It’s a rarity to find the words ‘Nick’, ‘Knowles’ and ‘music’ in the same sentence, particularly if you have had the misfortune to listen to his seminal album Every Kind of People.

Currently ranked in the top 17,800 music bestsellers chart on Amazon, it received rave reviews including ‘so good it makes your ears bleed’ and ‘bought for a friend who has since moved to New Zealand. I’m not sure if the two are connected.'

Anyhow, I digress: During a televisual lull last night I switched on to one of Messr Knowles’ programmes.

READ MORE:

I didn’t catch the name but believe it may have been the one with the channel 5 style dramatic title: DIY: SOS! Which is the televisual equivalent of describing anyone who carried on as normal and went to work during the pandemic as a member of the ‘front line’ (a term which I find rather offensive when compared to servicepeople who are the true front liners).

As I switched on, the sound was down and some mundane activity involving a skip, hi viz jackets and hard hats greeted me, along with the sight of Knowles standing with his tanned skin and ripped torso as he sweat profusely, despite doing little more than standing in his pre-requisite teapot position of hand on hips as he pointed at some soffit.

Bored, a few seconds later I turned the sound up and that’s when the real star of the show hit me straight between the eyes: the background music.

Among the rubble and mayhem of the job in hand which, inexplicably always seems to hit their target by seconds, Nick gave us the sad story.

Behind the tale of woe lay orchestral music, laced with violins and melancholy as the entire programme geared us up to become emotive. Now as an amateur DIY’er I have cried many a time: but usually through hitting my thumb with a club hammer or having to pay for the neighbours’ fences, but never due to death, destruction, or critical illness.

The stories' causes are worthy, no doubt, but the unsung heroes of the show are not Knowles with his multimillion pound pay cheque which he wastes on recording studio time, but the composers who not only tug on the heartstrings but rip them from the pulmonary trunk.

READ MORE:

The same method can be applied to any terrestrial big hitters including the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.

With the latter it is a given that you stand to get four yeses if you are aged under 16, no matter what the talent, but cast iron guaranteed to get covered in gold confetti if you have the much-vaulted back story.

Again, the message only hits home with some sad tunes which set the celebrity cryometer barometer into effect: If it’s a trip on the stairs and broken ankle, Amanda will sob, all the way up to Simon who needs to be convinced by a gunman taking out your immediate family and three other generations, along with the dog succumbing after being fatally hit by a Volvo V40 at the weekend.

The power of music has the ability to unite and ignite, bringing flashbacks and memories but also, as they have proved to a tee, to evoke emotion and sympathy to a cause, for programmes whose main focus is to increase viewing figures and thus advertising revenues.

Conversely, it was refreshing to witness Rose Ayling Ellis deservedly winning the Bafta for the ‘must see moment’ for her silent Strictly dance.

To provoke the emotion they did (and Mr grumpy here also welled up) by the simple turning off of the volume gave more of an insight, for a moment in time, of the tribulations faced by the profoundly deaf.

Not only that, but it proved that the visual can be more powerful than the audio on rare occasion, although watching Nick Knowles music videos tells me it’s a very close-run thing….