I could have told the BBC mind-controllers that the One Show (indeed any show) would attract a larger audience without the utterly pointless Adrian Chiles. I could have told them, and I DID – and I was right. Since the charmless blubber lips has gone, the viewing figures are significantly up – another blow to the BBC’s policy of selecting presenters for arcane sociological purposes.
I was right about the boring, bland and incompetent Justin Webb on Today, too. Bring back Stourton.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Rebekah “Babbling” Brooks announces that two News International titles under her control will start charging for online access come next May.
I understand that serious, quality newsgathering has to be paid for, and I deplore the fact that when the time comes (as it will) in which all commercially published newspapers have to charge for their online content in order to supplement the dwindling hard copy sales that currently pay for quality journalism, the BBC will still be offering it for free, subsidised by the licence payers.
This will be profoundly unfair, and massively damaging to non-state owned independent newspapers. The BBC will owe it to the British public who fund it to abandon this anomaly.
It became clear during the London ‘Freeshite’ bonanza that hard copy papers given away for nothing are worth, in news terms, a lot less than the paper on which they are printed [and not even a healthy arse-wiping option].
Similarly, Mrs Brooks evidently doesn’t feel she can charge for online content of her two prominent best-selling ShagRags – the Sun and the Screws – no quality journalism to pay for there. (Unfortunately she does have a number of lawyers’ bills and penalties to pay for a pile of upcoming damages for illegal phone-hacking, and they still have to fork out for unproductive journo-nasties like Mazher Mahmood, because he knows all the dirt on sensitive former execs, like Les Hinton and Andy Coulson – not to mention Stuart Kuttner).

Still, one must – albeit grudgingly – hail Ol’ Rumplechops for having the bollocks to lead where others will have to follow.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Over the last 30 years the BBC has stealthily assumed the mantle of the nation’s cultural and social anthropological arbiter. This has encouraged them to foist on their listeners and viewers certain performers – mostly in the non-talent-related field of presenting – of minority types to which they feel we should become accustomed and appreciate. A recent example of this activity is the adoption and promotion of the untalented, blubber-lipped, dim-witted, mono-toned, unfunny, unattractive fatso, Adrian Chiles.
Slowly, inexorably as the style wizards at the BEEB have let it be seen that Chubby Chiles represents a suitable role model for our young and impressionable, his flabby frame has been increasingly exposed – until they have given him an early prime time slot on the One Show, a kind of Blue Peter for almost-grown-ups, to which a well-groomed orang-utan could not fail to draw knackered and desensitized viewers after a hard day’s work.
But someone up there in White (Ivory Tower) City has at last spotted that Chiles is about as exciting a performer as a plate of blancmange, and they’ve thought it expedient to replace him on the all-important Friday show with the idiotic but immeasurably more watchable Chris Evans (despite the Ginger One not speaking Brummie, Ulster or Geordie.)
Chiles’ blubbery lower lip is reported to have gone all wobbly at the news. He says he doesn’t want to do the other days if Evans does Friday sitting next to the perma-grinning Christine Bleakley. The BBC are said even to have offered him his own Friday night Plug-Whinge-And-Fart Show – what they like to call a Chat Show.
Incredibly, Chubby Chiles is on a £1m a year contract. It is contemptible that the Corporation should chuck our money around to people like this without even asking us. I challenge them to provide any evidence that there is a demand for Chiles, or others like him – e.g: the grim Mogadon that is Stephen Nolan, brought over from Belfast at great expense every week to turn off the listeners of otherwise perky Radio 5 Live for four hours over the weekend.
If Chiles walks from the One Show – which he is mercifully threatening to do – don’t be surprised if they try and slip Nolan in – another dreary fatty with no manners and a bowl of French fries on each shoulder.
And this is not the first time I’ve had to talk about this…

Popularity: 7% [?]