Not-so-fresh viewing

‘I’m sure I’ve read this before,’ said the Fawn, skimming through my review of Heroes in the week-before-last’s Speccie.

‘I’m sure I’ve read this before,’ said the Fawn, skimming through my review of Heroes in the week-before-last’s Speccie. ‘You can’t have done, we were away when it came out,’ I said. ‘Well, it seems very familiar,’ she said. ‘That’ll be because all my pieces start to resemble one another after a time. Same style. Same jokes. Maybe I should just give up now, before anyone else notices.’

But I can’t, obviously. Nor can Michael Wood, Griff Rhys Jones, Tony Robinson, Dan Cruickshank, Simon Schama, Stephen Fry, Lenny Henry, Gordon Ramsay or any of those zillion and one annoyingly ubiquitous media types. Different fame levels but the same problem. We all know, deep down, that we have appalling limitations and glaringly predictable tics, and that we’ve said all we’re ever going to say many years ago. But damn it, we’re going to go on saying and doing it all the same because our agents and families and bank managers and egos won’t let us stop till we’re dead.

Take Rick Stein. Does the man need the money? (One for those of you holidaying near Padstow: ‘Takeaway cod and chips for four, moy lovely? Thank you, that’ll be £2,000.99.’) Except on his special subject of fish — which he’s done to death now, so that doesn’t count — has he ever said a single interesting thing in his entire life?

Yet here he is with another TV series — Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escape (BBC2, Wednesday) and it won’t be the last. After he’s done the Med, it’ll be Rick Stein’s Oz or Rick Stein’s USA; then, when he’s done the Far East, India and the Caribbean, he’ll be on to Rick Stein’s Baltic States; then, at just the point when he’s getting worried that Rick Stein’s Burkina Faso might not be quite the ratings-puller he’d prefer, one of his clever production people will go, ‘Wait a second.