The Bleedin' Obvious

Gosh. No. Really? I am surprised.

I can't abide Britain's Got Talent, a show for people who have never considered that singing or dancing isn't just the preserve of the cosmetically pimped. Or Parky, what a terrible chat show host he was for all but his own coterie of showbiz mates, a man who usually just asked the most obvious of questions to receive the dullest of replies. He'd been coasting on those Mohammed Ali and Billy Connolly interviews for a long time. Funny, he doesn't ever mention his Damned Utd stint at TVAM when he, Angela Rippon, Anna Ford and a couple of other charmless bores, a kind of even less successful SDP, were hastily vanquished by Frank Bough and efficiently replaced by Anne Diamond and a glove puppet.

Worst of all, Question Time. If I can't be bothered to watch members of the public teach their dog the rumba on BGT, I'm certainly not going to be gripped by the thought of watching angry teachers from Burton On Trent try to get one over on media trained fucktards trapped in an escalating spiral of hand-wringing me tooism. This week it should have been satisfying watching MPs squirm as they were resoundingly bollocked about their expenses, but Margaret Beckett and Ming Campbell have for many years been their parties fall guys, sent on to grovel in their own shit for the pleasure of Paxman or a Dimbleby. Seeing them at it again while all of those real bastards, the grey wardrobe-skinned nonentities we'd never heard of but were happy for us to pay for essential moat cleaning or porn, toughed it out in Westminster clubs, no doubt watching Ming and Margaret on a plasma screen through a haze of G&Ts as they struggled through their usual duet, Islands in the Shit Stream.

Interesting comment from soon to retire Tonight host Jay Leno: 'I like CSI and SVU and Law & Order, but there isn't any comedy. When I was a kid, you'd have a whole night of comedy. Now it's all very serious, it's all murder'. It's the legacy of George Bush, I guess, a fucked-up country gets fucked-up drama. This is also possibly why I've given up following American series, and why the new Star Trek film is so endearing: they've not done the now obligatory 'dark' reboot, but have instead made something lighter, funnier and more entertainng than the original. Now there's a thought.