After this week's shopping taking me down to my last and final groat (perhaps I should have only had one bottle of rum and put back the toothpaste) I was delighted to see my wealthy uncle, who popped in for tea and scones.
SavagereservationsforClaridgesatsix lent me a tenner to pay off the gambling nuns that live in the flat above (who threaten to give me a good shoeing unless I pay up), then the both of us spent the afternoon laughing at beggars, stuffing shrimp cocktails into our slobbering faceholes and taking a jaunt to Paris to hurl pennies from on top of the Eiffel Tower, of which the security guard managed to turn a blind eye. Mainly on account of the fact that he was looking up at the time.
Following this extravagance, I was a bit bewildered to be sitting in front of The Million Pound Drop (C4) which started on Monday, a live game show which aims to give away a million brothel tokens to contestants who can answer 8 questions correctly. The contestants bet their million pound jackpot across one, or more, of 4 possible answers. If their chosen answer(s) prove to be wrong, the money drops out of sight and away forever, leaving the contestants regretful and sobbing like they've just sent their child to boarding school.First off, never have I seen so much cash up for grabs in such a cheap way. It appears that the set was built from the left overs from the Woolies clear out by GCSE art students the Sunday morning after buying fake IDs to get into the local boozer. It's not helped that it goes on. And on. And on. Until, by the time the credits roll, you actually feel liberated, like you're coming out of a deep coma and your senses are returning to you for the first time in decades.
The format plays out the interminably lengthy conflict between tedium and a niggling desire to prove yourself cleverer than the gurning contestants, keeping you interested, bored, irritated and ambivalent all at the same time. This odd selection of competing emotions is probably designed to stop you thinking too much about the title and conjuring with mental images of the morning after Godzilla and Mothra took a constipated King Kong out for a particularly spicy curry.
The contestants appear to have been handpicked from a random sample of Hollyoaks extras and the criminally insane, ranging from grinning, peppy little yappers trying to convey personality through the sheen of terror or wide eyed, talking bookends who look like they received council assistance to put their trousers on. I was amazed by their ability to be irritating and yet forgotten, almost while they're still playing the game.
And so to the host. Davina. Her chummy everywoman shtick creates a vortex of unlikability. She possesses a unique kind of reverse Midas touch when it comes to personality, in that everything she touches (says or secretly thinks) turns to insincere. She tries so very hard to come across as a next door gal, a tomboy mukka, winking (I said winking) into the camera and pulling that face she makes when she doesn't like something (you know the one. It's a kind of lip curl of faux disgust and confusion that is supposed to make us think she 'doesn't take herself too seriously' but makes her come across as a patronising old sow, who might be having a stroke).
The harder she works on her breezy charm the more, I fancy, she is masking the fact that she's an overacting pantomime dame, irritating people's arses off and telling them she 'loves them' a good twelve minutes after she met them...
"Here's Carol and Mike from Redditch"
"Hi Davina.."
"Wow, I love you... the way you're, like, so cool about it... I luuuvvv' you guys, you're great"
Oh sod off Davina. You're about as warm and fuzzy as myxomatosis.
Her gracious gift of love extends until the time it takes for these people's dreams to fall down an unconvincing plastic slide like a huge Ker-plunk of destiny, then it's back to the green room to call her fake mum and tell her about some hair dye.
With the likes of Lauren Laverne, Kirsty Wark and Gabby Logan around, I can't understand how her style of anti-entertainment still gets on the box. Especially as, when she's not presenting and on shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, she comes across as pretty likable. I get the distinct impression that the only million pound drop going on is the one into her bank account on Monday after the show. Either that, or that's my uncle at the top of the Eiffel Tower making paper aeroplanes from the foldin' money.
TheyplaysofineIthinkyou'llagree. xx
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