for half an hour on The One Show sofa.
And Britain’s Brightest running out of bright Britons, with Clare Balding opening the show by introducing: “All the way from Germany, the only bottle band in the whole of Europe, GlasBlasSing Quintett.”
Yes, THE GlasBlasSing Quintett.

=================

Splash! runner-up Jake Canuso, who had a “slight pain in the wrist” (you do surprise me) which almost caused his handstand dive to go wrong, said afterwards: “I’m used to doing comedy, not drama.”
Sorry? Benidorm’s a comedy?

==============

Whenever a celebrity becomes too big for their boots, the biggest pitfall is to join the chorus of knee-jerk criticism, for one very good reason.
They’ll mistake it for jealousy of their success and dismiss anything that isn’t gushing praise as sour grapes. (See Chris Moyles and his amazing technicolour ego).
So before we go any further, let me make two things crystal.
I am not jealous of the publicity-shy, reclusive Ricky Gervais. Good luck to him.
And whatever I might say henceforth is based on the small fact that I have watched both last year’s pilot and Wednesday night’s opening episode of his latest television project, Derek, on Channel 4.
First the good news. It is not a disaster. He has not made a complete turkey of a comedy drama, two words that strike fear into my professional heart.
(You can feel the “but” approaching fast, can’t you?)
But…
The fundamental flaw is Ricky Gervais, the show’s title-role actor, writer, director, executive producer, writes the feem tune, sings the feem tune (okay, those last two aren’t strictly true).
It isn’t so much that it’s impossible not to see Derek, a kind-hearted carer with undefined learning difficulties at a closure-threatened nursing home, as David Brent the wrong side of a mid-life crisis having picked up a persistent gurn, although this is an issue.
It isn’t so much that the show is steeped in controversy, which it really isn’t.
Nor is it the fact that, like anything Gervais has done in the last decade, every new programme he makes is automatically compared with and always falls short of The Office.
No, the remarkable error he’s made is that he’s only gone and created a show revolving around a character who is, after just two outings, completely irrelevant and surplus to requirements.
There is, you see, a lot to like about Derek the programme.
Kerry Godliman who plays the care home’s manager Hannah is excellent.
Karl Pilkington cuts across the overwhelming sickly sweet sentimentality as no-nonsense handyman Dougie, for which his inspiration is clearly Karl Pilkington from An Idiot Abroad.
But Gervais the director/producer’s obvious longing to tug the viewers’ heartstrings with cheap soppy tricks borders on desperation – the melancholic piano classical music of Einaudi, cats and dogs from a pet rescue centre giving old people rare moments of joy, Hannah declaring: “90 per cent of care-home residents die within six months of being re-homed,” every last second of it batters you with a sledgehammer carved from the hooves of crying orphaned baby deer.
Strip all this away and at best you have a half-decent show.
This is Ricky Gervais we’re talking about, of course, so it’s not as simple as that.
The final scene where Dougie launched into a heroic tirade against a council bean-counter who wants to shut down the place was great stuff.
So I’ll give you two guesses who the camera lingered on as the end credits rolled.
Yep, Gervais. That’s the insurmountable obstacle with Derek. It doesn’t need Derek.
The writer, lead actor, director, executive producer has trapped himself.
And let me say for the record in case he’s reading. That is nothing to be jealous of.

==============

Monday’s guests on The One Show’s sofa were Mick Fleetwood and Micky Flanagan.
One’s called Mick and has made a fortune performing the same old material for so long it’s become tiresome (yes, you’re probably way ahead of me).
The other is the drummer from Fleetwood Mac.

==============

This week’s Couch Potato Spudulikes go to:
• BBC2’s Ski Sunday.
• Football Transfer Deadline Day, on Sky Sports, with the perfect combination of livewire Jim White and circuit breaker Natalie Sawyer, and this observation from former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan about Queens Park Rangers splashing out on so many new players: “QPR seem to adopt a splattergun approach.”
• Tony Gubba commentating on Matt Lapinskas’s Dancing On Ice routine: “This is the slam dunk cartwheel followed by some back crossovers, then the towering inferno and the bouncing aeroplane.”
Keep taking the pills, Tony.
• And the sight of Martine McCutcheon being crushed to death by a giant lump of cheese on Midsomer Murders which wasn’t, despite speculation, Phil Mitchell.
Poor thing, she’s gone to a Feta place. (And no, in case you’re wondering, four hours staring at Wikipedia’s entire list of Types of Cheese for a lame pun was not a waste of time).

==============

And to think, some people said Trinny and Susannah’s television careers were dead in the water.
Not a bit of it. Because, one text from a mate last Saturday afternoon and…
Why, if that isn’t Susannah, from Trinny and Susannah, on QVC shopping channel, a vision confirmed by the programme information: “TV stars Trinny and Susannah have designed a collection exclusive to QVC.”
Except Trinny was poorly, so Susannah was left to plug the pair’s clothing range, to within an inch of its life, for both of them: “When you’re wearing velvet, it’s important to show a bit of flesh, otherwise it can be very overpowering, but this is a very light velvet and it has this kind of sheen which bounces off and reflects on your face.
“Purple is an empowering colour, it’s regal, it’s a kind of papal colour, and people in power have traditionally worn purple.”
Right you are, chuck.
What really made the hour, though, was the QVC presenter on screen with her, who, it turned out after 50 minutes, had been giving out the wrong catalogue number, insisted: “There is nothing worse than a chiffon that doesn’t feel good on the skin,” with the possible exception of human rights abuses, genocide, and ITV2, and ended by teasing viewers with this beauty:
“Stay tuned. After the break I’m going to be cleaning next with some household helpers.”
Trinny and Susannah. They’re back.

==============

Wackiest guest of the week on This Morning was Jonathan Royle who can: “Read people’s belly buttons to reveal their secrets,” which began with Phillip Schofield announcing that it was specially for a TV critic who spends too much of his time watching This Morning’s 11.30am wacky-guest slot (not me, but it might as well be).
So I shall adopt the Harry Hill approach when EastEnders’ writers dangled a carrot of Tiffany Butcher saying she liked one thing, but on the other hand she liked another thing too, in attempt for the scene to be shown on TV Burp’s “FIIIIIIIGHT!” section.
The harder you try, This Morning, the less likely I am to feature you.

==============

This week’s Spuduhates go to:
• BBC2’s Great British Menu organising a banquet at the Royal Albert Hall to mark “25 years of Comic Relief” which, as we all know, began in 1985.
• Mastermind giving the green light to Red Dwarf as a specialist subject, whereas it’s actually more suited to a DVD quiz game, called Beat The Geek.
• Take Me Out: The Gossip co-host Mark Wright failing to give viewers the gossip that he used to date one of the girls.
• Top Gear’s moronic Dragons’ Den spoof destroying both shows at once.
• ITV’2’s The Big Reunion narrator Andi Peters lying: “Six of the most iconic bands of a generation are reuniting for an epic concert,” when it’s actually 5ive, Liberty X, B*Witched, 911, “FHM magazine’s sexiest band in the world in 1999” Honeyz, and Atomic Kitten, playing the Hammersmith Apollo.
• Voiceover man at the end of Channel 4’s One Born Every Minute: “If you can’t wait until next week, there’s a wealth of birth videos online at channel4.com.”
Speaking as a dad of two, believe me, I can wait.
• And the memory of Dermot O’Leary, hosting the National Television Awards, announcing: “Jeremy (Kyle) is poorly so he can’t be here. That’s karma for you,” a week before it emerged he has battled testicular cancer, which was made even worse when Phillip Schofield told This Morning’s viewers on Wednesday: “It’s something that all of us in daytime ITV have known about for some time.”
Just a pity, then, that nobody at daytime ITV thought to tell nighttime ITV.

==============

The Big Reunion narrator Andi Peters, speaking of the six 1990s boybands and girlbands featured on the show: “Record label bigwigs threw millions at them and scored platinum hits, from Derby to Doncaster.”
Which, by my calculations, is all of 52 miles as the crow flies.

==============

’Twas the night before Football Transfer Deadline Day, and not a creature was stirring, apart from Sky Sports’ Soccer Special anchorman Julian Warren who was hearing through his earpiece the goal flash, on Wednesday evening, that Reading had clawed back a 2-0 deficit at home to Chelsea:
“Oh! We’ve got to go to the Madejski Stadium! Late comebacks aplenty for Reading, and here’s another one. Chris Kamara.”
Kammy: “You’re not going to believe this, Jules…”
I think you’ll find he will.

===============

It was a night of absences and excuses at the O2 Arena on Wednesday.
Simon Cowell “wouldn’t give Ant and Dec the night off” to be there. Bruce Forsyth was “sunnying himself on the beach in Puerto Rico”. David Attenborough was in China filming yet another series on his bucket list.
Miranda Hart was apparently being checked out by Hugh Jackman, on Bondi Beach. Jeremy Kyle was poorly. Stephen Fry had “some awful virus”.
And EastEnder Charlie Brooks was “birthing partner to her best friend who’s in labour”, and frankly got the best end of the deal by witnessing untold physical pain and agony in the delivery room and missed all two-and-a-half hours of the National Television Awards, a largely uneventful, dour, and predictably shambolic occasion which did, nonetheless, throw up some surprises.
The usual Doctor Who block vote was missing presumed reading sci-fi comics as the show left empty-handed. Merlin turned out to be Irish (who knew?). Patrick Macnee is still alive and 91 next month. Paul O’Grady, when he was 18, was a founding member of ELO, judging by the massive hair.
And Richard Osman is an actual giant who, I assume, must sit behind that Pointless desk in the lotus position, in a 4ft pit sunk beneath the floor.
As for the accolades, all voted for by the public, it was a real mixed bag.
Phillip Schofield, minus his paedophile list, accepted This Morning’s eighth NTA gong, for Best Daytime Programme, by saying it was the show’s fourth, beating among others Come Dine With Me, which surely should be in the “Daytime, Nighttime, Any Ruddy Time” category.
Strictly Come Dancing thoroughly deserved its Talent Show victory, breaking The X Factor’s five-year stranglehold, as did Frozen Planet for Best Documentary Series ahead of its BBC1 stablemate Planet Earth Live with Richard Hammond on thermal-camera pink-blob watch at night in Kenya’s Masai Mara quiet season.
I was slightly disappointed The Graham Norton Show missed out in Entertainment Programme to I’m A Celebrity, more so that Mrs Biggs’ superb Daniel Mays and Sheridan Smith unjustly lost out for Male/Female Drama Performance, and in a disgraceful snub Pudsey the Dog wasn’t even nominated in Newcomer.
But you only have to look at the five million viewers who watch ITV’s Splash! every Saturday to realise that just because something is popular doesn’t make it any good.
Viewers voting for the wrong winners is one of television’s great constants, along with Simon Cowell getting everyone’s name wrong (it’s Nicole Scherzinger, Simon, not Nicola) and Ant and Dec winning the Ant and Dec award for the 12th year running.
The best I can say about host Dermot O’Leary is he had a better night than last year (when he introduced will.i.am as the “potential X Factor winner”) and exercised great self-restraint not to twirl on the spot and announce: “Your weekend starts right here!” or ask the nominees when their new album was out.
His dance with Darcey Bussell wasn’t actually too bad, at least compared with his MC Hammer silver incontinent pants routine on X Factor of which we were needlessly reminded, right up until the point he tripped over his own feet escorting her to the microphone.
Dermot’s truth settings, on the other hand, were all over the shop:
“Please welcome the incredibly talented Jack Whitehall.”
“British drama has never been healthier.”
“One thing we are united on – everyone, but everyone, loves a soap opera.”
In fact some of his claims were almost as ridiculous as Seb Coe elevating Clare Balding to “national treasure” status, right after Dermot had introduced her as: “The unflappable, unbeatable Clare Balding.”
And unwatchable, on Britain’s Brightest.
But it was Ruby Wax, paying tribute to Special Recognition winner Joanna Lumley, who topped the lot: “There is no greater god of television comedy.”
There is. With hilarious statements like that, it’s Ruby Wax.
Who knew?

===============

This week’s Couch Potato Spudulike awards go to:
Graham Bell’s breathtaking downhill course runs on Ski Sunday.
Watch channel repeating the best ever episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, with Kim Cattrall.
The most heartening TV ratings in years, a BBC2 Dad’s Army repeat on Saturday night trouncing Richard Hammond’s Secret Service on BBC1, which with any luck will kill off lousy hidden camera prank shows once and for all.
The Great Comic Relief Bake Off, a land where the sun always shines, producing four nights of brilliance by not changing a single aspect of the show for the celebrity specials and included a scene of utter carnage, set to pizzicato string quartet chamber music, in the form of 32 mangled custard slices on Monday.
And The One Show’s travel expert Simon Calder: “I was stuck at Milton Keynes yesterday because trains were cancelled because it had fallen below freezing, and I thought what latitude are we on? 52 degrees, the same as Irkutsk, the capital of eastern Siberia, where it is currently minus 29C.
“That is unfit for human habitation.”
You’re right, Simon. It is. But what about Irkutsk?

===============

The Celebrity Big Brother house, a place sealed off from the world, where nothing gets in and nothing gets out.
Except, of course, if you finished fifth on ITV’s annual karaoke contest and need to rehearse for The X Factor tour, like Rylan Clark’s been doing.
Yes, Channel 5, which forked out £250,000 for the privilege of securing his services for the series, completely forgot the entire point of the show.
It’s one of many gripes I have with the latest run of what is a fantastic format (the celeb version anyway) that’s almost impossible to mess up, yet somehow they managed it.
Volkswagen car advert name-dropper Paula Hamilton, the most promisingly barking housemate, was voted out first, since when the show has been sorely missing the self-proclaimed anthropologist, philanthropist, philosopher, galley chef, Silverstone car racing ace, longbow master, and: “Heavily talented woman,” even if she does say so herself.
The brief flashes of magic, such as the Tree of Temptation reincarnated as a vending machine and the Frankie Dettori dictatorship task, where the Italian jockey should have been referred to as Il Donkey, have been totally overshadowed by the show’s obvious and bewildering love of work-shy, fame-obsessed, limelight vulture Rylan and the presence of charmless US reality stars Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, a terrifying two-headed beast with the empathy of a praying mantis.
They applauded when they cost “Claire from Steps”, as Big Brother calls her, a letter from home, refused to take part in tasks, and I’m genuinely concerned what this couple could talk each other into doing given the right circumstances, for which I provide this evidence, from Spencer:
“Nothing would make me feel any emotion for these people. The only thing that would make me look twice is if they died in the house. And I still wouldn’t go to the funeral.”
Still, he did have this suggestion for a possible future career for the other celebs: “I think they could be a travelling circus if they wanted to be.”
Great idea. Just let Rylan be the one who puts his head between a lion’s jaws and you’ve got yourself a show.

===============

This week’s Couch Potato Spuduhate awards go to:
This Morning’s on-screen caption writer continuing to misspell “dissect” as “disect”.
Clare Balding announcing on Britain’s Brightest: “We are testing intelligence in completely new ways,” before stealing the intelligence round from Krypton Factor.
Gabby Logan claiming the rise in the number of people taking up diving is because of Splash! and not that little-known sporting event that took place in London last summer.
Loose Women adopting Rylan Clark’s meaningless, affected “drop me out” catchphrase.
And The One Show’s Lucy Siegle, in the snow in Huddersfield on Monday evening: “Without wanting to state the obvious, it’s blummin’ freezing out here. We are straddling an amber and a yellow weather warning, an amber is the most severe warning from the Met Office.”
Without wanting to state the obvious, Lucy, it’s not.

===============

Kevin Bacon stars in Sky Atlantic’s new thriller The Following.
So, in the style of that advert he does…
Bacon plays ex FBI agent Ryan Hardy. The Hardy Boys were fictional characters in a series of stories written by pseudonym Franklin W Dixon. Dixons is a chain of electrical stores, as was Comet.
Bill Haley & His Comets had a hit single with Rock Around The Clock. A Clockwork Orange was a film directed by Stanley Kubrick, as was 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Odyssey was an epic poem by Homer, the name of Bart’s dad in The Simpsons, which is a cartoon, just like Peppa Pig. Bacon comes from pigs… Kevin Bacon.
EE telecoms company, please make cheques payable for the free plug to Adam Postans, centre of the universe.

==============

A quick check now, six months after London 2012, on how that Olympics legacy is going.
New clubs are springing up everywhere, interest in disability sport is through the roof, a new generation of future stars is taking its first steps on the road to immortality…
And over on ITV, Saturday nights, Gabby Logan and Vernon Kay are in headless lemming mode for primetime pro-celebrity diving, from Luton.
It’s Splash!, which I’m sure hasn’t passed you by unnoticed, or Splat!, to be more accurate, a reality show to end them all that appears to come with its own running self-critique.
“It’s like a head-on car crash.” “It went disastrously.” “It was like the most majestic turkey I’ve ever seen.” “I think insanity has kicked in.”
It certainly has. One glance at the judging panel tells you that – Team GB diving coach Andy Banks, Olympic diver Leon Taylor, and Jo Brand, who’s there because, well, no one quite knows.
She’s been deemed qualified to assess the celebs’ skills at plummeting on the strength of 2011 water-based Dave series Jo Brand’s Big Splash and is firing out the same “I eat cake and don’t exercise” shtick that she’s been living off since Friday Night Live.
The only person emerging with any credit is Tom Daley, who I feel sorry for, even if his expert insights include: “The platform doesn’t move. The springboard does,” so I don’t know where we’d be without him.
We’d be probably left with alpha-female Gabby Logan constantly trying to save Vernon from himself, who in turn is messing up the phone-vote numbers, microphone technique, and last Saturday asked the judges: “Who do you think deserves that place in next week’s semi-final?” a fortnight before the semi-final.
So much is wrong here – the location, Vernon’s Bermudas, the “Splash Off”, which I thought only occurred in the gents’ urinals at pub closing time, the claim that it’s “the most terrifying challenge of the celebrities’ lives” when Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards once hurled himself off a 120m ski jump in Calgary, the “journeys”, “comfort zones”, water-based sob stories, the foam hands raided from ITV’s mothballed Gladiators store cupboard, the all-tumbling synchronised ankle-wiggling half-time display team, Towie’s Joey Essex beaming: “I done it for my family and stuff.”
And yet here’s the rub. There is much to enjoy. I can’t deny loving, as Woody from Toy Story said, the “falling with style”, Helen Lederer’s “nappy mat”, and the slow-mo high-fiving abandonment-of-all-dignity route to the platform.
Crucially, it’s watchable, which can’t be said for BBC1’s simultaneous Saturday night Olympic legacy, a quiz show named Britain’s Brightest, Clare Balding’s reward for that Bert Le Clos interview.
Rounds include spelling via the medium of semaphore, Pictionary, a ballroom/karate-based observation round, “a TV first as we combine mathematics with bouncing” (there’s a reason it hasn’t been done before), and this, from Balding:
“Your challenge is to estimate when 19 seconds have passed and then hit the button. But you won’t be able to see a clock and you will also be trying to make up as many four-letter words as you can.”
But enough about me, Clare. What do the contestants have to do?
Unlike Splash!, it’s devoid of fun. Nobody wins anything until the final show. And while Gabby and Vernon have a joint catchphrase, I’d like to see it adapted for Britain’s Brightest.
“No running. No bombing. No heavy petting…”
No second series, thanks.
London 2012 has a lot to answer for.

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This week’s Couch Potato Spudulike awards go to:
Celebrity Big Brother’s brilliant Frankie Dettori dictatorship and revolution task (Italian totalitarian regimes, they never last) in an otherwise forgettable series.
Kevin Bacon name-checking X Factor hero Wagner on that advert he does.
Joe Pasquale’s podium-tripping Dancing On Ice tribute to Queen’s Flash Gordon, and indeed the mac-flashing community in general.
And BBC2/ESPN’s World Darts Championship, won by Scotty “2 Hotty” Waites, including a commentator’s gift of a Dutch teenager named Jimmy Hendriks, yet Jim Proudfoot chose his conqueror Richie George to deliver the pun of the week: “Two new kids on the block have produced a right royal dust-up. Hendriks won the first and fourth sets, but George the second, George the third, George the fifth, and George the sixth, and moves forward to a potential coronation.”
Majestic.

==============

Off-the-scale bonkers This Morning guest of the week was mum of four Lorna Byrne who “can see and communicate with guardian angels standing three steps behind everyone”, including Holly Willoughby’s.
“Does mine have a name?” asked Holly.
“Yes but I’m afraid your guardian angel isn’t giving it to me. I can’t make it up.”
Could have fooled me.

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Brrrrr! It’s minus three Celsius at the Aigas Field Centre in the Scottish Highlands.
But don’t worry for the wildlife. The pine martens are in their element. The longtail tits are snuggling up on a snowy branch to keep warm.
And the rooks have a pecking order on their overcrowded tree, as Chris Packham explained: “The dominant rooks are actually at the top of the tree. You would think they would be suffering thermal stress because it’s the coldest place.
“But we think they go to the top because they don’t want to be pooed on because it takes the oil off their feathers which means that they’re not waterproof, which means they’re not well insulated when they’re out foraging all day, they get cold, and they waste energy.”
And the whole “being pooed on” thing too, I would have thought, a central feature of BBC2’s first live Winterwatch, which contained more wildlife in one episode than the entire series of Planet Earth Live, with Richard Hammond staring at blobs in the night-time pitch black of Kenya.
Obsessed with bodily functions this programme may be (Michaela Strachan “wouldn’t poo in the beaver lodge but I would in the loch”, after all, she does have standards), but it was consistently the best TV all week, from the colony of grey seals in Norfolk to the stark beauty of the Cairngorms to the robin scavenging the carcass of a roadkill deer.
Okay, the deliberate “live beaver action” references and Chris Packham sneaking in Madness song titles were maddeningly distracting (22 of them in total, FYI, took me pigging ages to spot and count them all), but he’s nothing if not passionate about his subject: “Here’s the pine marten. Let’s replay that. Look beneath the tail. And yes, there is a little spray of urine. Now, I don’t know why you pay your licence fee but I know why I pay mine – for that solid gold on Winterwatch.”
You get no arguments from me.
But two can play that game. And I have a little tip for co-host Martin Hughes-Games who declared on Wednesday: “It’s difficult to tell one tit from another.”
Chris Packham is the one on the left.

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What Happens in Kavos.
Frankly should have stayed there.

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This week’s Couch Potato Spuduhate awards go to:
C5 axing its best show, The Bachelor.
Everything about Dancing On Ice aside from Joe Pasquale, especially the continuing absence of any chemistry whatsoever between the hosts.
The awful New Yes, Prime Minister, on Gold, believing it can completely ignore the game-changing advent of Malcolm Tucker and The Thick Of It like it never happened.
This Morning’s on-screen line-up on Monday: “11am, Kerry and Jeff disect Dancing On Ice,” presumably before dissecting how to spell “dissect” correctly.
The BBC’s Natural History Unit producers (Africa) and presenters (Winterwatch) unnecessarily feeling compelled to justify why their film crews don’t intervene in a baby animal’s death (it’s called “nature”, people).
These hideous words from a continuity man: “Now on BBC1, hidden camera high jinks from Richard Hammond’s Secret Service.”
And BBC1’s news-themed, cheapskate clips show Animal Antics which began with this: “I’m Tim Brooke-Taylor and here to offer his expert opinion is my dog, Sparky.”
No it’s not. It’s a fully grown man, wearing glasses, named Matthew.
Barking mad.

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Winterwatch’s Michaela Strachan: “And what do you find at the end of the beaver trail?…”
A harem?