Imagine the scene at some BBC committee meeting. The Chief Officer for Commissioning, Unit Programming is setting out the problem. ‘Gentlemen, recent controversies — the Ross/Brand phone calls, the ongoing problem of Ross’s £6 million annual salary, which is more than the entire budget for a year of the Today programme, our own excessive pay and expenses — have brought mistrust and contempt on our management, which not even the record number of Emmys for Little Dorrit has erased. We urgently need to reclaim the moral and cultural high ground. Any suggestions?’
Up pops an underling: ‘Why don’t we bring back Hole in the Wall?’
COCUP: ‘Ah yes, the programme which brought almost universal scorn from the critics, who complained that it was tedious, childish, unredeemed garbage and called it Hole in the Head. Even Dale Winton — Dale Winton of Supermarket Sweep! — has jumped ship. And the first series became a running gag on TV Burp, when Harry Hill said Lord Reith must be turning in his grave. It was an object of derision on ITV1, of all channels, on a show which had 50 per cent higher audiences. So it clearly ticks all our boxes.’
Well, something like that must have happened because Hole in the Wall is back, Saturday nights on BBC1, as tacky and flimsy as its Styrofoam walls. The new host is a person called Anton Du Beke, who confuses shouting a lot and showing his teeth with charisma. ‘Good evening, Wall-lovers!’ he cries, an oxymoron like ‘Velveeta connoisseurs’. The ‘celebrities’ who appear include people who used to be almost well known, people you’ve never heard of and an underwear model with a troubled past.
If you haven’t ever seen Hole (and most sane people haven’t) the slebs are dressed in lycra. They stand in front of a swimming pool in which, as Anton puts it, ‘the water is so cold, it will give you frostbite in places you don’t want to get frostbite!’ — and the lameness of that remark is appropriate for the whole enterprise. He then shouts the show’s catchphrase, much mocked by Harry Hill, ‘Bring on the wall!’, and the slab of plastic approaches. In it is a human-sized hole of a peculiar shape. If the slebs can contort themselves, the hole passes over them; otherwise they are knocked into the pool. And that’s it, though there are a few exciting variations, like having more than one sleb on at a time.
So it’s as exciting as Pro-Am Pin the Tail on the Donkey. (You won’t be surprised to learn that the format comes from Japan, where most shows are either witless, cruel or both.) Yet the studio audience are clearly in a state of febrile excitement, which makes you wonder if they’ve been drugged or drip-fed gin. Much is made of the fact that the winners get to donate £10,000 to charity, though nobody mentions their fee for appearing, which will not be the minimum wage, even though some slebs would pay to appear, if only to boost their fee for opening convenience stores. It’s ghastly and the BBC shouldn’t do it.
Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers sounded better than it looked. The suppers weren’t all that simple, or attractive, since most of the recipes amounted to ‘chop up loads of ingredients, then add a bucket of cream’. One dessert included cream, ice cream, meringue, fruit, nuts, topped with icing sugar. Why not Nigel’s Heart Attack Platters?
The Secret Life of Twins (BBC1, Wednesday, Thursday) was intriguing, informative and entertaining. It almost restored my faith in the Beeb. q
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