Why we Brits love to hate James Corden
As his US show ends, Stephen Armstrong explains why we need this all-rounder back on the nation’s TVS
IHe’s one of our most successful exports. He sings, acts, writes, presents – and irritates
n a surprise move, James Corden has quit his job hosting The Late Late Show on US TV network CBS – which reportedly pays him $7million a year – in a bid to spend more time in the UK. It’s a decision seemingly hailed with cries of joy by almost no one actually living in the UK.
Twitter, a site that rarely expresses anger, posted suggestions that Tyson Fury fight him next, pictures of armed men at the British border aiming to keep Corden out (a Corden cordon, if you will) and abuse from terrified Doctor Who fans, as rumours abounded that Russell T Davies would be signing the Hillingdon born actor-cum-presenter as the 14th Time Lord.
If the British public’s relationship with James Corden were to be translated into an actual relationship, it would be a little like an internally self-abusive love affair between an addict filled with self-loathing and James Corden. We hate him so much and yet we keep coming back for more.
His career was clearly over in May 2019 when he took part in a Reddit Ask Me Anything – a real time Q&A session on the online chat forum where anonymous users can ask celebrities… well, anything. Theoretically risky, they’re usually surprisingly banal – except in Corden’s case, where the session turned into a brutal roasting.
He managed to answer three of more than 700 insulting pseudoquestions. The few printable ones included: “How have you managed to make it this far?”, “Why are you, James, such a deeply unpleasant person?”, “Do you feel like you are given enough credit for managing to ‘make it’ in America with your severe unlikeableness and apparent complete lack of comedic ability?” and “Why did you think this was a good idea?”
There was so much hate delightedly amplified by the UK media that his race was clearly run. Ridiculously, he then put out a special episode of Gavin and Stacey, the BBC sitcom he co-created with Ruth Jones, on Christmas Day 2019. He had no chance and the whole thing was embarrassing. Except… the highest rated Christmas Day sitcom episode in TV history is the 1996 Only Fools and Horses special, which attracted a staggering 24.35million viewers. Gavin and Stacey comes second with 17.92million. Both were the most-watched programmes of their respective years, and TV was different in the 1990s. For comparison, 1996 included the England v Germany semi-final in the Euros, which attracted 17.46million viewers, while 2019 saw England play South Africa in the Rugby World Cup final, gathering 9.45million viewers. They think Corden’s over. He isn’t now.
Two years later, he again ruined his career by hosting Friends: The Reunion. Social media was irked at his temerity. “James Corden adding the Friends reunion to the list of things he’s ruined with his mere presence,” said one wag. The tumbleweed that greeted his performance gave Sky its second highest ratings of all time.
Obviously it was all down to the Friends cast, right? Wrong. The Reunion was the result of the most powerful alchemy in celeb-based TV – Corden and his producer Ben Winston, the son of Lord (Robert) and Lady Winston, his partner in the production company Fulwell 73 – and the man who persuaded the Friends to reunite. The duo met when Winston worked as a runner on Channel 4 drama Teachers, in which Corden played a student.
They bonded over football and, according to Winston, “recognised great ambition in each other”. The two stayed in touch and Robert – by then directing X Factor promos with judge Gary Barlow – stepped in when Corden was facing a career catastrophe after the failure of his sketch show Horne & Corden, alongside Gavin and Stacey co-star Matthew Horne.
Winston directed the 2014 documentary When Corden Met Barlow; you can find this on Youtube and it’s worth watching. Gary Barlow picks Corden up in his black Range Rover and they tour the sites of Barlow’s career, singing along with Barlow’s mixtape in the car. It’s the founding moment of Corden’s Late Late Show viral monster Carpool Karaoke, where famous names such as Michelle Obama, Paul Mccartney, Barbra Streisand and George Clooney warble along with Corden in a car.
The slot is designed as much for Youtube as TV – Adele’s 2016 appearance has more than 250 million online views compared with the show’s ratings of just under one million – so sells more records and downloads than almost any other promotional tool.
“Winston and the team at Fulwell are fans and enthusiasts first,” explains Ed Waller, editorial director of TV industry bible C21 Media. “Their shows don’t feature tough questions, they’re basically hagiographies. That’s why they’ve got the best contacts books in sport, pop and Hollywood. They have the access and the kudos.”
Assuming Corden avoids the massed volleys of the Twitter Rifles and doesn’t enter the Tardis, the Winston/ Corden contacts book will come with him. If ITV was smart it would heave Jonathan Ross or Ant & Dec or Simon Cowell – any of them, please – off air and stick him in a light entertainment prime time slot. If the BBC was smart, it’d offer him a sitcom/presenter deal and cash in on his West Coast contacts. If Netflix was smart, it would shove Ricky Gervais off screen and place Corden in its “funny Brit” slot. If Channel 4 were smart, it would sell itself to him.
Because in Corden we have a taxpayer-funded talent, the product of the BBC and subsidised theatre, who has carved out a niche in the most commercial television market in the world on his (and Winston’s) own terms. CBS is on record that “we desperately tried to keep him for longer, but James only wanted to do one more year”.
Indeed, the depressingly illinformed White Paper on the future of broadcasting published this week by the Government includes, among the deckchair-on-titanic fiddling, the ambition for British TV “to compete fairly and continue to make shows loved at home and abroad – huge international hits reflecting a vision of a modern UK”.
This sounds pretty much like Corden’s Late Late Show, where Chris Martin, Adele, Riz Ahmed, Elton John, Harry Styles and Rod Stewart warble in the same carpool karaoke as A$AP Rocky, Stevie Wonder, Madonna and Bruno Mars. Corden and Winston have a strong team of talent spotters, locked into the global phenomenon of Korean boy band BTS – one of the few groups since the Beatles to get four top 10 US albums in under two years – early and hard, giving them shovelfuls of youth at a time when the BBC is appealing mainly to the 60-plus demographic.
People may call him fake, people may call him fat, people may call him talentless – and it’s true his drinking and drug-taking years meant he lost his way for a while. It’s also true he’s a bit Marmite … But he’s one of our most successful exports. He sings, acts, writes, presents and irritates. Indeed, his nearest equivalent is probably Noel Coward – London suburbs, fake accent, Atlantic reputation and someone you’d never want to see naked. The knighthood must be on its way.