Hi-ho telly lovers, and welcome to another bout of Idiot Boxing. It’s cold, it’s wet, and it’s dark, but fret not – simply bask in the glow of your lovely telly cube and all will be well again.
When people compile fictional lists of British national treasures, the same names tend to crop up – Stephen Fry, Sir David Attenborough, Sir Bobby Robson – and each has doubtless earned the acclaim and affection of the general public. However, there is always one name I feel is unfairly overlooked. Large of collar, bespectacled and bald – that man is Harry Hill.
It s cold, it’s wet, and it’s dark, but fret not
Some may scoff (and they shouldn’t, it’s a ghastly, guttural noise – it’s far nicer to express your derision silently) at the merest suggestion that Harry Hill ranks alongside such luminaries as Fry and his ilk, but it is the very fact that, even at the ripe old age of 44, he is still so relentlessly silly that he should be celebrated. The Frys, Attenboroughs and Robsons of the world are so revered because they are the nation’s kindly uncles and grandfathers. Hill, on the other hand, is the older brother who refuses to grow up, and long may his commitment to frivolity continue.
Nowhere is his passion for the absurd and silly more evident than in his criminally under-rated and often overlooked Telly Burp (ITV). ITV rightfully has an appalling reputation when it comes to comedy (Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show and Keith Lemon’s World Tour, hang your heads in shame.), but Harry Hill’s Telly Burp is a shining beacon amongst a festering ocean of cack. The writing is characteristically surreal and typically dense with jokes, and not a second of the show is wasted. Hill fills time and space so effortlessly with the merest raise of an eyebrow, that he puts far wordier and physically effervescent comics to shame. In less skilled hands, the show could easily end up as a canned laughter filled atrocity, chocked full of weak and generic observations on the week’s telly. In Hill’s hands, it feels more like a Channel 4 show recorded on a typically garish and primary-coloured ITV stage.
Viewers who caught this week’s show were treated to a WI group singing a Ting-Ting’s song, a fight between two cherries on an ironing board and a bowl of meat and spaghetti, and some much deserved piss-taking of ITV’s rival to The Apprentice, which is called something like “Natural Born Sellers”. It might seem like lazy journalism that I haven’t bothered to check, but if ITV aren’t going to bother to make the show even remotely entertaining, then I don’t see why I should bother.
The writing is characteristically surreal and typically dense with jokes
Harry Hill then, is undoubtedly a national treasure – though whether or not we can expect him to ever be Sir Harry or Lord Harry is quite another matter. The lapels of his suit are already fairly populated with badges anyway, so I shouldn’t think he’ll be too bothered either way.
