✒The Black Hole of Calcutta is often invoked by Strictly Come Dancing studio audiences, and similar analogies were voiced when the launch show was recorded last week at Elstree, the studio where Ice Cold in Alex was shot. Among those complaining about the heat was Bruce Forsyth, who said off-camera: "I was in India in 1954 and they had air-conditioning in every bloody restaurant, every bar, and here we are! It's amazing, isn't it?" TV viewers were denied seeing one positive result of the tropical conditions, when a giant moth – compared by some in size to a bat, though by that stage they may have become unhinged – flew around the studio after mysteriously emerging from Forsyth's jacket. Perhaps it had been hibernating there since 1954.
✒Journalists invited to attend were even more restive than the dance lovers, as those who plumped for watching the show in the studio were asked to get there at 5.30pm and (with round-table interviews only starting at 11.15pm) forced to leave the Hertfordshire outpost and look for transport after midnight. BBC spinners' embargo rules – which included a strict ban on saying who was partnering who before the pairings were unveiled on screen – also prompted mention of piss-ups and breweries, since these bizarrely left hacks with nothing to write for their papers on the day of transmission. This forced them to get together and circumvent the Beeb's silly rules by divvying up quotes and agreeing to hold them back from Friday to Saturday.
✒ Monkey's advice is to take a peek at newbie Newsnight editor Ian Katz's Twitter feed (@iankatz1000) now, before the inevitable anti-candour clampdown from the BBC thought police. In his first week in charge – nicely coinciding with the premiere of the WikiLeaks film, in which Dan Stevens plays him – the former Guardian deputy editor was frank about the trickiness of getting more women on ("I WILL find them, but harder than I realised … It's just the chap experts are a lot easier to find") and of keeping Jeremy Paxman happy. The latter challenge is not yet one he seems to have mastered, as the anchorman made little secret of his scorn for having to (a) invite viewers to send in video shorts ("I can hardly wait"), and (b) quiz guests about Cheryl Cole's revamped bum and other tattoos, backdropped QI-style by giant images of body art ("that was the most ridiculous discussion I've ever chaired on Newsnight", guest Rachel Johnson tweeted him as saying after ripping his mike off). So it was possibly a little wistfully that Katz noted a French politician interviewed for another item "displayed formidable Paxman handling skills by referring to him as 'my dear'".
✒ Although TV's top suits will assemble for this week's Royal Television Society convention just two days after the parliamentary grilling of feuding past and present BBC grandees about stonking payoffs, there's no BBC session scheduled at Cambridge. Is the RTS going soft? Trying to explain, Channel 4 boss David Abraham, the event's chairman, mystifyingly says "Tony Hall is still getting his feet under the table so we have deliberately not put the BBC at the centre of debate". Is this the same Hall, appointed last November, who fearlessly leapt, unscripted, on stage at an Edinburgh TV festival session on the BBC two weeks ago?
✒ Lifting its kimono just a bit, the Economist has sought to explain why its journalists are still anonymous in a typically fusty version of an FAQ, credited to "????". To begin with, the weekly sees "maintaining [its] historical tradition" as taking a stance against "rampant byline inflation" in other, more ego-driven titles (a swipe presumably embracing its sibling the FT, which has some very large picture bylines); and the rule also reflects the fact that pieces "are often the work of the Economist's hive mind", and a view that "what is written is more important than who writes it". So far, so pompous; but the blog concludes more ruefully by noting that on the pesky internet things are different – posts are given two-initial bylines, hacks are named in video/audio output, and, horrifyingly, "many of them tweet under their own names"– so that "our no-byline policy is fraying a little around the edges". Sounds like much more than a little, doesn't it? But that just shows another advantage of anonymity: write something economical with the actualite or simply embarrassing, and no one need know it was you. Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 days ago.
✒Journalists invited to attend were even more restive than the dance lovers, as those who plumped for watching the show in the studio were asked to get there at 5.30pm and (with round-table interviews only starting at 11.15pm) forced to leave the Hertfordshire outpost and look for transport after midnight. BBC spinners' embargo rules – which included a strict ban on saying who was partnering who before the pairings were unveiled on screen – also prompted mention of piss-ups and breweries, since these bizarrely left hacks with nothing to write for their papers on the day of transmission. This forced them to get together and circumvent the Beeb's silly rules by divvying up quotes and agreeing to hold them back from Friday to Saturday.
✒ Monkey's advice is to take a peek at newbie Newsnight editor Ian Katz's Twitter feed (@iankatz1000) now, before the inevitable anti-candour clampdown from the BBC thought police. In his first week in charge – nicely coinciding with the premiere of the WikiLeaks film, in which Dan Stevens plays him – the former Guardian deputy editor was frank about the trickiness of getting more women on ("I WILL find them, but harder than I realised … It's just the chap experts are a lot easier to find") and of keeping Jeremy Paxman happy. The latter challenge is not yet one he seems to have mastered, as the anchorman made little secret of his scorn for having to (a) invite viewers to send in video shorts ("I can hardly wait"), and (b) quiz guests about Cheryl Cole's revamped bum and other tattoos, backdropped QI-style by giant images of body art ("that was the most ridiculous discussion I've ever chaired on Newsnight", guest Rachel Johnson tweeted him as saying after ripping his mike off). So it was possibly a little wistfully that Katz noted a French politician interviewed for another item "displayed formidable Paxman handling skills by referring to him as 'my dear'".
✒ Although TV's top suits will assemble for this week's Royal Television Society convention just two days after the parliamentary grilling of feuding past and present BBC grandees about stonking payoffs, there's no BBC session scheduled at Cambridge. Is the RTS going soft? Trying to explain, Channel 4 boss David Abraham, the event's chairman, mystifyingly says "Tony Hall is still getting his feet under the table so we have deliberately not put the BBC at the centre of debate". Is this the same Hall, appointed last November, who fearlessly leapt, unscripted, on stage at an Edinburgh TV festival session on the BBC two weeks ago?
✒ Lifting its kimono just a bit, the Economist has sought to explain why its journalists are still anonymous in a typically fusty version of an FAQ, credited to "????". To begin with, the weekly sees "maintaining [its] historical tradition" as taking a stance against "rampant byline inflation" in other, more ego-driven titles (a swipe presumably embracing its sibling the FT, which has some very large picture bylines); and the rule also reflects the fact that pieces "are often the work of the Economist's hive mind", and a view that "what is written is more important than who writes it". So far, so pompous; but the blog concludes more ruefully by noting that on the pesky internet things are different – posts are given two-initial bylines, hacks are named in video/audio output, and, horrifyingly, "many of them tweet under their own names"– so that "our no-byline policy is fraying a little around the edges". Sounds like much more than a little, doesn't it? But that just shows another advantage of anonymity: write something economical with the actualite or simply embarrassing, and no one need know it was you. Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 days ago.
MARK WEBSTER: Peter Crouch was at Strictly Come Dancing keeping an eye on which lycra-covered, hairless, fat-free fandangoist would be dancing with his missus.
Reported by MailOnline 4 days ago.
THE girlfriend of Abbey Clancy’s new Strictly dance partner has warned she will “keep her eye on her”.
Reported by Daily Star 4 days ago.
Yesterday critics suggested Strictly may be on top because the public have grown bored with watching ‘vulnerable people being exploited’ on Simon Cowell’s ITV show.
Reported by MailOnline 4 days ago.
Shane Richie has hinted he would like to step into Sir Bruce Forsyth's shoes on Strictly Come Dancing.
Reported by Belfast Telegraph 3 days ago.
This is Grimsby --
They are both gearing up to show off their dancing skills for the first time on Strictly Come Dancing.
Reported by MailOnline 2 days ago.
Strictly contestant Vanessa Feltz is predicting she could end up piling on weight rather than shedding pounds like many past celebrities.
Reported by Belfast Telegraph 2 days ago.
Strictly Come Dancing contestant Abbey Clancy has been roping in lanky husband Peter Crouch to train - because his height is forcing her to improve her posture.
Reported by Belfast Telegraph 2 days ago.
Abbey Clancy has roped in lanky husband Peter Crouch to help her stand up straight for Strictly Come Dancing.
Reported by Daily Star 2 days ago.