IAN HYLAND
On last night’s telly
Bradley Walsh: Happy 60th Birthday, ITV ★★★★
Cheers to Jason Manford for throwing me into a mild panic just before the first ad break in this birthday tribute to his old mate Bradley Walsh.
In Tuesday’s Mirror, Bradley wasn’t in my Top 10 game show hosts of all time. The Chase is a quiz show – end of. So you can only imagine my surprise when I heard narrator Jason say: “Coming up, Bradley takes his place as the king of the game shows.”
A few minutes later, once Jason had reeled off a list that included such game show classics as Only Joking, Midas Touch, Odd One In, featuring Mr J. Manford, and Keep It In The Family, I knew my research had been sound.
However, as this lively one-off reminded us, Bradley hasn’t done too badly elsewhere.
It was still an odd programme for ITV to be putting out in prime time though. If Covid-19 hadn’t come along, Bradley would have probably had to make do with a Moonpig card signed “All at ITV”.
To be fair there are worse ways to fill a schedule.
Truth is, I would have been happy enough watching an hour of Bradley cracking up at rude-sounding names on The Chase. There was plenty of that here, plus some wonderful out-takes from that show and from Law And Order: UK.
This retrospective also helped me to finally put a date on a couple of landmark moments in his career.
One, the year I stopped confusing him for Brian Conley – 2001.
And two, the exact day he finally found a hairstyle that suited him – May, 31, 2004 – the night Danny Baldwin arrived on Coronation Street.
‘‘ If Covid-19 hadn’t come along, he’d probably have made do with a Moonpig card signed ‘All at ITV’