Document 1626

TV critic review column: TV's Ditched as I Switched on to Partying

Author(s): Paul English

Copyright holder(s): Derek Stewart-Brown: on behalf of The Scottish Daily Record and Sunday Mail Ltd

TV'S DITCHED AS I SWITCHED ON TO PARTYING

4 January 2007

IT's been a long relationship, and on Sunday night I think I pushed it a bit too far...

As a circle of 14 well-oiled wanderers joined hands and stamped feet to bring in 2007 with an impromptu version of Auld Lang Syne in my living room, I realised my loyal companion had been left in the corner - forlorn, ignored, resentful.

Yep, on Hogmanay - the TV reviewer's equivalent of his wedding night - I slung my telly a New Year rubber ear.

Let me start 2007 with a confession for those who think I spend every night sitting in front of the TV conjuring cleverly cynical responses and insights of staggering genius in response to telly. I don't. And I don't spend every night sitting in front of the telly either...

The busy wee elves at the TV stations send review copies of the week's viewing to Record towers in time (often) for Thursday's review column. For everything else, well, there's digital Betamax, otherwise known as Sky +.

So my date with Hogmanay telly came not with the warm fuzz of drunkenness, but instead through the sensitive filters of a January 2nd detox -i.e. I'd nae bevvy left after the party. No matter. After 10 minutes of stv's Hogmanay Stories with Colin & Justin, I was down on my hands and knees sooking at the stubborn stain in the carpet in the vain hope it was two-day old whisky.

With more cheese than my cocktail stick hedgehog, the boys did lots of that 'what a big surprise' look they do whenever they're near a camera - you know, the one everyone else reserves for five-year-olds unwrapping Christmas presents. The pre-recorded party-thrown in early December - included homespun Hogmanay memories from celebrities, with Cartoon Cavalcade's Glen Michael showing how he's been spending his retirement talking like Prince Charles, and Michelle McManus miming Wild Mountain Thyme so painfully that next year they'd be better asking Celtic's Stephen...

Jackie Bird fell fowl (sorry) of the wind too, with BBC 1's pre-recorded countdown littered with references to "tonight's big party in Edinburgh". After the Big Fella peed all over our party plans again, maybe Auntie McBeeb should just ask Lady Dame Sir Heather The Weather to count us down to the bells from now on..?

End of year staple Only An Excuse scored high in the laughter league, and the inaugural Still Game Hogmanay Special was just that - special - with four lift-bound pensioners in p**h and the lads enjoying Indian "samaos" and "proka" courtesy of newly-landed Navid in 1975.

Giving in to demands for a swatch at La Bird's gear this year, I was briefly reunited with my telly after the bells, and wur ain Paolo Nutini's version of Auld Lang, er, "Zyne". "Jesush. He shoundsh like an old wino," dribbled my mate from Hampshire, spilling Bristol Cream down the radiator. Maybe. But thank God nobody could hear us..

Information about Document 1626

TV critic review column: TV's Ditched as I Switched on to Partying