Yahoo

I'm not sure what was going on with tonight's edition of TFI Friday and I hope that someone is brave enough to approach Chris Evans and tell him that he should draw a line under this week and learn from it. During the original run of the series it started to drop off when it deviated into featuring commercial chart acts (an entire episode was once devoted to the Spice Girls) as it was largely seen as a music show for the cool people, whoever they are. As I have said before, Chris Evans was to the Britpop era as John Peel was to punk and Alan Freed was to rock and roll, so these little blips are best avoided. 

Elsewhere on the show Dawn French gave a reasonable enough interview and there was music from Hurts but aside from this I couldn't stay interested enough to not go outside onto the porch for a cigarette, so disinterested was I that picking up my discarded fag ends up and dropping them in the wheelie bin ensured that I missed Justin Bieber's headline music performance. In the interview itself he came across well and displayed a sense of humour (advising to use 'cute kittens' as a tag when uploading YouTube videos) despite noticeable jet lag. He certainly wasn't the jumped up little shit I was expecting and wasn't diva enough to not have a go on the slip and slide (a feature that will no doubt grow tiresome) prior to his PR chat with Evans. 

The problem is that TFI didn't seem to know who it was trying to please. Was Evans trying to attract younger viewers to a show predominantly watched by people in their mid-thirties upwards? I'm not sure he should be taking TFI in that direction in the long term because not only will this possibly put off 'proper' bands from appearing but will also turn the show into a slightly later at night kid's show. There aren't too many more editions of this short series left and it would be a shame if it was remembered this way, especially if the new Top Gear dies on its arse. 

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #60 is available from here

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