Beeb Icons mix grate and good
ESTELLE was talking about her gas oven on Come Dine With Me when she said: B.Sykes of Sudbury wins £35 for that howler. Keep ’em coming to the address at the top of the page.
HAS poor Rita been pranked on Corrie? On Wednesday she had an advert in the Kabin window for a “French polisher” – unsavoury slang for the sort of service Hilda Ogden never supplied, not even on honeymoon.
If the next advert says “beautiful butterfly needs mounting” we’ll know a red light district is operating within easy reach of
Rosamund Street.
I LOVE Cathy on Two Doors Down, but if she were your neighbour in a Glasgow suburb wouldn’t you be tempted to move to Arbroath or possibly rural Nebraska just to get the hell away from her?
ALFIE on EastEnders ain’t a bad bloke. He’s just fallen in with the wrong crowd – his family.
ICONS successfully shafted my New Year resolution to stop shouting at the telly. What a travesty!
Why was David Bowie pop’s only contender? Was he really more significant than Elvis or Aretha Franklin?
Imagine McCartney or Elton watching this at home, thinking: “How much more have I got to do?”
In typically patronising, we-know-best style, the Beeb want us to pick the greatest icon of the 20th century. But we can only vote for people they chose.
Like Gertrude Bell. She certainly achieved tremendous things, but how many people could pick her out in a police line-up?
Ditto Roosevelt. The 1930s President was a great man; and a reminder that the American dream once meant more than just trampling over the other guy... but what would his picture score on Pointless?
It’s Che Guevara’s image that lives on, not FDR’s.
Tanni Grey-Thompson was magnificent, winning 11 paralympic golds. But is she really a bigger sporting contender than George Best, Ronnie O’Sullivan or boxer Jimmy Wilde?
You can understand the BBC wanting to keep mass murderers like Mao, Adolf and Uncle Joe at bay, but it’s perverse to blank Sinatra, Dylan and the Queen.
Groucho, John Wayne and Otis are all Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday,
10 Lower Thames Street, London
EC3R 6EN NAMES IN THE FRAME: Some of the famous – and not so famous – faces
AWOL, along with Jagger, Bogart, Louis Armstrong, Attlee, Dali, Hendrix, Freddie Mercury, Jesse Owens and Ronald Reagan.
Reducing the series to a box-ticking exercise ensured it reflects BBC-approved values, i.e. the views of what Clarkson called “seven people in Islington” (terribly unfair on the 37 who live in Hampstead).
And they really didn’t want Churchill to win. Cue digs about the Bengal famine (caused by Japan occupying Burma in 1943...when there just might have been a few other things going on).
By today’s standards, Winnie had some dodgy views, but so did most people decades ago – H.G. Wells supported eugenics, Castro persecuted gays. Besides, Gallipoli was Winston’s real Achilles heel.
Niall Ferguson would’ve put Churchill’s case better than Sir Trevor McDonald, himself a broadcasting colossus compared to Dermot O’Dreary...
If this was about British icons, where was Tommy Cooper? If it’s global, where’s Pavarotti? Why does it have to be a half-baked contest anyway? Why not just celebrate the greats? MARTIN Clunes, right, Manhunt... SAS: Who Dares Wins...Hunted... When Heroes Fly, Netflix...The Paras: Men Of War. NISH Kumar, left, Question Time – Death In Paradise has more depth...Icons – more chronic than iconic…Cleaning Up – turning off.
‘I just twist all the knobs till the right one comes up’
STAGED “random audience chats” on entertainment shows. Grating padding on The Greatest Dancer. The BBC imposing “Common Era” on us (still no common sense). Most Haunted – it is to honest inquiry what Wayne Rooney is to sobriety.
WILL Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ divorce be a mini-series? Imagine the papers being delivered by one of his drivers…arriving late, in an oversized box, and tossed under next door’s hedge.