The bottom photo is of a jewelers
shop window with a Christmas tree still in place, the other two pictures are of
the window of a newsagent that doubles up as one of those shops that inexplicably
sell tat such as bongs, Buddha statues and borderline racist dancing
Rastafarian dolls. It’s good to see, (if a little weird) that there are still
traces of Christmas in evidence when you pop out to the shops.
I only wandered out as far as
Hyson Green this afternoon to do a bit of shopping for Mandi’s birthday, as I
am full of cold and didn’t want to be out of the house for too long. We spent
the rest of the afternoon watching Strike It Lucky
on Challenge.
Michael Barrymore seems to be
one of those people that television doesn’t want to invest too much trust in
nowadays mainly due I imagine to his unpredictable behavior, and no longer in a
good way. Although he was not held accountable for the death of Stuart Lubbock
at his house, the case remains open. If he had done something terrible then
surely even a cable TV channel like Challenge would not wish to broadcast old
editions of his popular game show.
Watching these old episodes of
Strike It Lucky only goes to show what a
skilled entertainer he was, and how well he dealt with the contestants.
Barrymore was certainly a warmer host than the bullying abrasive style of Bruce
Forsyth, a man that Barrymore was set to steal the light entertainment crown
from until it all went wrong. After his Celebrity Big Brother stint in 2006 he
guest hosted The Friday Night Project with
Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins (someone with his own share of negative column
inches) and went down a storm with the audience. The fact that he came second
in CBB only went to prove his popularity
with the public, so I can’t figure out why he has had such a difficult job
regaining a foothold in the entertainment industry, reduced to appearances on
the likes of Celebrity Coach Trip and Celebrity Come Dine With Me.
Thanks to ITV’s obsession with
The X-Factor and Britain’s
Got Talent, the traditional Saturday night ‘shiny floor show’ is
something that both BBC1 and ITV have struggled to maintain. Obviously Ant and
Dec can do no wrong on ITV but the BBC’s recent attempts (excluding Strictly Come Dancing) have fallen flat; I Love My Country being the biggest example. With Bruce
Forsyth no longer at the peak of his ability, maybe it’s time for the BBC to
open the cheque book and bring Michael Barrymore in from the cold. He would be
ideal in any ‘people show’ format, or would do justice to a rebooted version of
The Generation Game to give one example.
Or maybe he should do the most obvious job of all, and present Strictly Come Dancing? At the age of 61, the time could be
right for the light entertainment crown to be passed on at last!
===
My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle
for 99p a month (link)
Any money donated to the PayPal account above will be
put to good creative use, find out more here.
