I have no idea why TV is obsessed with comedian Zoe Lyons but I know exactly how it all started
BEFORE I get to the nuts of BBC1’s latest disaster, can anyone explain television’s slight obsession with comedian Zoe Lyons?
All available evidence suggests she’s never been anything more than pub funny, at best.
Yet Zoe remains a TV fixture, starting this week with a showboating appearance on Have I Got News For You, where she trashed fellow SAS: Who Dares Wins recruit Matt Hancock with an outburst that would’ve looked a lot less bitter and cowardly if we’d seen her say the same things to his face while they were on the Channel 4 show.
These were just the high-profile appearances, though. Whisper “Zoe Lyons” furtively into your Sky Q handset and a wall of activity explodes across your screen. Comedies, quizzes, reality shows. She’s across all formats.
Why? I’ve no idea, but I know exactly how it all started.
Contestant Zoe was the lasting “gift to the nation” from the first ever series of Survivor, on ITV back in 2001, and for that legacy alone the format and any TV executive who indulged it should surely have been strapped on to Nasa’s next Black Hole probe and blasted into oblivion.
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Incredibly though, at a reported cost of £30million, Survivor hasn’t just sneaked back on to our screens, this “game of trust and betrayal” has barged its way back on to prime-time and relegated the much-loved Antiques Roadshow on to BBC2 in the process.
Over 4.8million members of the network’s core audience showed exactly what they thought of that move by switching straight to the second channel, leaving just 2.1million watching Survivor.
If I ever thought that was the end to the provocation though, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Survivor has found at least two new ways of alienating viewers, starting with posh girl contestant Ren, a network data scientist, who couldn’t have looked more pleased with herself when she made this announcement about her pronouns at the start of Saturday’s edition.
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“I’m non-binary, like, I’m just a human being. I use she/they, I prefer they/them, but if people use she/her I’m not, like, ‘Oh my God, how dare you’.”
That’s, like, big of her, no, given that there’s no such scientific thing as non-binary, it’s an affectation that’s either used by the terminally dull to make themselves seem more exotic or the politically malevolent to bully and control the rest of us.
The added madness of its use on Survivor is that this series also features a one-legged surfing school owner called “Pegleg” and they still haven’t bothered telling us how he lost his limb.
The non-binary posturing, however, has been flagged up ASAP and rigidly enforced by the BBC to a comically awkward extent with the other contestants.
“I get on with the girls . . . and Ren.”
“The boys outnumber the girls . . . and Ren.”
“Lee wants to get rid of the girls . . . and Ren.”
Compared with this right-on indulgence, my second gripe seems very tame.
I must report, however, there are also issues with the voluble host Joel Dommett, who, perhaps aware he was vanishing into the Dominican Republic sand like a half-eaten ice-cream cone, suddenly referred to himself in the third person as “serious Joel”, in the apparent belief he needs to be distinguished from “comedy Joel”, who joked during the Hot Pursuit challenge: “What do you call a man who walks through water?
“Wade.”
The distinction then couldn’t be more academic, but Joel is hardly the real target here, obviously.
The villains of the piece are the BBC executives who put the poor confused sod there in the first place and never carry the can for their mistakes, no matter how catastrophic and costly they are for the people who pay their wages.
So divorced from their real audience and obsessed with chasing a fantasy youth market are these people that I don’t have any doubt they’ll see this series through to the bitter end, six weeks from now, and possibly even commission another run of Survivor.
It’s not the immediate problem that really haunts me, though.
It’s the future, 20 years from now and series 126 of Have I Got News For You, with Ian Hislop, Paul Merton, Zoe bloody Lyons . . . and Ren.
Matt's smirk screen
A BRILLIANT series of Channel 4’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins ended with victory for Gareth Gates but one obvious mystery.
If the Special Forces staff really wanted to use “distressing sounds” to force the Pop Idol runner-up into submission, why didn’t they play him Will Young songs on a loop?
Never mind Gareth, three bars of Evergreen and even the parrots would’ve fled that jungle.
You sensed though that Billy, Foxy, Dilksy and the gang were far too distracted by the immovable smirk of Matt Hancock, to such an extent even the normally unflappable Umpire admitted: “He’s a political animal.
That makes him a t**t, it doesn’t make him s**t at this.” ’
Cos, say what you like about the former Health Secretary, he was actually less conceited than Love Island’s Teddy Soares, who described himself as “charismatic” and a lot tougher than professional athletes Perri Shakes-Drayton, Jermaine Pennant and Gareth Thomas.
Indeed, having survived everything, I felt slightly aggrieved he wasn’t declared joint winner, right up until the vainglorious buffoon tried to crash Billy’s victory high-five with Gareth, at which point he got a look from the Chief Instructor and message that was clear.
Matt, I think you better Leave Right Now.
Schedule clash
SCHEDULE clash of the week, courtesy of ITV, Channel 4 and BBC4?
The Only Way Is Essex/Embarrassing Bodies/Two Melons And A Stinking Fish.
Vorder's scent of cement
BLANKETY Blank, former BBC Wales host Carol Vorderman: “If I had my own scent, do you know what I’d like?”
Vorderman: The Smell Of Desperation? Calvin Decline? Eau Dear? Scent D’Coventry? Chanel No 905?
“I’ve got a thing about cement powder.”
And that, based purely on her make-up, was actually going to be my sixth guess.
Great TV lies and delusions of the week
Big Brother, Will Best: “Paul, you’ve been a brilliant housemate.”
Mamma Mia! I Have A Dream, Alan Carr: “We’ve got a problem on our hands. They were all so good.”
And Stand Up To Cancer, Amy Gledhill: “What a night it’s been so far. So many incredible comedians being incredibly funny.”
On what channel? I’ll switch over.
Scream and shout
THIS Morning, Tuesday, professional irritant Dave Fishwick: “I’m going to be doing scream therapy and it’s going to be great fun.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.
Nope.
Stacey doolally
THE new Alan Whicker (Part 783).
Stacey Dooley: Inside The Undertakers.
Paul the pallbearer: “When I first saw a body it was moving.”
Stacey: “What do you mean, it was moving?”
“No! No! No!”
“Oh. You were moved.”
Stacey Dooley, ladies and gentlemen.
Banged up bother
INCIDENTALLY, in case anyone is feeling too sorry for the famous inmates on Banged Up, Channel 4 invited a friend to take part on the show.
Opening offer? £60,000.
Unexpected morons in bagging area
THE Chase, Bradley Walsh: “The Yorkshire town of Beverley is named after what amphibious rodents?”
Ryan: “Toads.”
The Chase: Celebrity Special, Bradley Walsh: “The elongated upper lip and nose of an elephant is known as a what?”
Charlene White: “Snout.”
Mastermind, Clive Myrie: “Which actor who died in 2023 and was commonly known by his surname played Tevye in the 1971 film musical Fiddler On The Roof?”
Tom: “Liberace.”
Random TV irritations
BBC1’s Stacey Dooley: Inside The Undertakers providing the most grievously misleading title since Piers Morgan On Death Row.
Abi’s magically healing facial scar on prison drama Time.
ITV’s The Long Shadow remaining insufferably pleased with itself right to the final episode’s closing credits.
Robbie Williams’s 193-minute luxury dwelling Netflix pity party.
And the increasingly gynaecological dialogue of EastEnders reaching a new low on Monday with Sonia loudly announcing: “I’ve got a scan appointment on Wednesday to check the thickening of my uterus lining.”
Yet still the show’s ratings collapse seems to remain a mystery to the BBC.
Great sporting insights
STEVE McKIMM: “We were unbelievable. I can’t speak highly of my players.”
Dion Dublin: “It’s a foul but it’s a non-foul.”
Simon Thomas: “The interesting news is that Phil Foden is on.
“That’s not the news that’s of interest.”
TV gold
TRACTOR porn politician Neil Parish exacting necessary revenge on Tony Gooch, the prison wing bully, on Channel 4’s brilliant Banged Up.
Dilksy taking charge of Matt Hancock’s final SAS: Who Dares Wins interrogation: “You’ve got no power here, my pedigree chum.”
BBC1’s never less than gripping documentary series The Met.
Bill Maher’s “war on the west” masterclass, on Real Time: “The Jews didn’t colonise Palestine or anywhere else, except maybe Boca Raton.”
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And the one funny moment from C4’s Stand Up To Cancer marathon, which arrived during the Celebrity Gogglebox segment when Tim Vine was watching the angel shark snaffle victims on Planet Earth III:
“That is like an angry whoopee cushion.”
Lookalike of the week
