ALLY ROSS
Anything tougher than privates on parade and John goes to pieces… his SAS: WDW exit has done us all a public service
Barrowman knew that if there’s one thing the long-suffering British won’t forgive, it’s a quitter
ALL-singing, all-dancing, celebrity flasher John Barrowman exited public life this week, not with the flourish and round of applause he’d probably have wanted.
But with a puddle of vomit at his feet and the words “sack of s**t” ringing in his ears as he quit Channel 4’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins just 32 minutes after the latest contestants had reached their base in New Zealand.
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This self-styled “centre of the universe” was back on Lorraine’s ITV show the next morning trying to explain that he’d been “true to himself” and blah blah blah.
Barrowman knew, though, that if there’s one thing the long-suffering British won’t forgive, it’s a quitter who shuns redemption.
He’s gone. It was public service broadcasting, then, of the highest and most brutal order from SAS: WDW, a show that, to paraphrase the great Johnny Carson on the Oscars, is 45 minutes of sparkling entertainment spread over an hour-long show.
First clue to the 15-minute lag arrived, right at the start of this series, with the appearance of a psychologist named Alia Bojilova, who specialises in declarations of the bleeding obvious and telling us the new celebrities are: “A complicated bunch.”
READ MORE ON JOHN BARROWMAN
I’ll say. For “complicated”, though, you can probably guess that, with the exception of the sports stars, they are every sort of pointless, bone-brained public nuisance, from Boris’s steely-eyed sister Rachel Johnson to “comedian” Tez Ilyas, whose opening pitch asked us to “imagine the smugness that would emanate from me if I passed this course”.
Or indeed, even if he didn’t, because his self- satisfaction levels were radioactive long before it started.
Corbynista Tez, incidentally, used to sit on something called the Live Comedy Association but had to quit in 2020 due to his appalling behaviour towards women.
Yet the slightly surprising thing is, neither Tez nor Barrowman, whose flashing got him cancelled in 2021, is the most obviously annoying contestant on SAS: WDW.
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How could they be, when there are no fewer than three recruits who’ve come through the ranks of The Only Way Is Essex — a show that, like red-necked parakeets, has infested every single corner of British television, so that almost no part is now free from their squawking self- obsession.
By far the worst of them here is Bobby Norris, whose act is pitched somewhere between Mick Jagger and Frank Spencer, and during the brief moments when he wasn’t vomiting into a bin-liner made a noise that appeared in the subtitles as: “NEEEEEEEEEE.”
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He’d have failed every single challenge set for him by the SAS staff as well but for the emergence of an even bigger pain in the ar*e called Marnie Simpson, from Geordie Shore, who made the huge strategic error of back-chatting regiment legend Billy Billinghm after losing the dam descent to Bobby on account of the fact she “couldn’t breathe”.
“If you talk back to me one more time,” said Billy, leaving no one in any doubt he’d act upon it, “you’re going to become amphibious. I’m going to throw you in the f***ing water. F***ing spoilt little kid. Buck your ideas up, gobs***e.”
Bone-brained
The stunned silence that followed should’ve won the show awards as you could almost hear the great mass of viewers applauding Billy, the first man ever to put Marnie in her place.
It’s at this point, though, you got the sense that the SAS boys took a backwards step, TV people took over and Marnie was called in for “questioning” to see why she challenges authority (see earlier).
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These are not the brutal encounters in SAS: WDW of yore, however.
They are now shoulders to cry on and an invitation for the celebrities to unburden themselves of every minor “mental health” set-back in life they’ve ever suffered.
It’s exactly the sort of cliched comfort zone, in other words, from which I thought the show was meant to be removing these cry babies, and I’ve no idea why SAS: WDW indulges them as there isn’t a single gap anywhere in the TV market for Z-list sob stories.
Salvation through tears is the last thing that’s needed here, in fact, with the ultimate goal surely being to vanish most of the contestants just as effectively as it removed John Barrowman who, last time I looked, was trying to talk up his tour of Britain, on Lorraine’s show.
“It’s me and a piano.”
No audience. Just John and a piano.
Random TV irritations
CHANNEL 4’s utterly repellent Married At First Sight reducing marriage to the status of a mystery counter on Tipping Point.
The Great British Bake Off wasting 90 minutes of everyone’s time with an elimination-free opening episode. Anyone who talks about their “love language” (shut up).
And Nightsleeper’s “hero” Joe claiming: “The police are going to be on the train in five minutes. This is almost over.” When there were still 315 minutes to go. The sadistic sod.
GC? IT'S MUMBA JUMBA
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FILLING the screen like a diabetic Honey Monster, Gemma Collins boldly announced that last night was time to find out: “Why I am the way I am.
“Because, at the moment, it feels like I’m from outer space.”
A development that might’ve ruled out intelligent life on Mars but would definitely have led to a more interesting episode of BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are?, which rather lost me when The Brentwood Behemoth revealed: “I’ve got a lot of family in Wales” and I realised she was talking about the country rather than the animals.
The wider problem here, of course, is that, like so much else on the BBC, WDYTYA has been sacrificed to the cult of youth and fashionable political issues, like mental health, slavery and the excesses of the British Empire, with The GC’s episode being no different.
As interesting as it ever got, in fact, was the discovery of a “schizophrenic” grand-mother, on her maternal side and a great-grand- father “who was ill with lumba . . . jumba, help me aaaaht?”
“Lumbago.”
Nearly an hour later, it emerged that, for all the accompanying wows, Gemma’s Essex-based family had barely moved 20 miles down the A12, over several hundred years, having first crawled out of the primordial swamp at a pace that could not have been better named or serviced.
“Foulness Island,” explained narrator Phil Davis, “is owned by the Ministry of Defence.
“It’s used for the testing of explosives, so access is restricted, but Gemma has been given a special invite.”
And as far as I’m concerned, can visit any time she likes.
Great sporting insights
LES FERDINAND: “Not playing well is a sign of a good team.”
Neil Warnock: “Liverpool’s midweek win was the perfect anecdote to last week’s defeat.” And Simon Thomas: “Only one word can describe the weather at the King Power – absolute filth.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Chase, Bradley Walsh: “The word memorandum is often abbreviated to what four-letter word?” Phil: “Mem.”
Bradley Walsh: “To remain calm and be prepared for an emergency is said to keep your powder . . . ?” Namuli: “Wet.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “The word used to refer to land on the edge of a sea . . . SHORE . . . is an anagram of which equine animal?”
Bill: “Beach.”
And my favourite answer of the week, Mastermind, Clive Myrie: “In the 1980s, Jocky Wilson, John Lowe and Keith Deller all won the world championship in what indoor sport?”
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Emma: “Cycling.”
TV gold
THE return of BBC2’s fascinating Parole series. BBC1’s Ludwig, with David Mitchell, which burst brilliantly to life after 35 minutes and really should be broadcast on a Sunday night.
River Cartwright’s chase scenes on the superb Apple TV+ series Slow Horses.
Mortimer and Whitehouse nailing the blueprint for all enduring middle-aged male friendships on BBC2’s Gone Fishing: A shared obsession, trivia, Eighties pop nostalgia, Fast Show impressions and health worries.
And breathless comedian Chris McCausland putting one of the judges firmly in his place after charming the nation senseless, with his partner Dianne Buswell, on Strictly Come Dancing: “Craig, I’m literally too knackered to care.”
Lookalike of the week
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Sent in by Arthur Godfrey, of Aylesford, Kent.
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