Why Corden should have cut Adele’s BRITS speech even shorter

OK, so the BRITS could do with another shake-up, agreed? Right, so let’s not waste a second. First up, it’s time for a new presenter. James Corden has done a decent enough job for the past couple of years, bless him, but as we saw the other night with the fiasco over Adele’s thank-you speech, we need to hire someone a bit tougher.

Someone who could have stood up to those nitwit producers, screeching in his ear to cut her short so they could go to the stupid news.

Or, better still, someone who’d have waded in and cut her just as short as Corden did, but who wouldn’t have been so apologetic and wussy about it. (“Yeah, yeah, you want to thank the world and its bleeding wife, we get the picture, dear. Look, nobody cares, OK? Off you pop, there’s a love. We want to hear Damon Albarn doing some of his nice shouting . . .”)

Me, I’d suggest either Jeremy Paxman (“Come on, come on, we haven’t got all day . . .”) or Ann Robinson (“And people actually like your music, do they . . ?)

Either of those would do a spectacularly brilliant, blisteringly rude job – turning what’s become a blandly predictable corporate ceremony into something way more watchable.

Really, though, the fuss about Adele’s curtailed speech has kind of missed the point. Whatever she was planning to say, let’s be honest, it would have been pretty blinking dull. All acceptance speeches are.

So the biggest shake-up I’d suggest would be to hack down every winner’s allotted thank-you time to a Twitter-inspired minimum. If you happen to have won one of those tacky fairground skittles that passes for a BRIT award these days, you’re allowed the equivalent of 140 characters – and no more – to say what you feel you need to say. Exceed this by so much as a single character and your microphone immediately cuts out.

And a trap door sends you plunging into the Thames.

And a shark eats you (optional).

Come on, 140 characters is plenty. It’s enough to say: “Thanks to everyone who’s bought my perfectly OK album and made me famous for a bit, plus various dull record company bods, all called Simon.”

In fact, better still, scrap the speeches altogether. If they really want to thank the dull record company bods, thank them in person, one by one, in the weeks and months ahead. It’s not as if your average pop star doesn’t have enough time. They’re recording, what, one album every couple of years? That takes about an hour. Or maybe 75 minutes, tops. And don’t say, ooh, but they have to do retakes, overdubs, etc. Course they don’t. If they’re so talented that we’re swamping them with awards, they ought to be able to stroll into the studio late one morning, record this magnificent album of theirs, and be out of there well before lunchtime. By my calculations, this leaves them with one year, 364 days, and 22 and three-quarter hours spare to go around saying thank you to the Simons.

(Oh, minus the gigging time, I suppose. And promotional nonsense, Knock off maybe 60 days for all that guff. But still. What a doddle.)

And thanking us, the fans? Seriously, don’t bother, there’s no need. I’m sure it’s meant well, and I’m sure you’re awfully grateful to people for buying your lovely tunes, but even if you dismissed us a bunch of gullible planks with zero taste, it really wouldn’t influence my attitude to you music. Not a bit.

I don’t expect your thanks, any more than I expect Mr Heinz to pop round and thank me every time I eat his beans. I’m not that needy.

If I happen to like some pop person’s noise, I’ll spend my money it. And when I grow bored with it, which I can guarantee I will, I’ll stop playing it. If it’s on a CD, I’ll hang it in the garden, along with the complete works of Dido, Craig David and Toploader, to scare off the birds.

* Mike Ward is the TV Critic of the Daily Star and the TV Editor of the Daily Express Saturday magazine. You can hear him on talkSPORT every Monday at 3.15pm with Hawksbee & Jacobs and every Thursday at midnight with Andy Goldstein.

Will Dancing On Ice please stop Twittering on?

LISTEN, I get it, OK? I get the fact that millions of us are watching TV and tweeting at the same time these days, generously sharing our pithy observations, witticisms, knee-jerk reactions and spite. I do it myself sometimes, although usually I can’t be bothered, given that it’s fundamentally pointless and, freak that I am, I’d rather talk to my family, sitting in the same room. What I’m saying is I don’t have a problem with those who do. Honestly, I don’t.

What I do have a problem with is TV shows that have leapt on the Twitter bandwagon in a manner that reeks of desperation.

Take, for example, ITV1’s Dancing On Ice, which has been going to enormous lengths, since this latest series got underway, to draw our attention to its tweet-ability.

At one point the other night, new co-host Christine Bleakley excitedly informed the soon-to-be-eliminated Laila Morse, best known (in fact, only known) as Big Mo from EastEnders, that at that very moment she was “globally trending” (essentially meaning that a lot of people were remarking upon how rubbish Laila was at skating). This revelation clearly wasn’t for the benefit of Laila herself, who looked as if she didn’t have a clue what Christine was banging on about, nor care that much, but for the benefit of us lot at home.

“Hey, look, everybody!” was essentially the message Christine wanted to send us. “We’re the show everyone’s talking about. How cutting-edge are we, eh?”

Well, yes, I’m sure you are, chaps. Jolly well done, you. But seriously, give it a rest, will you? Stop trying so hard. Stop ramming the Twitter thing down our throats. And if you must read out tweets live on air, please at least exercise some kind of quality control. Don’t just read them out for the sake of it, just because people happen to have tweeted a few random remarks about your programme, however banal (let’s be honest, the really caustic, witty ones won’t get a look-in). It just comes across as a bit desperate, as if you’re frantically trying to convince us, or possibly yourselves, that you matter, that you’re relevant, that you’re “of the moment”. Just get on with the show (God knows, it drags on for long enough already) and leave the Twitter community to do its own thing.

Finally, bear in mind that the vast majority of your 7.7 million viewers aren’t even on Twitter. Many will have no desire to be. Some won’t even have a clue what it is. And that, don’t forget, is fine as well. So the more you go on about it, the more you alienate these people, still the bulk of your core audience. You’re effectively making them feel as if they’re not fully engaged, that they’re excluded and out of touch, that there’s a party going on elsewhere, metaphorically speaking, to which they’ve not been invited, where the smart, witty people are having all the fun.

For a major show on a populist TV channel, that’s unforgivable.

So please, just stop it, all right? Make a show that respects and engages every viewer equally, rather than one that looks as if it’s desperate to be friends with the cool crowd.

Right now, you’re just making yourself look needy. And that’s about as uncool as it gets.

* Read Mike every day in the Daily Star and every weekend in the Daily Express Saturday magazine.

Red Or Black: go on, guys – chuck in the towel and give us all a giggle

WOULDN’T it have been lovely if, half way through the latest edition of Red Or Black (sorry, I can’t be doing with the question mark in the title), presenters Ant & Dec had suddenly turned to one another and gone: “D’you know what, this is just getting worse, isn’t it? Shall we go home?”

What a brilliant, career-defining moment that would have been. Throwing in the towel, live on air, less than halfway through this ridiculous, over-hyped, ratings-shedding gameshow, they’d have sent their credibility soaring. They’d have returned to their dressing rooms to find their mobiles buzzing with a billion offers of work, although maybe not that many from Simon Cowell…

I have to confess, I only caught the final stages of the latest show. This may have had something to do with my wife going: “I know it’s your job, but if you force me to sit through so much as a millisecond of that crap ever again, my darling, I shall *** off your ***** with a rusty ******.”

I saw enough, however, to be able to predict what was going to happen at the end. I knew the guy was going to lose the million. Or, rather, fail to win it, which I appreciate isn’t exactly the same thing.

Which proves what exactly? It proves that we can all make wild 50-50 guesses, based on nothing but a hunch, and then tell ourselves how jolly clever we are when they happen to prove correct. Big deal.

One or two people have suggested I was a bit too harsh in my scathing criticism of the opening night’s programme. Only a bit, mind you. They agreed with almost everything I wrote (be honest, for once it was hard not to) but suggested that the climax – where it’s down to just one punter against the pointlessly huge roulette wheel, and where correctly predicting the colour of the slot into which the giant ball will come to rest will secure them one million – was actually quite exciting.

I can’t say I share the sentiment. For me, the only excitement by then is knowing that this nonsense is nearly over for another night. Not so much a question of excitement, then, as one of sheer relief.

And before you point out what one guy on Twitter rather bluntly suggested to me the other night, namely that I’m perfectly capable of switching over to another channel if this programme offends me so much, let me just say this:

I’m not. As a generally rather laid-back kind of bloke, it’s been ages since I’ve got myself quite so cross about a television programme and I have to say I’m throughly enjoying it. Besides, Mrs Ward, although she did stick to her threat last night, was kind enough to use a local anesthetic.

Finally, one thing I’d suggest to the producers, just as a gag for the final night’s contest, would be to introduce a funny twist to the closing moment. As the big ball comes to rest for the last time, ideally with the punter missing out on the million, the cameras should pan down to show a grinning Simon Cowell lying beneath the roulette wheel, clutching a giant magnet.

Go on, guys, I dare you.

We’d all know it was just a joke.

Well, I would. And let’s face it, I’ll probably be the only one still watching by then.

* Read Mike Ward every day in the Daily Star and every weekend in the Daily Express Saturday magazine.

Red Or Black? Simon Cowell’s biggest prank of all

WOW, isn’t Red Or Black jaw-droppingly, gobsmackingly bad?! You’ve got to hand it to Simon Cowell, haven’t you? After years of success with talent contests, he’s now turned his hand to prank shows. And by selling ITV bosses the idea of Red Or Black, he’s pulled off the biggest, most spectacular prank in TV history. The man is an absolute genius.

I mean, obviously the basic idea is rubbish. Only a clueless ninny, or possibly an ITV commissioner, would argue with that. Take a ropey, blatantly flawed concept for a gameshow, chuck a shedload of money at it, hire the most popular pair of presenters on British telly, book the most colossal venues, set up the most spectacular stunts, sign up a whole bunch of high-profile guests, offer a massive prize, then top it all off, production-wise, with all the bells and whistles money can buy – and what do you ultimately end up with?

Yep, exactly: a ropey, blatantly flawed concept for a gameshow.

Because there’s no getting over the basic problem here. Namely, that beneath all the hype and the pyrotechnics, it’s just a silly, uninspiring little guessing game.

It’s not that I resent all these people competing for the chance to win a million pounds. Jolly good luck to them. But don’t expect me, as a viewer, to seriously care. Because ultimately – and here’s the big snag – they’re not earning it.

They may well be deeply deserving individuals, but as far as the show is concerned we’re given no serous reason to engage or empathise with them.

On other shows, competitors are at least seen to give something of themselves. And we respond to that. It may be a powerful X Factor performance, such as Fife lass Jade Richards delivered on the latest show; it may be two minutes of utter humiliation on Britain’s Got Talent; it may be correctly naming the capital of France on Millionaire. It still amounts to some degree of effort and input.

Here it’s just a bunch of strangers hoping to get rich quick through pure fluke – tied in with a handful of the sort of sob stories The X Factor has largely abandoned these days as old hat.

Ant & Dec try their damnedest, bless them, like the reliable pros they are. But even they must surely acknowledge that Red Or Black is the biggest waste of ITV airtime since Celebrity Wrestling.

* Read Mike every day in the Daily Star and every weekend in the Daily Express Saturday magazine.

How Tulisa has developed the perfect look for The X Factor

I’VE been busy perfecting my Tulisa look. You should try it yourself, it’s jolly easy.

Just stand in front of your bathroom mirror – or even a mirror in a public place, such as Primark, if you prefer working to an audience – and open your mouth as wide as you can, as if preparing to insert a giant baguette or something ruder. Then do likewise with your eyes (in this case, probably without visualising the baguette-insertion) and, well, that’s pretty much it.

With minimal effort, you will have perfected the X Factor judge’s “astonished” look. You can now deploy this whenever one of the show’s auditioning acts surprises you. In a single gesture, you’ll be able to convey your thoughts to millions. Or at least to the other people in your living room.

From the X Factor judges’ perspective, don’t let’s underestimate the importance of this and other facial expressions (disappointed, sad, embarrassed, elated, bored etc). Appearance has always been an essential part of the job, but while their clothes and hair can be arranged fairly easily by a multi-tasking expert backstage (“multi-tasking” in the sense that, thanks to years of experience, the stylist will simultaneously be able to ask the judge if they’ve been anywhere nice for their holidays), those facial expressions are something each judge must perfect in their own time.

It’s a lesson Andrew Lloyd Webber sadly failed to heed before his various BBC1 talent shows such as Find Me A Dorothy and, before that, Pick Us A Nancy, No For God’s Sake Not That One, Oh Blimey, All Right, If We Must. Whenever the camera focused on Andrew during a performance, he’d be sitting there looking as if his face had gone into some kind of spasm. It was most unfortunate.

So, yes, judges on The X Factor are way more clued-up about this sort of stuff. Mark my words, they’ll have practised for hours in front of their mirror at home, learning how to make their faces convey the full range of obligatory emotions in an entertainingly exaggerated fashion. Even though, in the case of Dannii Minogue, it was rather hard to tell any of those expressions apart…

Also, I’ve noticed that the producers seem to have eased off on the sob stories in this latest X Factor series. Either that, or maybe the people who turn up just happen to be a lot less miserable and wretched these days. Or maybe, aware of the criticism levelled at the show in recent years, the programme-makers have altered the application form, so that it now reads:

“Do you have a desperately sick relative? Has a beloved pet recently been run over? Are you basically dying?

“If you have answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, please do NOT apply for this year’s contest. Frankly, we’ve had our fill of people like you. Do us all a favour and get over yourself…”

What we’re getting instead is a lot more of the Subo factor. By this, I mean people who look kind of weird / freaky / scary but turn out to have jolly nice voices. These are the people for whom Tulisa’s Astonished Look™ is tailor-made (although the rest of the judges, to be fair, usually mange to offer something pretty similar, facial reaction-wise, indicating their own personal levels of astonishment).

It’s a look that effectively says: “Golly, whoever would have thought you could sing so beautifully, bearing in mind you look so weird / freaky / scary / just plain fat? People like you normally sing like wounded mooses.”

What the judges neglect to mention at this point, because they don’t want to upset these people too early in the process, is that the weird / freaky / scary / just plan fat person will still eventually get kicked off the show, on the basis that, although their story makes good television for a few weeks, they’re ultimately still too weird / freaky / scary / just plain fat to sell records.

“Ah, but surely,” I hear you cry, “Susan ‘Subo’ Boyle is not your classic beauty – and she’s gone on to do fine, Mike.”

And you’re right to point that out. Even though you actually didn’t point it out, and I just put those words in your mouth. But Susan Boyle’s case was slightly different. For one thing, she appeared on Britain’s Got Talent – which is technically a different show on the basis that it’s got dogs on it – and for another, she instantly captured the entire global market in mega-selling ex-talent show weirdness, leaving nothing for anyone else to cash in on.

Her true legacy has been what we’re witnessing in this latest series: the somewhat odder individuals enjoying a lot more of the spotlight, the morale-crushing reality check of Boot Camp still some way off for them.

As for the rest of us, watching at home, there’s a lesson to be learned if we plan on entering this contest ourselves next year. Namely, forget the sob stories and cultivate the image instead: get hold of some ugly, ill-fitting clothes, pile on a few pounds, avoid sunlight, ask a blind person to cut your hair and generally develop the kind of aura that will guarantee you a double seat whenever you use public transport.

Then learn to sing in tune.

It’ll be worth it just for the look on Tulisa’s face.

* Read Mike Ward every day in the Daily Star and every weekend in the Daily Express Saturday magazine.

Another old post from June 2010: Corrie’s Tony goes nuts among the knickers

We got Coronation Street back last night. Tony Gordon, the businessman-turned-lunatic, was still holding two people hostage in Underworld, the silly local knicker factory. He was out for revenge, although it took me a moment to remember what for.

He’d escaped from jail, where he was meant to be serving a life sentence for murdering the dopey man his wife Carla had been having an affair with. Or at least arranging for him to be killed in a hit and run, if you want to be picky. The hostages were Carla herself, who used to be the love of Tony’s life, and Hayley, who used to be Harold.

I think Tony was out for revenge for getting sent to jail, although if he goes around arranging for people to be run over, what does he expect?

He’d snatched Carla and Hayley with the help of a man called Robbie, his former cellmate, who in real life was Hugo out of The Vicar Of Dibley. Robbie had pretended to be a nice person, like he is when he’s Hugo, in order to get Carla and Hayley on his side. And then he’d revealed to them that he wasn’t like Hugo at all, ha ha. He was actually a bit mental. They’d have kicked themselves, only he’d tied them to chairs.

Things didn’t look good for Carla and Hayley, especially after Tony then went and killed mental Robbie. Hayley felt especially upset because she’d done nothing wrong. Her only crime was that she was married, although not properly, to Roy, the local café owner who likes steam trains and always carries his things around in a shopping bag.

When Tony had thought he was dying from a heart attack a few months ago, he’d owned up to Roy about committing murder. When Tony had got better after all, he realised he shouldn’t have done this. He’d then tried to shut Roy up by attempting to drown him in the canal, but he hadn’t managed. So now he was out to hurt Roy in the way he thought would be most effective, other than maybe kneeing him in the testicles. Roy loved Hayley – who, of course, used to have testicles herself – more than anything, so Tony knew Roy would hate anything hideous to happen to her…

And then Maria showed up, which messed with Tony’s plans a bit. Maria was Tony’s most recent ex, and had loved him to bits, even with his funny sticky-out eye, until she’d discovered he was a psychopath. Maria had previously been married to Liam, the man Tony’s wife Carla had an affair with and who Tony had then arranged to have killed. Maria had always suspected that Tony was behind Liam’s killing, but then changed her mind when everyone told her she was behaving like a barmpot. She’d then fallen in love with him instead.

Also, Carla had once been married to Liam’s late brother Paul. It’s all jolly confusing and probably explains why everyone in Coronation Street drinks so much.

Anyway, Maria ended up in the factory with Tony’s two hostages. She screamed when she saw Robbie/Hugo lying dead on the floor. Tony promised not to hurt her but didn’t promise not to hurt Carla and Hayley. He threatened bad things would happen if Maria walked back out of the factory. But she did and they didn’t. Not at once, anyway.

Tony then produced a can of petrol out of thin air and started splashing the contents around the factory. Hayley and Carla looked even more frightened than ever.

And then we got the closing music, which the Corrie people have changed a bit in the last few days and doesn’t really sound dramatic enough to go with a scene where a mad man with a sticky-out eye is about to set fire to himself, his wife, 1000 rolls of polyester knicker material and a woman who used to be a man. It needed the EastEnders doof-doof.

Talking of EastEnders, Max has his eye on a new woman. She used to be in Footballers’ Wives, where she made a curry out of someone’s dog.