It seems like such a long time ago, but there was a time when people kept a close eye on the television during the week and try and guess what would grab the attention of Harry Hill (and his team of writers) on Saturday’s edition of Harry Hill’s TV Burp. I remember when it didn’t matter what your plans were for Saturday night; you couldn’t leave the house until you had watched it. Phones were switched off, doors were locked, and tea was ready in time for the whole house to sit down to catch the programme that the ‘no talking’ rule could have been invented for. Apart from the slight disappointment of discovering that the programme was recorded weeks in advance thanks to the writers being given preview tapes, the show could do no wrong.

As the show continued, each series started to contain at least two weak episodes that dragged down the rest. The pressure of producing a show like this must have been immense when you consider the fine details that Harry picked up on. When Burp began featuring shows on obscure cable channels that very few people had seen, the show appeared very laboured, perhaps they should have concentrated on what people still insist (myself included) on referring to as ‘real telly’; BBC1, BBC2, ITV, and Channel Four, making occasional visits further down the dial.

When GOLD started broadcasting repeats of Harry Hill’s TV Burp this year, I wasn’t sure if they would stand up against time and would look as ridiculous as the constant repeats of Have I Got News For You on Dave. Topical comedy has by its very nature got a short shelf life, but Burp manages to still appear fresh and new, even if it feels a little odd to see shows like The Bill mentioned or characters in Eastenders that you didn’t remember.

Soap operas aside, a look through the schedules reveals why Burp had to end when it did, it’s simply that television is about 95% dumbed-down rubbish and documentary series that are beyond parody. You can’t make comedy out of something like The Undateables because you would cause offence and the likes of Benefits Street is mere reality poverty porn designed to make the Daily Mail go all silly. Alan Partridge’s pitch Cooking In Prison has already been made, (I’m still waiting for Monkey Tennis) which goes to show that not only has television ran out of ideas, but also that no idea is too ridiculous. Clive James used to show us ‘hilarious’ clips of Endurance, a Japanese game show that punished contestants by making them eat snails and insects, and we the viewer were encouraged to laugh at the funny foreigners, (this was the 1980s). Now we have I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here with Ant and Dec doing exactly that, punishing contestants for having not worked for twenty years. As Morrissey once declared, that joke isn’t funny anymore.

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