Where are these programmes going right? (From Watford Observer)

Where are these programmes going right?

11:35am Monday 19th October 2009

• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

It’s quite difficult to turn on the TV these days without coming across the X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing or one of the many genetically modified offspring of these two shows.

Just as the call of the first cuckoo heralds the arrival of summer, the ratings battle between these lumbering behemoths of light entertainment signals the advent of winter.

From now until Christmas, couch potatoes across the land will be glued to their sofas on Saturday and Sunday evenings - and even on week nights, too - as they tune into various spin-off shows that purport to bring viewers up to date with all the latest gossip from the behind the scenes.

Perhaps I’m getting old and cynical, but this year I just can’t work up the energy to follow either of these weekend blockbusters. For a start, the acts on the X-Factor are carbon copies of pretty much everything we’ve seen before - except those repellent Grimes twins, who appear to be visitors from a parallel evil universe - and over on BBC1, the replacement of dance doyen Arlene Philips with the pretty vacuous Alesha Dixon has only served to tarnish and devalue Strictly’s already flagging format.

Is it me or are you too suddenly more aware of the feathers fraying at the edges on those cheaply revealing spangled costumes this year?

If you’ll pardon the expression, this season’s ratings battle between Brucie and Simon Cowell can definitely be summed up in three little words: tit for tat.

Even if you can actually be bothered to watch one of these programmes, the fact that this year the format for each has been extended well beyond the limits of human endurance to straddle what seems like the whole weekend means that you have to invest an awful of time and effort to keep up.

I’m sorry, schedulers, but I’ve a got a life. There just aren’t enough hours in the weekend to speculate on the off-set wardrobe wars of Dannii and Cheryl or worry about Natalie Cassidy’s Cha Cha Cha.

Only the most dedicated viewers would be willing to run the risk of developing deep vein thrombosis by slumping motionless in front their small screen for the entire weekend to follow these tired timewasters.

Presumably this is the loyal and largely immobile band prized and targeted by advertisers?

On the single occasion I watched an episode of the X-Factor recently, the show was interrupted by so many commercial breaks that DFS sofas enjoyed more screen time than the contestants.

Strangely enough, DFS seemed to be plugging yet another ‘mega sale‘ - posing the important question, how unlucky would you have to be to buy a sofa from this particular chain on a day when the sale wasn’t on?

The other advert that cropped up with annoying regularity featured Aleksandr the oligarch meerkat. Now, I have to be careful what I say here because I recently upset a small boy when I told his mum in front of him what I’d really like to do to his favourite TV character.

(Let’s just say that sending a group of Stasi hyenas round to his burrow covers it nicely - simplz) But, honestly, I ask you, am I alone in finding the popularity of this feeble mono-‘joke’ campaign one of the most baffling things on TV?

I say ‘one of’ because the current adverts aimed at people who apparently thrill to the concept of coordinating the colour of their toilet flush with their bathroom décor or who find it intellectually challenging to rinse the brine from their tuna also make me want to hurl abuse or a tin of something wet and fishy at the plasma screen.

I’m saving my most hated advert of the moment to last though.

Possibly inspired by Simon Cowell’s sinister, Mack the Knife-style Hollywood smile, the strangely luminous glow emanating from Louis Walsh’s new set of dentures or that ultra-brite horsey thing going on with Dannii and Cheryl when they attempt to convey sympathy, the advert that seemed to appear most often in the breaks of the last X-Factor I watched promoted a new formulation toothpaste.

Indeed, this particular commercial cropped up so many times that by the end of the show I was word perfect.

Promoting a new blue minty gel, the advert in question features ‘Katy’ apparently from Islington, a girl so messianically excited about her toothpaste that you’d think she’d witnessed the second coming, or at the very least bought a Prada handbag instead of experiencing a slight fizzing sensation on rinsing.

Fixing her unnaturally aqua-fresh blue eyes on the camera, Katy tells us: “Yep, that looks like a toothpaste” - er, as opposed to what, pray, a haemorrhoid ointment, a manatee or maybe a traction engine?

I mean, how difficult can it be to identify a toothpaste? Yet Katy clearly thinks that this is a key selling point!

Extolling the many virtues of her new minty gel, she then whips herself into a frenzy of ad-speak including the immortal line: “It just wraps it up in bow”.

(It’s a toothpaste girl, for goodness sake, not a Chihuahua).

The coup de gras is the final line, which might have looked fine on the page but on Katy’s breathless delivery hangs in the air like a great steaming cloud of codswallop: “Where is this product going wrong? Nowhere!”

Note to the agency responsible for this piffle: where is this advert going wrong? Everywhere!

Mind you, the other advert that always made me howl (with laughter) was for male grooming product ‘Just For Men - Beards‘. Yes indeed, without a hint of irony, it really was called that, presumably to make it absolutely clear to all us hirsute females that if we wanted to darken our own facial hair we should seek out the sister product in the range.

Beards seem to be alarmingly fashionable at the moment.

I reeled in horror last week at a photograph of David Beckham in which, at first glance he appeared to wearing half a balaclava. On closer inspection, however, it was clear that facial fuzz and not Mrs B’s deficiencies on the knitting front were responsible for this abomination. He looked like Wolverine.

Even worse, news has reached me that thinking woman’s (stud) muffin Daniel Craig has recently been spotted modelling a beard larger than that attached to the average Old Testament prophet. Meanwhile, love god Brad Pitt has morphed into half of ZZ Top.

This is disturbing. If these iconic arbiters of male taste are dodging the lather, it can only be a matter of time before the likes of Simon, Louis, Brucie and even perhaps the very fashion-forward Dannii Minogue bring the trend to Saturday and Sunday night variety viewing?

Eeeuw!

Where is this look going wrong? Everywhere.