One man's rant against the 21st Century....: itv

Tuesday, 2 January 2007

More Reality TV Tat

Good old ITV. Take a successful BBC show, steal the format with only the most minor of changes and then broadcast it primetime.

This time, it's the second series of "Dancing on Ice" aka "Strictly Come Dancing On Ice". ITV have today revealed the "stars" of this brain numbing twaddle - and they have plunged straight to the Z-list:

1) Lisa Scott-Lee. The most fame hungry media whore this side of the Atlantic. After numerous failed "comebacks" the talentless bint just keeps on inflicting herself on the masses. Wales' answer to Paris Hilton. Without the money or talent.

2) Ulkrika Jonsson. So desperate she married a reality "star".

3) Kyran Bracken. Famous for not being Matt Dawson and not winning the Rugby World Cup.

4) Lee Sharpe. Actually an improvement on Celebrity Love Island. Considerably less famous and successful than Peter Schmeichel.

5) Clare Buckfield. "Actress" from 2 Point 4 Children. Wasn't that about ten years ago?

6) Phil Gayle. "Newsreader". At least he was many years ago on The Big Breakfast.

7) Kay Burley. Sky News presenter and presumably the token older woman. And not as foxy as Carol Smillie.

8) Duncan James. Ex-member of Blue, probably reeling from the fact that no-one in their right mind was interested in their comeback. Because it was crappier than the first time around, and that's saying something.

9) Stephen Gately. Famous for not being Ronan Keating.

10) Neil "Doctor" Fox. Way past sell-by date DJ.

11) Emily Symons. "Actress" from the tale of everyday farming folk in Emmerdale. Except that she's Australian. An appearance on this rubbish surely indicates she's soon to be written out.

Listen carefully and you can hear the bottom of a barrel being scraped. Until Celebrity Big Brother starts, that is.

Sunday, 31 December 2006

"London" Luton Airport

During a recent elongated bout of channel-hopping through the mire of designed-for-the-mentally-impaired channels that make up British TV the other day, I happened across "Airport" being repeated on ITV7+1 (or something).

For those fortunate enough to have not seen this, it's yet another cheap filler of a programme designed to fill out ITV's schedules between the latest offerings of Z-list celebrity reality shows and Coronation Street. Basically, it's a tour around Britain's provincial airports (cue Tony Robinson explaining that "later, we will go to Barnsley's Michael Parkinson Airport to see how Tanya at check-ins wedding preparations are getting on....) giving a fly on the wall view of EasyJet employees laughing their tits off at the cretins who still foolishly turn up for their hols expecting their plane to a) be there, b) be working, c) depart on time and d) not be triple booked; and then get highly pissed off when any combination of these factors fail to materialise.

Fair enough, a proportion of these idiots are foreign, so it is difficult not to enjoy their collective misery.

One stop off on this tour of locations that EasyJet try their best to avoid flying from or to was London Luton Airport.

Now, let's get one thing straight. Luton is nowhere fecking near London. To be precise, it's 35 miles away from London. Calling Luton Airport "London Luton Airport" is about as geographically precise as "Newcastle Edinburgh Airport".

Talk about taking a fecking liberty and trying to "big up" the image of a shitty town in the middle of nowhere that has absolutely bugger all going for it.

Think Sunderland without the glamour, charm and charisma.

I can understand (to a degree) Luton Airport wanting to shake off the image created by Lorraine Chase, but for Christ's sake that was thirty years ago!

You can just imagine the poor foreign sods expecting to fly into a London Airport and get off the plane to be met with a majestic view of St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. How disappointed are they going to be.....