News Beat
Alex Scott thinks she’s a colossus of modern TV but she’s just another jungle desperado promoted WAY beyond her talents
ON I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here! this week, viewers were stunned to discover Alex Scott had smuggled a highly unlikely item into the ITV camp.
Not the salt sachets and air freshener that were confiscated on Monday’s episode.
The mystery ingredient, hitherto concealed from the public, was her own broadcasting genius.
At least, that was the ear-pricking claim Alex appeared to make when she declared it was her hope and belief she’s: “Always given a job and a role because I’m the best person for that role. Never because I tick a box”, though tick a couple of them she most certainly does.
Quite a conceit given Alex’s high-profile presenting jobs in television have recently included everything from Comic Relief and Children In Need, through Football Focus and the World Cup, to her own quiz show, The Tournament.
It’s a body of work, in fact, that suggests Alex is Terry Wogan, Jeff Stelling and Bradley Walsh all rolled into one.
Bite their tongues
How, then, did her campmates react to the news there was a television colossus in their midst?
With meek acceptance and a good deal of sycophancy from Lisa Riley, of course. For if any of them had said “Don’t you think the woke revolution helped you just a little bit?” their own career would’ve ended, immediately.
Viewers were meant to bite their tongues as well. However, anyone who’s seen Alex destroy Football Focus’s legacy knows she has only two settings. There’s awkwardly playful Alex, when she’s trying to engage in studio ‘bantz’ and there is deadly earnest Alex, when she’s regurgitating the coaching manual at Martin Keown and Dion Dublin.
The moment live TV throws her a curve-ball, though, as it did with a blizzard during an abandoned FA Cup tie between Alfreton and Walsall, in 2023, she dries up completely and you’d be as well replacing her with a snowman.
Deep down, I suspect, she’s aware of her limitations as well. Indeed, if she wasn’t, Alex wouldn’t be craving public affirmation in that Australian jungle, which has never been quite so jam-packed with desperados frantically seeking our approval and all sorts of other things beyond the appearance fee.
There are honourable exceptions, naturally, like Spandau’s Martin Kemp who is sweetly content with his life and just seems to have signed up for the change in scenery and a bit of a laugh. From most of the rest, though, you can smell the distress and ambition from 10,000 miles away.
EastEnders’ Shona McGarty, for instance, keeps bursting into song because she longs for a recording contract even more desperately than Lisa Riley clearly yearns for full Loose Woman status.
Others, of course, are using the experience as some form of therapy, as is the case with Jack Osbourne, Vogue Williams and resident box-of-frogs Ruby Wax who is by far the most interesting and entertaining person in the camp.
Ruby’s a particularly welcome presence, this year, because she’s also taken some of the limelight away from the insanely irritating Tom Read-Wilson, who is the constant star of his own one-man cabaret.
A full-time affectation is this boy, whose attention-seeking was previously restricted to E4’s obscure Celebs Go Dating, where he’d have been branded a sex pest if he was straight. But he’s now been allowed to go mainstream and clearly believes the sky’s the limit.
There was a time, not so long ago, of course, when television simply wouldn’t have indulged Tom’s act any longer than three weeks.
Ant and Dec would’ve been merciless, instead of strangely smitten, for the duration and ITV would have replaced him with the next OTT try-hard, as soon as the show was over.
Woke-driven
Now? The industry doesn’t indulge these egomaniacs, it actively encourages them.
It elevates Alex Scott far beyond her capabilities and even creates shows like ITV’s new travel advertorial The Great Escapers in the deluded belief some people might be missing Dean McCullough, who was 2024’s version of Tom Read-Wilson.
The only people who don’t seem adequately catered for in television’s brave new, woke-driven, minor celebrity-fixated world?
The poor bewildered viewers who crave real talent but haven’t even been given a proper explanation to Martin Kemp’s contraband conundrum yet. “It’s a big old tin of air freshener. I just can’t work out how Alex got it in.”
And I wouldn’t try, Martin. But I’m guessing it wasn’t “sideways”.
UNEXPECTED MORONS IN THE BAGGING AREA
THE Finish Line, Roman Kemp: “Walk The Line is a 2005 biopic about which country singer?” Ashleigh: “John Wayne.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Being Gazza, Tackling My Demons is a book by which footballer?”
Tara: “Gary Lineker.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “What TV comedy writer was born Lawrence Gene David?”
Alistair: “Lawrence of Arabia.”
“Larry David.”
RANDOM TV IRRITATIONS
GOOD Morning Britain’s caption cretins hitting a new low with: “Mum Prunella Scales was in Faulty Towers.”
Channel 4’s White Lotus rip-off, Summerwater, wasting six hours of everyone’s time. BBC2 simply cut-and-pasting all of its dumbest 21st Century political prejudices on to ancient Rome, in Civilisations: Rise And Fall.
And The Last Leg and Have I Got News For You using the same useless comedians to make the same jokes about the same targets, with the same underlying left-wing bias, every single week. Someone pull the plug on both, please.
Preferably at the same time.
SHOW’S COOKED, TORODE
AN overload of irony to kick off another Celebrity MasterChef, as host John Torode described it as: “The start of something truly fantastic.”
It’s not, obviously.
It’s the beginning of the end for John and his new co-host Grace Dent, from Chorlton And The Wheelies, who arrived with an operatic sense of her own “importance” which made you think she was debuting at La Scala rather than time-keeping at a rack of lamb contest.
For this is a show very slowly drowning in its own pomposity, scandals and repetitive obsessions (chocolate fondants, men in skirts etc), where the only possible excuse to keep watching is the needy desperation of the celebs.
This week’s intake included writer Dawn O’Porter, who seemed to have been practising for this moment since lockdown, singer Jaki Graham and Love Island’s Chris Hughes, who is so dense he was genuinely stunned to discover there are more than three species of fish: “Salmon, sea bass and trout.”
Mind you, he wasn’t much slower than Hollyoaks’ Jamie Lomas who was incapable of reading and understanding even the simplest instruction until Chris took it back to basics at their pairs challenge.
“Jamie. Imagine I’m really thick.”
Then imagine Gregg Wallace rocking back and forth on his bed muttering: “Two minutes. You’ve got two minutes.”
Honestly, it’s easier than you think.
TELLY quiz. RE: Celebrity MasterChef, who said: “Antony Costa is chicken thighs cooked in a Greek style?”
A) John Torode?
B) Grace Dent?
C) His LinkedIn profile?
QUIZ show answer of the week. The Finish Line, Roman Kemp: “In 2018, Vogue Williams married which reality star?”
Doniya: “Spencer Pratt.”
“No, Spencer Matthews.”
But I’m giving her the points anyway.
LOOKALIKE OF THE WEEK
THIS week’s winner is Bullseye guest Beau Greaves and Doctor Who’s head of woke propaganda, Russell T Davies.
Sent in by Paul Burkett, of Millwall, South London.
TV GOLD
BBC2’s Chris McCausland: Seeing Into The Future which was characteristically optimistic and devoid of self-pity.
Strictly’s Lewis Cope and Katya Jones performing the most joyful Charleston, on Strictly. BBC1’s Kingdom proving to be perfect Sunday evening telly.
Paramount + masterpiece Landman, featuring Billy Bob Thornton, who’s so good it’s possible to forget he looks like a sweary, red-neck Phillip Schofield.
And the Olympic-class ad-libbing of I’m A Celeb’s Ant and Dec, who are alive to every sound and movement in that jungle: “The cockatoos are out in force this morning.”
“Have you seen a cockatoo? . . .”
“Let’s just move on.”
GREAT SPORTING INSIGHTS
CHRIS SUTTON: “It was the first shot of the game and he headed it in.”
Sam Matterface: “Several players have been used as unused substitutes.”
And Paul Merson: “Mentally, he’s very good physically.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
- THE Death Of Bunny Munro. Not a moment too soon.
ONE week on from the happiest sporting moment of my life, moral busybodies at BBC and Sky News continue to report that: “Scotland’s MEN have qualified for the World Cup.”
Why?
In case we thought it was Scotland’s pine marten community who’d beaten Denmark?
For genuine fear of a fascist uprising that would force all women to stop playing football and walk four paces behind their husbands?
No. It’s purely because, without their woke nitpicking, all of the most pointless mediocrities in broadcasting would be out of a job and we’d be free to think for ourselves and just enjoy the football.
And that can’t happen, obviously.
GREAT TV LIES AND DELUSIONS OF THE WEEK
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the week.
I’m a Celeb, Ant: “Tom’s a man of many talents, isn’t he.”
Celebrity Masterchef, Dawn O’Porter: “I’ve got through to the quarter-finals, so this hasn’t been a total waste of time.”
And an ITV continuity announcer, on Monday: “Actor Timothy West will talk All Creatures Great and Small on tomorrow’s Good Morning Britain.”
Unlikely, I’d have thought.
