In the background, from the next room, I can hear Jonathan Ross and his chat show. His loud, raspy voice cutting through the ether with all the charm of fingernails going down a blackboard.
What an outdated genre, the chat show.
The guests are typical chat show guests from what I can tell. Famous actors and the like, as usual I have little idea who most of them are.
With Ross, the guests are not the stars: he is.
No doubt he is a talented comedian. Still quick-witted and not quite as crass as he was in the Andrew Sachs days, it sounds of a time long gone, a time before even Parkinson, even though it wasn’t.
Ross’s show is to sell books, promote films and to make us by music but it has the precise opposite effect on me.
I suppose I grew up with Parkinson who would always be on after Match of the Day. As the pubs closed at 10.30 pm, there was little alternative to watch as the great Yorkshireman tossed gentle half-volleys at big stars. He was regarded as the master but I always found his questioning no more intense than Steve Wright’s “You’re brilliant. What makes you so brilliant?” style on his Radio Two show, ‘In the afternoon’.
Russell Harty, a super camp Yorkshireman, Terry Wogan, all kissing the Blarney Stone banter and seemingly making it up as he went along (it sure sounded like it) and now we have Alan Titchmarsh, a man who made himself famous through…er…gardening.
The best interviewer for me was Clive Anderson. Sharp as a knife, quick as a flash, asking the questions that the rich and fatuous – like ‘Lord’ Jeffrey Archer – hated. Not to mention the Bee Gees, god rest two of their souls. They’ll always be The Tosseurs to me! (Look it up, kids.)
But Ross still occupies the late evening slot, trying hard to be funny, failing dismally to my ears but always impressing the wildly enthusiastic audience who sound very much like they’ve been kept all night in the Green Room.
It’s somehow appropriate that Ross is on ITV, the station that deals almost totally in the past, resurrecting old shows that once worked but now seem totally trite.
I see so little on TV that is cutting edge and nothing that is cutting edge away from the BBC. At least Auntie had a good go last week with a brave show about the scandalous death of Baby Peter Connelly, to the chagrin of the government and their fawning pals.
But chat shows? Sorry. Move along. Nothing to see here.
PS Bill Maher is better than all of them. By miles.
