The Top Of The Charts

There are those of you who believe that the music charts mean nothing anymore. That because everyone steals their music online anyway; nobody buys records or singles anymore, so the chart is based on radio airplay more than anything else. And those people would be right. Nobody cares about which song is number #1 anymore, because it’ll inevitably be whichever musician has been given the biggest push from their record company. There’s no fun in it anymore.

But there is one exception, which happens to be Christmas. The Christmas #1 is still incredibly important, because it’s the one week of the year when almost anything could win. Sure, the X-Factor and countless other reality shows all release their singles for Christmas, so usually one of those wins. But at the same time, there are so many different wild cards in play during Christmas that nothing can be guaranteed. The winning song could be performed by a credible rock band, or a children’s TV show (Tellytubbies, anyone?) And because there is such variety, and so little stability for this week, the BBC have relented.

They’ve given in. Finally, the public have won. Because Top Of The Pops is coming back! At Christmas! It’s only coming back for a special, but this is still rather big news. Top Of The Pops, for our international reader (you know who you are), is a TV institution which was cancelled a while back. It ran down the chart, and featured performances from six or seven of the bands who had done well that week. Although these performances were generally mimed, the show was entertaining Friday-night viewing (wait... when was it on, again?) and the public loved it. And then... they didn’t love it anymore, and it lost viewing figures and got cancelled. The reason? Well, Wilftonville thinks it knows the answer to that one:

Yeah, the presenters. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who actually likes Fearne Cotton as a TV presenter, and her overeager sidekick Reggie Yates isn’t much fun either. Yet they were put in charge of the show during the last few months of its existence, and ran it into the ground. And hey – guess who are back to present this year? Yeah, those two. It’s not on.

What TOTP needs is a guest presenter format, like ‘Have I Got News For You’, so that each week a different celebrity hosts the show, thus making each week’s show different from the week before. Guests hosts can include: Jeremy Clarkson, Michael Palin (yes!), Jimmy Saville, Claudia Winkleman (hey Claudia!) and Terry Wogan. This is what is needed, BBC, if you want to make a success of this franchise again. And make sure that you dump Fearne and Reggie, and put Noddy Holder on the Christmas show instead, because he’s really excellent.

You’ll thank us for this later.

How To Save Children In Need

If your immediate thought after reading that title was “oh good! I like helping needy children, because it’s the morally correct thing to do” – leave. You’re useless, and this blog is not written for people like you. Go join a volunteer shelter or something. You see, we’re not talking about dying kids here. We’re talking about ‘Children In Need’, the TV fundraiser.

Every year, the show, which is shown on BBC1 and takes up a whole evening of programming, makes a whole lot of money for dying children all across the UK. It’s a good cause, certainly, and this year they gathered over twenty million on the night. However, this money came at the cost of human entertainment, as viewers were forced to watch several half-baked ideas brought to life in the name of showbiz variety. Among the many broken ideas that came to our screens was a ten-second (it felt) preview of the next Doctor Who Christmas Special, a visit by Gok Wan to Coronation Street which went nowhere, a similarly pointless crossover between Top Gear and Ashes To Ashes, and two shorts (and we mean short) skits from the casts of Merlin and The Royle Family. Each time something was announced, it brought about at least a bit of excitement among the audience watching, but almost every single part of the show disappointed. The featured moments - a great Strictly Come Dancing section aside – were flat and boring; the brilliant Terry Wogan wasn’t getting any support from his audience as he went about presenting; Tess Daly had to hold together the show on her own (which she just about did), and overall the night disappointed.

So here are our ideas for how to improve Children In Need, and make it a show which can rival Comic Relief (a fundraiser which routinely makes over forty million pounds on the night). We think with these ideas, the show will vastly improve.

The Set:
1: Get Terry Wogan a sofa. The presenters have to stand for the entirety of the show, which just feels mean. Give them a sofa area where they can sit and talk to guests in-between links. It’ll save Terry’s legs, and he won’t then spend so much time complaining about his knees.

2: Bring back the second-floor. The show used to have a set of stairs which led to a balcony, from which the presenters could introduce the acts, who performed on the dancefloor below. Bringing it back will make the show feel much more contained, as at the moment the studio is far too big, and not enough is going on in it.

The Presenters:
3: Give Terry less to do. If you put Terry Wogan in front of a crowd, he’ll start improvising. It’s how he works. And that’s also partly why we all admire him, but… You need to take him out of proceedings more. Don’t send him into the crowd, don’t have him greet every act once they’re finished performing their songs. If you keep him from the audience, they will respond more whenever he does appear. It’s like the inevitable Graham Norton appearance on Comic Relief: he’s an inspired presenter if you don’t put him onscreen for hours on end.

4: Switch presenters around. As a part of #3, the presenters should be paired up and given slots of their own. Like Comic Relief! It brings more identity to the show, and you can have more child-friendly presenters on at the start, before going more adult as things move along.

5: No more Fearne Cotton. Personally, Wilftonville dislikes her. But on top of that, nobody wants to go backstage – it ruins the mystery of what will happen next if we have interviews with Duffy held, apparently, in a corridor.

6: Gaby Roslin. We want her back! Or at the very least, give us some more variety with who presents. Why can’t we have any middle-aged, female presenters? Grr, BBC!

The Show:
7: The first hour should be presented by Dick and Dom, and should feature lots of custard pies, gunge, mess, and mayhem. It’s fun!

8: Work on the ideas properly. You have a year to set up your ideas, so once you’ve decided that the cast of The Bill should sing songs by The Blues Brothers, work on it more. Don’t give up as soon as you establish the concept. Work on it more, decide what should happen, and when, and give the thing more structure.

9: No regional programming! Don’t cut to county-specific sections so we can see a group of teachers in Leeds get their hair shaved off for charity. It’s boring.

10: You own the shows, BBC. Dr Who, Merlin, The Royle Family – you should be able to do more with them than two-minute sections. You don’t need to work a reference to your mascot Pudsey into each one; so let the writers do something silly and fun with the cast, and let them have more than two minutes running time. The Doctor Who sections you had last year, and the year before – those were perfect.

11: Tone down the actors who sing. Sure, it’s lovely that they can do this, but we don’t need to have seven or eight acts where a soapstar sings a showtune. Get them to do something with more variety, instead – why not have them do some shadow theatre, or mime for a bit?

12: Cut the last two hours. They’re completely surplus, and it forces you to start recycling bits you’ve already shown. Cut them, and streamline the show so you space out the goods bits more smartly.

13: More variety, overall, please. Singing and dancing is all well and good, but how about some comedians? The BBC has so many sketch show people at the moment, so why not commission some special sketches from them all? It spices things up.

14: Bring in more of your shows. Quiz shows, perhaps? They’re always decent value for money – the BBC2 programme that comes on while the main show breaks for the news is almost always one of the best parts of any Children In Need Night.

15: Stop asking us to give you money. We get the idea. Also, the idea that you ‘need’ the money? I’d rather you ‘would like’ it. Seems like a nicer thing.

16: Paul Daniels. We need MOAR magic on the BBC.

Rating The Presenters: Glastonbury

Glastonbury has come to an end after one great day and two mildly interesting ones. It’s a shame that everyone focused on Jay-Z as a controversial headline act, when for some reason Michael Eavis chose the Kings of Leon and The Verve to headline on the other two days. Jay-Z was blinding, anyway, but this is all besides the point.

The BBC were hosting the event this year, as ever, and they had a range of presenters doing their ‘thang’ to try and make the festival as interesting as possible. I know what you want, though – you want me to rate them all out of ten to see who was the best presenter. Well, even though I am pretty hung-over, I shall oblige. Because I’m so lovely.


Edith Bowman – a decent effort from Bowman this year, although she suffered from not having Colin Murray around to support her, and was instead drowned in the sea of boring egotism that flowed out of Zane Lowe at every opportunity. 5/10

Zane Lowe – nonsensically up himself for the entire festival, when he wasn’t talking about how close he was with Jay-Z he was attempting to fill his interviews with in-jokes that nobody, not even his co-presenters, could understand. As such, he was one of the worst narcissists of the bunch. 2/10

Phil Jupitus – normally Jupitus is a funny, charming bloke. Whenever he gets near to live music, however, he seems to feel the need to turn the attention on himself by twittering about some 1980’s jazz act that nobody cares about and interrupting everyone in sight to make lame jokes. Disappointing. 4/10

Lauren Laverne – the most pretentious of the lot. Always has been, always will be. There is a time and a place for rambling semi-jokes, and it isn’t whilst presenting a music programme. Along with Jupitus, she formed the most annoying double-act of the festival. 3/10

Annie Mac – nice lady, who obviously knew what she was talking about. She sometimes got lost in her own conversation, but she was fine. 6/10

Nick Grimshaw – odd choice to present, but he came across as a likeable chap who was self-depreciating and witty. In fact, he was one of the only presenters who actually pulled off self-depreciating without sounding like he was being ironic and egocentric. Odd voice, though. 6/10

Rufus Hound – predictably brilliant. He is saddled every year with the most difficult job around, of walking round with the general public and exploring the non-musical side of the festival. It’s a tricky job to do, because you don’t know if people are going to start swearing or if they’ll jump in front of the camera, and you have to be witty to do it. Luckily, he was. 8/10

Phil Nichol – the worst presenter by far. He was here for some of the links, and his manic laughter and smug grin made me want to punch him repeatedly in the face, shoulder, knee and groin. 1/10

Jo Whiley – Jo is always good. She has a good presenting style, knows when to let her interview subjects to talk and when to interrupt, and gave a good sense of the feel of the festival. There’s a reason they made her the lead presenter, you know. 8/10

Mark Radcliffe – class and quality, as always. I don’t know why they don’t team him up with Stuart Maconie, but oh well. Radcliffe can move from genre to genre like none of the other presenters, meaning he was in charge of the BBC4 and the BBC2 coverage, and he seemed at home whether he was presenting some jazz or a scuzz rock band, or Jay-Z, or folk music. And he always had a decent anecdote to relate. He’s the new John Peel, essentially. 10/10


What was my highlight of the festival? Well, obviously, it was Katie Melua.

Who Will Replace Terry?

Terry Wogan has had enough of Eurovision, and you can’t blame the guy. For the past ten years or so he’s sat by and watched as the British entry has failed miserably (with the exception of HAWTNESS Jessica Garlick, who came third), and has had countless attacks aimed at him because he realises, as does most of Britain, that Eurovision is a popularity contest and not based on the music. Actually, it’s probably because he has noticed this that Britain has. And he’s not just a passive bystander, remember. Terry picks and befriends and promotes the entrant each year, appearing on TV shows and doing interviews and doing his best to boost the profile of these bands and singers, only to see them fail. It must be a little heartbreaking, and you could hear at the end of Eurovision this year the despair and aggravation in his voice as he debated whether we should bother with it anymore.

Terry’s better than Eurovision now, and he deserves his break from it, should he choose to pass on the baton. But the Eurovision will remain, and the only question is: who will take over? A lot of people have been pushing Jonathan Ross to do it, because he does everything else so nobody will notice, but that’d be a mistake, as would Jimmy Carr, that other guy who presents TV in Britain. You need someone who isn’t a one-trick pony, who can do more than that. So I’ve compiled a list of people who I think would be great for Eurovision, and I urge you, should you agree with any of them, to form petitions and start chaining yourself to BBC headquarters in order to get your person into the job.

Graham Norton: The cheeky Irishman would be just the ticket for guiding us through the camp joys of Eurovision, and could poke joyous offensive fun at proceedings. He could also, though – and this is the key thing – do so whilst still being in awe of the whole event. It’s tailor-made for his personality.

Mark Radcliffe: The Radio 2 DJ has a wry eye for details, and if anyone would be able to tell us that the Romanian entrant looks like a broken TV set with green mouse ears, it would be him. At the very least, he should take over if Ken Bruce moves over from the Radio 2 programme to the TV broadcast, which is possible.

Rob Brydon: My personal favourite choice. Brydon can do pretty much anything, having an astonishingly wide repertoire. He also has a superb voice for the event, and a wicked sense of humour. He could make fun of something and then pull himself back and tell us off for agreeing with him.

Jools Holland: Imagine the awkwardness of any interview Jools has ever done on his show, but stretched out for three hours or so. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

Claudia Winkleman: Three hours of listening to the delightful Claudia Winkleman would be fine by me! I love you, Claudia Winkleman.

Ronnie Corbett: The great thing about Ronnie is that he would be reminded of a story by seeing someone from Armenia or something, and would go off on a long-winded joke about things, paying no attention to what is happening on screen, making for a superb night of calming television.

Brian Blessed: Admittedly, I’m pushing it a little here.


Who would you like to see?

The Saturday News Story: BBC Cocks It All Up Again

Chris Moyles has been criticised for glamourising alcohol abuse, after he allegedly stated that he drinks five pints a day. David Poley, who isn't famous, said that the media "sometimes encourage drunkenness", a statement which has sent shockwaves racing through the BBC. "We've just seen, about a week ago, Chris Moyles on Radio 1 talking again about how he drinks five pints a day," said a visibly horrified Mr Poley.
This will come as a crippling blow to the managing directors of the BBC, who just can't seem to go one day without some sort of scandal going on. On the plus side, it looks like they're really earning that multi-million pound Christmas bonus they got last year.
Mr Poley said that Chris Moyles is "glorifying drunkenness", and he may have a point. Who wouldn't want to look like Chris Moyles?

You are what you drink: and Chris Moyles obviously just drank an overweight, annoying bastard.

BBC executives scrambled together an apology letter to all the millions of people who turned to alcoholism in the aftermath of Moyles' outlandish statement, and hope to God that nobody is going to point out that they've also been recommending that people watch Torchwood.