Damn You, Jimmy Carr!

I've never been much of a fan of Jimmy Carr. I think he's overexposed and over-rated. Also he looks weird. I think most of it stems from the first time I saw him, which was him doing stand-up. He told old jokes badly and made no effort to tie them into a coherent act. I've not liked him much ever since.

That said, he is funny when he's off-the-cuff, and he does have a pleasing habit of mocking people who deserve it. He was on Jonathan Ross's show a while ago and they both insulted each other for several minutes before eventually Ross had to bring on a new guest.

But damn, damn, damn you Jimmy Carr for so utterly failing to capitalise on what we now know was one of the greatest opportunities of all time: Anne Widdecombe has promised never to appear on Have I Got News For You again because of his fairly relentless mockery of her (which is of course good news, which combined with her retirement from politics means the number of things she's crap at but does anyway is slowly but surely diminishing). And he was fairly harsh, but to be fair, if she's stupid enough to sit in front of a professional comedian on national television, admit she called her cat "Arbuthnot", and proceed to demonstrate her air-raid-siren-like tri-syllabic call which makes that name a particularly efficient choice, then what the hell did she think was going to happen?

"His idea of wit is a barrage of filth and the sort of humour most men grow out of in their teens," she harrumphs in her Daily Express column today.

You know, because to understand just how infantile the filth that BBC2 truly is requires the kind of well-developed mind that's really only found in the intellectual elite that is the readership of the Daily Express (today's top searches: madeleine; Madeleine McCann; Princess Diana; mccann; [empty string]; Crossword; Kate Middleton; offers; madeline; sunday express), a level of culture and sophistication I naturally aspire to one day achieve.

"The edit got rid of much of it but there's no amount of money for which I would go through those two recording hours again. At one stage I nearly walked out." (from the Guardian)

Nearly? That's not good enough! Think how fantastic it would have been if she'd walked out! And he only had to push her that little bit harder.

Damn, damn, damn you, Jimmy Carr!

(Those were the genuine top searches today. "Princess Diana" is the example search it does if you don't type anything in -- which makes the presence of the null string in the top searches all the more fascinating. I also see Express readers can't spell the name "Madeleine" any more consistently than the hacks who write for the Metro.)

Have I Got Views For You

I used to love Have I Got News For You. It was an intelligent and topical panel show with a good presenter.

I do not like Have I Got News For You. It is a pathetic excuse to show poor-quality not-funny video clips downloaded from the internet, presented by a parade of people none of whom are TV presenters, just so that Ian Hislop can make the same tired snide comments at them while Paul Merton talks nonsense and generally acts like he's totally bored of the whole thing (which is fair enough) and the guests say nothing at all. Anne Widdecombe, who I hate anyway, presented the show last time, and she was rubbish at it. (She's rubbish at everything she tries to do, in my experience, particularly politics.) The answer to the odd-one-out round was "he's the only one whose name isn't a type of oven". Seriously. That's not satire. It's not even topical -- their names were ovens this time a decade ago. The guest publication has taken over the missing words round, so that's not topical either. The "In The News This Week" routine that bookends the show isn't topical. Last week one of the questions was "how did silkworms cause trouble in 1947", and the answer was "by coming from the wrong countries". That's not topical, and nobody will know the answer. That's more like a QI question, except that it's not remotely interesting.

I find that I'm increasingly watching Have I Got News For You solely for Paul Merton, and he's not at his best on the show.

Probably it's because it's not shown on a Thursday.