All those mediocrities gathered in one place…

THE foul-mouthed gorillas missing from the National TV Awards (ITV1, 29 October) were, of course, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.
But with or without those two smirking, overgrown, overpaid schoolboys, the event was always going to be a dismal letdown.
The programme’s slogan was “all the glamour, all the stars, all the action”.
“All the faces you’re bored rigid with” more like, as cameras panned over no-marks from The Bill, Hollyoaks (officially, the world’s worst soap opera), Strictly Spandex, and Britain’s Got Crap Singers.
David Tennant won a gong again, but he decided not to turn-up to this annual tack-fest…which shows impeccable taste on his part.
Instead, he was busy doing real work (well, “real work” in actors’ terms) at a theatre.
But he was interviewed live, during a break from treading the boards as Hamlet, to announce he’d be stepping down as Doctor Who after next year’s shows were in the can.
A frisson on indifference ran through the audience…
Elsewhere in the show, a succession of American “stars” I’d never heard of sashayed on to announce the winners, including some ditzy bird from Desperate Housewives.
As for Paris Hilton? Why, why, why?!
EastEnders won an award again – presumably for putting middle class syntax into the gobs of Working Claarse Cockerney Characters from Central Casting.
Then Simon Cowell got a prize for force-feeding our country and other unfortunate nations his dreadful “talent” shows that involve public humiliation of people who are too stupid to know they are being exploited.
Thanks heavens, now that I’m reviewing television again, that I have an en-suite vomitorium in my living room.

I HAVE, of course, enjoyed seeing BBC executives squirm over the puerile and offensive broadcast by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.
Having read a transcript of the broadcast I was disgusted by the nastiness of it – and the arrogance of BBC “entertainers” who think there is no limit to how cruel, tasteless and cynical they can be.
At least Brand had the decency to resign.
It remains to be seen what happens to Ross. For the moment he’s suspended. So there will be no chat show from him on BBC television this weekend – which is no great loss.
But if I was a BBC boss I’d sack Ross – even though it might cost me millions of pounds in licence-payers’ cash to rip up his contract.
If a high price has to be paid for a return to decency – so be it.
And if the bloated, arrogant fools who run the BBC get a lesson in humility as part of this process then that will have come not a moment too soon.