Poor show by Royal Variety
ROD Stewart bailed out of headlining the Royal Variety Performance with a sore throat.
Shame. Rod gargling with Listerine would have been more entertaining than Robbie Williams desecrating Slade’s Christmas classic.
Host Rob Beckett’s unlikely “not a double act” with professional sourpuss Romesh Ranganathan felt, as Rom said, “like a booking error”. Burke and Hare had more charisma. Beckett did better on his own, recycling his routine about his wife’s family and their taste for fancy tea: “The mother-in-law offered me a red bush. I nearly fainted.”
Frank Skinner came on stage with his shirt hanging out, giving the impression he’d just got lucky backstage with a chorus girl...or, luckier, with a contortionist.
Another act got their biggest laugh by announcing: “I did a poo and it was massive.” Quality entertainment.
The whiff of “will this do?” hung over the night. It was 75% pop and musical theatre with no time for magicians, mimics or ventriloquists.
Luke Evans sang well but looked like he was auditioning for an action film.
Harry Connick Jnr came all that way for one song...
We got a Cirque du Soleil contortionist (it’s never Zippo’s, is it?), Austrian tumblers, BGT winner Colin Thackeray and the cast of Mary Poppins (Mary wasn’t right).
Come From Afar made me want to Stay Well Away.
Traditional variety bills build to a star-studded crescendo. ITV’s just peter out. The comedy headliners were unknowns Flo and Joan. They deliberately swerve funnier and more popular variety entertainers because they think they know better than the public – a mixture of arrogance and snobbery that has consistently led to dismal failure.
The Royal worked better when ITV and the BBC took it in turns, providing a much-needed element of competition, because ITV are to variety what Dan Osborne is to fidelity.