Spectator sport

On Sunday night Cowell, who has been abusing the Irish twins, John and Edward — they resemble one’s children singing at you far too long because they have got your attention — changed his mind and kept them in the competition. Thousands of viewers complained that the programme has ‘lost its credibility’. Yes, it has. And Noddy isn’t a real human being, either.

I watched The Thick Of It (BBC2, Saturday) with an American friend who loved it, even though half the references must have whizzed past him. He pointed out afterwards that we actually want the loathsome Malcolm Tucker to come out on top, just as we wanted JR’s machinations to succeed in Dallas. That’s what hooks us. My only anxiety is about what Armando Iannucci and the gang can come up with to skewer the Cameron lot from May next year. I hope they are working on it now.

Michael Portillo presented Digging Up the Dead (BBC4, Monday), a programme about Spain finally coming to terms with its ghastly civil war. Portillo’s father Luis fled from Franco, and married an Englishwoman, ‘so if it hadn’t been for the Spanish civil war, I wouldn’t exist’. I hadn’t realised that 4,400 victims of summary execution are buried a short way from where we sipped coffee in Malaga last summer. The programme was beautifully judged, full of fascinating yet grim information, and deeply affecting.

But Portillo’s last programme was about a classmate who committed suicide, and before that he investigated humane methods of capital punishment. A theme is emerging here. There may be some ancient family curse: ‘If Portillo’s show be on the box / Then death shall shake his gory locks…’