Paul No Grady

Well done ITV1. In order to make sure viewers feel comfortable with the timeslot Paul O Grady left when he moved to channel 4, you've decided to give the campest man on your network his own hour-long show where he basically dies on his own arse.

That Anthony Cotton Show (Weekdays 5pm, ITV1) has just finished it's first airing. Not my own choice of watching, but since starting this blog I've started to give new shows a chance. His style of interviewing is original, if not odd. Instead of talking with the B-List celebrities about future projects, he muses about their life and tells them his favourite projects that they've been in. There's your typical "banter-with-the-audience" section, where a few members have gifts for Anthony, and it's up to the audience to decide which gift will be diplayed on Anthony's "nik nak shelf". I swear to you the following dialogue occured:

Anthony: "So, which gift should go on my shelf? The cake, the sphinx or the foot-warmer?"
Audience: "The sphinx!"
Anthony: "Well, I didn't like the sphinx. Should I take the cake?"
Audience: "Yeah! The cake!"

Oh brilliant. We've got an audience full of nodding dogs.

Near the end of the show, we have our typical family-show messing around at the end. Here, we had a nudist painting who printed up a flower by painting her body parts. It must state somewhere in Anthony's contract that he must say something every fifteen seconds, because he wasn't letting the poor woman have a word in edgeways, simply by repeating the last two words of everything she said.

Painter: "And I use non-toxic paint"
Anthony: "Non-toxic paint.."
Painter: "For the petals I paint my forearms"
Anthony: "Forearms, yes..."
Painter: "And for the centre, I'll have to improvise"
Anthony: "Improvise, of course."

It got to the point where I was able to predict what he'd say next at the same time of which he said it. It's quite an odd interview style.

Paul O Grady he isn't, but I must say the show was entertaining... albeit for the wrong reasons.