What a strange programme that was on TV tonight – Clive Anderson presenting something called The Funny Side of Talent.  Clive has been presenting TV shows for over twenty years, and radio shows before that.   Whose Line Is It Anyway ran for 10 years, he had his own chat show on Channel 4 and another one on the BBC, and is always popping up on QI.  His style is often a mixture of fluency and hesitancy but he is never lost for words…

…so why was he so wooden and awful on TV tonight?   He sounded like he had never been in a studio before.  He sounded like he was reading words he had never seen before, with absolutely no variation in tone or emphasis.  Was it a subtle joke to make us all think we could do better – since the theme was talent shows?   It reminded me of that sports edition of Mastermind with Des Lynam presenting it – a total car crash of a programme.

Still sat through it for all the old clips of Hughie Green and the dog saying “sausages” and the general nostalgia of some of the clips.

On a positive note: last week I watched Newsnight for a change where Tim Marlow was doing the arts segment.  What a natural.  I knew he could present programmes on paintings well enough, but who knew he could host discussions on cinema and literature with such skill?  When somebody is so enthusiastic and well-informed about one topic it is easy to imagine they are like that because they have specialised to the exclusion of other areas, but he was just brilliant.

If he is a regular I might have to start watching newsnight.