Guess who’s failed to polish The Nightly Show turd? Why, it’s nun udder dan John Bishop

TURNS out there is a stage between panic and despair.

It’s an ITV production meeting where they’ve chucked out every other idea and someone’s wondered out loud if John Bishop could fill the void with a riff about dog turds.

Toxoplasmosis, children, blindness, that sort of cheerful thing.

And remarkably, he did.

The logic being, I guess, if anyone knows what it’s like to be covered in dog mess, it’s the host of The Nightly Show — a steaming, great pile of the stuff which I hadn’t planned to touch again, on the grounds that it was either going to a) improve or b) vanish.

Neither happened. Instead it was just a different kind of nightmare in the hands of John Bishop, who’d identified an unlikely cause of all the problems when David Walliams handed over to him.

“It’s the lights,” he reckoned. (They’re on, but no one’s in.)

Fair to say this was probably wishful thinking or an “alternative fact”. Because, by the time it came to hosting TNS, Liverpudlian John had removed most of the existing comedy strands and replaced them with an opening joke that came with its own intro: “Nun udder dan . . . ”

As in “It’s nun udder dan Kylie Minogue”, “nun udder dan Madonna”, and “nun udder dan Robbie Williams”.

It wasn’t actually them, of course. It was nun-udder-dan John, in full drag or costume, spoofing their old videos for an uncomfortably long time.

The reward at the end of it wasn’t so great either. A burst of John Bishop “sit down”, which was an experience every bit as dispiriting as a burst of John Bishop “stand up”. You know the sort of schtick, I’m sure.

Plodding, predictable, jarringly coarse at times, prolier-than-thou (John used to be very poor) and devoid of any decent material, apart from a “swearing as punctuation” observation that was a lot funnier when Billy Connolly first did it, about Glaswegians, in the 1980s.

The moment he wheeled the show’s corpse into the irony morgue, though, was when he turned to the subject of Donald Trump and declared: “The President’s approval ratings are lower than chlamydia.” People who live in glass clap clinics etc etc.

However, I will say this for John Bishop. Unlike David Walliams, he seemed genuinely interested in all of his guests, particularly Pamela Anderson, who was giving the show a bit of momentum until she got bumped for a swear-off with boxer Tony Bellew.

As enthusiastic as he was, though, Bishop is not a particularly good interviewer and he’s also got that comedian’s nasty habit of blowing the punchline to other people’s anecdotes, as demonstrated with Martin Kemp, who had nowhere left to go once the host said: “I believe George Michael accompanied you and Shirlie on your first date.”

A small complaint, in the normal run of things.

But, if TNS can’t make up its mind whether it’s a comedy or a chat show — and it can’t — the smart thing to do would be to appoint a permanent host who could do both, like Dara O Briain, for instance.

The show’s fate, though, is already sealed and it will continue to play pass the parcel bomb between presenters and comedians who can’t really do either.

Mel & Sue have, mercifully, absented themselves from this bloody process, so the job has now been handed to a woman with a proven track record of killing off her own chat show.

It’s nun udder dan Davina McCall who, without a hint of handover sarcasm, told John Bishop: “All I’ve got to do is control the enthusiasm.”

Consider my enthusiasm curbed.

All hail Alien's arrival

WHILE the Channel 4/ BBC left-wing comedy establishment attempts to get yet another round of applause by reminding us how much they hate Donald Trump, Harry Hill’s unconventional approach produced something entirely different, last week, on ITV.

Actual tears of laughter.

Many of them were produced by a gloriously amateurish promotional sing-along for Coventry Market which Harry had unearthed for the second episode of Alien Fun Capsule, a TV Burp-style panel show with no greater mission in life than being funny.

It comes without any proper format.

But there are panellists like Lorraine Kelly, who was asked to blow into a bagpipe breathalyser after being confronted with a clip of her much younger self, apparently the worse for wear, on some long-forgotten daytime nightmare.

Strangest of all, though, it’s got properly constructed punchlines: “We love your couscous in our house, Ainsley (Harriott). In fact we’ve had the same packet for three years. I’m just waiting for a special occasion, like Camilla Parker Bowles getting pregnant.”

Laughter, fun, jokes. They’ll never replace angry, meandering rants about sexism, obviously, but what the hell. I like Alien Fun Capsule a lot (ITV, Thursday, 8:30pm).

BBC bias Trumps itself

HOW the BBC works (Part 103). Since its Christmas play, which was “a biting political satire on wealth and inequality”, the following has happened on EastEnders:

1. Jane’s physiotherapy has been stopped, due to NHS financial constraints.
2. Florida-resident Preston has indignantly explained he wasn’t to blame for Donald Trump.
3. Denise has announced she’s more vexed by Brexit than her arrest for assault.
4. The Queen Vic’s “EU-themed supper club night” has been blighted by racist anti-Polish graffiti.

By contrast, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray simply stated, last week, that she didn’t think a sex change could make a man a “real woman”.

So I don’t need to tell you which one of them has just been reprimanded with an impartiality warning, by the BBC, do I?

The BBC. Steadfastly impartial, just so long as you share all of its right-on prejudices.

The curious case of Alan Carr

CHANNEL 4 clearly has no idea what to do with Alan Carr, who was meant to turn into Graham Norton about five years ago.

He very obviously didn’t, though. So instead they’re scatter-gunning him everywhere, including Crufts, where he was co-hosting with Clare Balding last week and proving about as helpful as an outbreak of canine distemper.

Chemistry? There was none. Innuendo? There was barely anything else, from the pair of them, including the taste test nugget that “Alan Carr may have taken a full mouthful of doggy chocolate brownie”, which wasn’t a huge surprise, to be frank with you.

The one vaguely instructive segment, however, was a dog-grooming masterclass with Alan and a woman called Tiena, who was handling a Tibetan terrier by the name of Pancake.

“It’s got a hygiene area. Nothing there. But you scissor-cut the cling-ons, check the private parts to see there’s two.”

Then shove a bottle of prosecco down its gob and bingo. He’s ready to present Chatty Man.

Lookalikes

THIS week’s £69 winner is Victoria Beckham and Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

Sent in on email by Charlotte Hardcastle.

Quiz show imbeciles of the week

Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Gareth Bale plays international football for which country of the United Kingdom?”

Cheryl: “Newcastle.”

Ben Shephard: “Which Australian state is separated from the mainland by the Bass Strait?”

Cheryl: “Gibraltar.”

The Chase’s Bradley Walsh: “What orbits the Earth at a distance of 238,000 miles?”

Chris: “The Sun.”

GOOD Morning Britain

Piers Morgan: “When I’m in LA, I find most of the paparazzi are perfectly reasonable. You give them a picture and say, ‘That’s it’. They usually go.”
Give them a picture of who or what?

Medical mystery of the week

BBC3, My Unusual Vagina. Antonia: “My labia looks like a World War Two zone.”
The Battle of the Bulge? Operation Colossus? Or the Minsk Offensive?