In spite of the hype, I enjoy the World Cup. But I don’t enjoy the omnipresent James Corden, who played the clingy, footie-loving, curry-scoffing, lager-glugging, belly-baring, deeply annoying best friend in Gavin and Stacey.
In spite of the hype, I enjoy the World Cup. But I don’t enjoy the omnipresent James Corden, who played the clingy, footie-loving, curry-scoffing, lager-glugging, belly-baring, deeply annoying best friend in Gavin and Stacey. That was funny. Bringing the same persona into his World Cup Live programmes (ITV, too often) is just embarrassing. Corden is from that school of comedians who think that laughing a lot is, in itself, funny. He’s like that table full of drunks in a restaurant who imagine you share their hilarity, when actually you loathe them. He is a human vuvuzela, making a loud and meaningless noise, because he can.
His first show, after the England v. USA match, included, for no apparent reason, Simon Cowell, who may feel that he doesn’t get enough exposure on television already. Cowell spent most of a grim half-hour looking in need of a red button to press in order to get rid of everyone else. And there was Katy Perry, who is an American pop singer. Her fiancé, Russell Brand, is apparently a West Ham fan. So?
Worst of all, even though the programme began just 20 minutes after the match ended, it in no way reflected the national mood of mingled pity and resentment we all felt for Robert Green, the wretched England goalkeeper. It felt packaged and preplanned. They couldn’t have changed it if England had just won 6–0 or been humiliatingly defeated.
Presumably ITV felt that by signing a footie-loving, curry-scoffing, etc., fattie they would appeal to the average fan.
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