A final shift at Television Centre

My friend Callum, whom I've known for ten years, has just finished his final shift at Television Centre before he and his BBC News colleagues decamp to Broadcasting House. He took the opportunity to write a note on his Facebook page detailing his memories of the place. It's absolutely immaculate and he has generously given me permission to reproduce it below:-

(I'm in the middle of my final shift in the newsroom at BBC Television Centre. You know the address off by heart, I expect. Wood Lane, London W12 7RJ. My job is moving to Broadcasting House in central London next week. For all the hue and cry about my employer selling off the home of showbusiness, there has been remarkably little said about how to many people, this is not much more than a nicely-shaped office block, handy for the Central Line. It's riddled with asbestos and mice. There's nothing for miles around, except for the gargantuan cathedral of retail which opened across the road a few years ago. There is, it has to be said, a bar on the fourth floor, thank God. I'll be quite pleased to leave. But I'm also quite pleased to have worked here. I've written a few thoughts about it.)

I didn't want to work at TVC because it was the home of the biggest and most famous news operation in the world. I wasn't that attracted by Graham Dawbarn's doughnut of brilliant and brutalist glamour. I wanted a job there because it was where my girlfriend worked.

So one Wednesday in the summer of 2005, eight days after terrorists had gone to blow up the Tube, and couldn't, I was shown through the glass gates of Stage 6 and told to get some news on the World at One.

I wasn't terrifically successful. A few hours' work experience didn't cut the mustard when I returned a week later for an interview. A fellow candidate I'd chatted to that morning in reception beat me to the job.

A couple of months later, there was a phone call and a sleeper train arranged hastily from the north. This time, I passed the interview and on December the 28th, 2005 I sat down next to Brian Perkins (Brian Perkins!) for my first day proper.

My girlfriend still worked at TVC. Her job was in what I came to realise was the "showbiz end", where work also meant laughter and lunch. Soon afterwards she left the BBC but, thankfully, not me. (As the saying goes, reader: I married her.)

The newsroom became my routine. Three on, three off. On that first day there was Champagne after the six o'clock news. There was none on the night shifts. The need to deliver quality first means there is none at any time, now. But 2am breakfasts are still on sale in the Foyer, and I've shared plenty.

There followed seven years, on and off. Once, we snuck into the empty Newsnight office for a peek at the Paxman empire. It was at TVC in the humour-deprived small hours that I wrote an inconsequential news story which gave Charlotte Green a fit of the giggles. You can find it on YouTube now.

Other memories: a colleague hacking into the first-floor chocolate dispensing machine one humid weekend and filling his Panama hat with Minstrels. Christmas carols rehearsed in the basement and performed in the church on Uxbridge Road (St Stephen and St Thomas: the martyr and the doubter.) That basement was the venue for a few angry union meetings, too. I always got lost trying to find the right room. We walked out on strike at midnight more than once, and for a few months we walked out every Monday in support of our colleague Alan Johnston, kidnapped in Gaza. There was a weekly silent vigil, 3pm in the car park. I was here when he walked around the newsroom, free again, and shaking hands.

I was up all night on Up All Night. Occasionally, I was embarrassed on air by Dotun Adebayo. Ben Jacobs fed us so much honey cake once, in honour of Rosh Hashanah, that I couldn't speak. My first time presenting half an hour of national radio and the weather forecaster, due on at 28 minutes past 5, failed to appear. I can't remember what I said or how I filled the space. I don't want to remember, that much.

I made too many friends at TVC to write down now, for fear I'd miss someone and offend them. I miss the brilliant Julian Krause. There was a story told at his funeral about the time he took a roll-your-own smoking break under a balcony just as the Real IRA blew up a taxi on Wood Lane. With his ears ringing and bits of black cab raining from the sky he turned to Corrie Corfield, fag aloft, and asked: "Blimey, Corrie. What did you put in this?"

At 3am on a Sunday there was not a lot of showbiz to be found at TV Centre. Thankfully, there was a lot of wit.

Brilliant. 

"It involves cables, but I'm not going to say any more than that..."

We're now at the stage of this year's Strictly where the block vote is starting to take effect. This year's block vote isn't because of heart-throb status or great legs, but because of sporting heroism.

 

Victoria Pendleton has improved markedly as a dancer, but is unquestionably the weakest in the field now, combining a remarkable ability to lose her steps and never recover with a general lack of personality on the floor. It's quite tough to watch her now, as she comes across as chirpy and competitive and approachable when in the training room or on Zoe Ball's settee, but gets all serious and flinchy at showtime. And yet the public saved her.

She deserved to be in the dance-off after Saturday's showing at Wembley Arena (which Tess Daly called "iconic"; two words - it isn't) but did the regular thing of crawling from the bottom two after the lines closed, leaving the dull but effective Nicky Byrne on one of the rungs. And the show lost its funniest and most effervescent character in Richard Arnold as a result.

The Pendleton block vote comes from her Olympian achievements, of course; as a sportswoman who is also decorative, one can't imagine she's getting loads of votes from that sector of women that claim partaking in physical sport to high levels ruins your femininity. But for the majority who see sports people as just that, especially ones who took gold at the biggest event on earth, she's seen as someone who deserves to stay in the competition because she was brilliant on a bike. It must be the reason, as she isn't justifying her survival as a dancer at all.

Arnold's exit is a shame as he transformed the notion that someone half-noticeable on ITV should remain half-noticeable during their tenure on Strictly. Camp as a teepee and as funny a man as the show has ever hired, he ultimately paid the price for his lack of rhythm in the latin section. That he could have fun as a latin dancer and rack up points with the ballroom disciplines was a trait that could only take him so far, though with Pendleton still surviving, it's disappointing that he didn't carry on at least another week. And he wasn't helped, I'm sure, by the singing of Club Tropicana being subject to some kind of technical failure in the arena.

Still, if the man has ambitions left in telly, his handful of weeks mugging to the crowd, outwitting Bruce Forsyth and the judges on a week by week basis and generally managing to progress as a dancer while always happy to send himself up will help him achieve those ambitions.

Pendleton and Byrne are the next obvious knockouts though much depends on whether the remarkable Michael Vaughan can maintain his improvement levels and get somewhere in the latin rounds. His American Smooth on Saturday was superb, and to see him third overall and therefore a shoo-in for the next stage was a feeding time moment. He, along with Byrne and Pendleton, won't make the last three, irrespective of what order they exit the show, but as for who will, that's entirely up for grabs. And I rather like that.

The obvious three seem to be Denise Van Outen, Louis Smith and Kimberley Walsh. The former is relentlessly delivering each week, but there are issues for the other two - Smith is dividing the judges and his marks are inconsistent, while Walsh found herself in the dance-off the other week, suggesting a public apathy (though it could be just because Cheryl Cole was in the crowd). A continuing uncertainty for either of these two should act as music to the ears of my own dark horse, Dani Harmer, whose potential seems to have been entirely lost on people. Lisa Riley is probably too reliant on being a "character" to make the final but has real hope for it nevertheless.

As for the show itself, it looks like Craig Revel Horwood has been instructed to end any negative reviews with at least one positive, something which takes the gloss off his candour as a judge, though if he means it, then there is no reason to grumble about it. The panto booing really gets on my nerves, especially as it's obvious the contestants - and their professional partners - are far more interested in what he has to say than the other judges.

Two other things from the Wembley Arena show: firstly, Girls Aloud were actually great, and secondly, why did we need half a dozen close-ups of Rory McGrath in the crowd? Is he Dani Harmer's uncle?

Patten down the hatches

The D-G has gone, senior news executives have gone, the self-flagellation levels are at an all-time high, and still it's not enough, or not right, for some people.

What's that you say? Chris Patten should go too? But he's not an executive or employee, you bozos. He heads the BBC Trust - he represents the licence payer, not the organisation.

Inevitably, the naturally left-leaning self-appointed guardians of our lives on social media have just thought of Patten's politics first and decided he has to go, without actually noting what job he does. He's a Conservative, therefore he must be wrong/unsuitable/culpable/dishonest. Grow up.

"That was more than magical - it was a miracle!"

And three weeks in, time to talk about Strictly. Given that I'm usually prone to babbling on about the show once a week, it perhaps shows just how uncontroversial this current run is, without ever being uneventful.

 

Things have altered for me though in the opening spell, mind, such as my opinion of Richard Arnold. Didn't like him at first, as the regular crowbarred-in-from-ITV contestant who will guarantee discussion of the show on the main rival channel. But he is someone I've warmed to. He isn't especially charismatic, but my goodness does that man have wit. He genuinely makes me laugh. He isn't a good enough dancer, especially when forced to turn on the machismo, but his self-deprecation and side-ordered one-liners will earn him votes for a little longer. He's learned how to take the show seriously without taking himself seriously, and that's tough.

Beyond that, the rest of the bunch have pretty much evened themselves out and now it's a proper contest. The three who have gone have not been surprising, especially with the welcome if rather boring return of the dance-off, and as a result Johnny Ball and Jerry Hall got their deserved cards, one by dint of being not very good, the other by dint of being not very dedicated. Sid Owen's exit yesterday was simply about not being good enough, irrespective of his attitude or experience of stage performance. He didn't seem to be having much fun either.

Michael Vaughan's quickstep represented probably the most extraordinary transformation we've ever seen in the space of seven Strictly days. In the dance-off last week and surviving by a whisker, he skipped about the floor in his penguin suit at the weekend as if he'd been doing it for years. Like Robbie Savage last year, he seems to be developing as a ballroom man, and his continuing presence is dependant on his performing properly in the ballroom disciplines while doing enough in the less predictable latin.

Vaughan's one glorious display doesn't yet make him a dark horse; I'd love him to win, as he's a great sportsman and a smashing bloke, but he's the definite outsider still, and goodwill for the man as a cricketer and leader of the finest England team in a generation will keep him afloat for a bit, but not forever. The other blokes vary from the unexciting but competent, such as Colin Salmon; and the over-eager buck who'll survive through his fanbase, like Nicky Byrne. Louis Smith, meanwhile, is the Ricky Whittle du jour - he'll sail through to the last stages but lose out because ultimately he isn't very interesting.

Calling the female competitors is much harder as, now that the awful Hall has gone, they're all pretty good. Victoria Pendleton can still resemble a chick whose stilettoes have snapped when she misses a step, but get her through a whole dance and she does well. Fern Britton will get better by the week and has national goodwill that a minority sports star, even one with Olympic gold medals, can't manage. Lisa Riley is very entertaining and not unaccomplished either, while Dani Harmer and Kimberley Walsh have that youthful confidence and focus that will take them far, though Harmer for me is treating the competition with more respect.

That leaves Denise Van Outen, who has had to cope with criticism for being too good too soon, which is a tad unfair, and it's almost as if she's deliberately toned it down in order to level off the flak, when a competition is just that. She's still the obvious winner at this stage.

As for the show, the dance-off's return - good for dancers, bad for entertainers - will at least make sure that the brief that the connoisseurs demand the show sticks to will be retained, and so far nobody has controversially gone through at the expense of someone better in the dance-off. On the judging panel, it annoys me that Bruno Tonioli feels the need to stand up and gyrate with every single comment he makes, though it actually annoys me more that Len Goodman hams up an irked reaction his way next to him every single time. I'd like to think that Darcey Bussell demanded to be sat away from Tonioli when she agreed to become the new judge. She's following Craig Revel Horwood's lead by being honest and practical in her criticisms - though not brutally so, of course - and her stay is working wonders.

They've tried to take it on a step this year with extra props in the dances and extra-curricular duties for others - Revel Horwood as the Tin Man, Anton du Beke as Frankenstein - and the 'abracadabra' gag from Vaughan after his quickstep made me laugh a lot. It at least shows that the production team is afraid of going stale. No such thoughts from Bruce Forsyth though, who seems to be playing along with the idea that he is going stale. More and more fluffed lines keep a-coming, but to combat that he seems to be improvising more than ever, and when he does an aside to the crowd or the judges he gets it largely spot on. Ultimately, however, I still think the only reason he is doing the job is because nobody at the BBC has the guts to tell him it's over.

Ruby at ten

She may be going blind, but she's still my gorgeous, lazy, mischievous, manipulative, stomach-of-clockwork Basset hound - and yesterday she was ten years old. Here's Ruby basking in the glow of her double-figured awesomeness after breakfast yesterday.

I sing her name every day to the intro of Hot Chocolate's Every 1's A Winner. Try it. No, go on.

Leppings Lane

In 1989, society and the establishment hated and mistrusted football fans. If the disaster at Hillsborough hadn't happened, it still would have done somewhere else before long, just as devastatingly, and just as rife with recrimination and bitterness afterwards.

I've been to Hillsborough four times as a supporter and once as a journalist. The latest visit as a supporter was last Saturday. Away fans are given the infamous Leppings Lane end. The road itself is residential, predominantly, and a huge roundabout with a standard Highways Agency sign leads up to it. It's called, somewhat doggedly, the Leppings Lane roundabout. It's a road with national significance but still local meaning. People who live or work on Leppings Lane will be proud of their locality, and there's no reason why not. But that stand, that away end, especially now as the horrors of that semi-final day return to the public psyche, is unmatched as the most gruesome place in football.

It's not the actual viewing area that's the problem. Clearly the crumbled terraces that were divided into three cages - cages, that word still makes me shudder - with inadequate emergency exit facilities have long gone. The stand is now divided into two tiers of seating, with the lower tier not taking up half the allocation but much less of it. And they don't even allow that lower tier to be used. The upper tier only is where away fans go, and to access that tier you have to go through the same turnstiles, up the same staircases, into the same cramped concourses and up the same narrow walkway tunnels to reach the open air that greets you with the game that Liverpool fans used in 1989.

It's not just that these are the same - you can tell they're the same. The concrete floors in what is by some distance the most unroomy concourse I've ever experienced in nigh-on 80 grounds is ancient. The catering staff stand behind age-old cages, like exhibits in a Victorian asylum, dispensing the pies and ale from under a hatch measured at just big enough via millimetres to fit an open bottle of beer through. The walls are undecorated, the toilets awful, the whole place dusty, unloved, untouched, utterly bleak. I'd been before, in similar numbers with other Hull City supporters, but perhaps because - no, absolutely definitely because - the lethal combination of rank facilities and an attitude by the authorities ranging from suspicious to evil had finally been fully exposed to the world, 23 years after 95 funerals had been held and one life-support machine was ticking over, I felt at my most queasy and uncomfortable there.

Sheffield Wednesday own this ground, and this end within the ground. I have no idea what the facilities are like for home fans in the other three stands at Hillsborough. They may be similar, they may be totally removed from what the visiting supporter paying £28 to watch his team has to endure. But the very notion that they haven't actually touched the access and indoor sections of the most notorious stand in football since it contributed majorly to the deaths of 96 people, even after all this time, is pretty much unforgivable. Maybe they have plans to do so - if so, these plans are long overdue. Maybe they should raze the whole damn end to the ground and start again. Not one person would mourn it.

Hull City won the game and I left the stadium with very mixed feelings indeed. Satisfied with the result, shocked at what we had to put up with. This is without the continued stinking attitude of South Yorkshire Police, whose current incarnation seem hell bent on putting football fans in their place for daring ever to question their authority, judging by the relief sent to look after men, women and children of all ages who wear black and amber scarves and wanted to watch their team play in comfort, safety and - lest we forget - with a bit of fun. Football is sport. It should be a fun experience to watch it.

Hillsborough's fateful Leppings Lane feels and looks like the self-same Leppings Lane end that produced English football's darkest day. I now don't want to go again.

Now he's got the Lithuanian equivalent of the MBE...

I was a better swimmer than him, though...

Love, love them do

It is impossible to criticise the Beatles, I find. So elevated is their status as life-changing purveyors of art that altered Britain forever, that any attempt to make a negative comment about them is quickly refuted, shouted down or taken as coming from someone who doesn't know what's good for them.

See, while my mum and dad were exactly the right age to idolise the Beatles, they didn't. Mum thought they were good. Dad thought they were acceptable. Neither thought, even when the bandwagon's tyres had been deflated by the weight of the world jumping on it, that they were this colossal, uber-positive phenomenon that most people of that generation would have us believe.

There were people born in the 1940s and 1950s who disliked the Beatles, there really were. They disliked the hairdos, the repetitive choruses, Lennon's attitude (or McCartney's boyish cheekiness, but probably not both), the domination of the radio when they wanted more Motown or Perry Como or Cliff Richard. They weren't controversial or anarchic, they just had an opinion. It differed from the norm, but an opinion it was. These same people exist today, and their opinions won't have changed. It's just that nobody who controls the flow of information can believe for a moment that their view has relevance. They're the Beatles! Everyone loves the Beatles, don't they? So let's say so!

I get disappointed when people do that excruciating thing of claiming Ringo Starr was a crap drummer, I think I Want To Hold Your Hand was pretty much unrivalled in the trite and twee stakes until the Corrs turned up, and I think John Lennon was disturbed and overrated. Yet I like the Beatles. But, as the stuff written last week about Love Me Do's anniversary showed, we're not allowed to just like them, let alone scorn them, however articulate our argument. We've got to idolise them, adore them, not question them, because, well, that's just what the world does, isn't it?

Ruby update

Ruby was in quite a happy, frisky mood this morning when I went to give her and the others their breakfast, so perhaps a Ruby update is in order.

Her eyesight is continuing to decline, but it's hard to tell exactly the speed or the extent. Some days she can walk perfectly in line with anything when it's pitch black, while on others she can barely see her paw in front of her face in bright sunshine.

She's never been a complex dog but she's proving quite baffling here. If there's a sudden change in conditions, like switching a light on at night or putting her outside in the evening, this confuses her. It's as if her sight is at its strongest once it has had time to get used to the conditions around it. As such, Ruby can get out of bed when it's dark outside and, despite the light being on, walk into a wall a couple of times before eventually finding her water or the dog door. It's endearing but obviously it is a little heartbreaking each time too.

Her demeanour, however, hasn't changed despite her occasional frustration and her nose touching brickwork when it shouldn't, and that's key, I think. On top of that, she's as fit as she's ever been despite approaching her tenth birthday - pensionable age for a Basset - and there's nothing wrong with her appetite or her other faculties. She can still bark the place down when Boris won't let her into bed and still roll on her back when she's feeling too lazy to have her lead put on.

On her walk the other evening, she tripped over a kerb, even though she and the others have got used to me saying "ups!" every time we approach a kerb after crossing a road. I've said it to them for as long as I've had them. Her timing let her down and she sprawled a bit. Bassets aren't entirely expressionless, even though the happiest dog still always looks as miserable as sin, and the look she gave me was one of weary embarrassment more than anything. She didn't hurt herself though, and didn't look particularly upset.

Ruby has made it her mission to live the simplest of canine lives since she walked through the door as a puppy who tripped over her own ears and stole an entire chicken pasty off the coffee table while I answered the phone. Somehow, bless her heart, she is continuing to do that despite gradually losing the benefit of the most important sense of all. I love her even more for it, and as the one thing she doesn't experience in all this is pain, I suspect she might be with us for some time to come, even if her sight isn't.

Pooling your resources

Note to ITV4 and its viewers - when Wimbledon FC players shoved Martin Tyler and Dave Beasant into a Torremolinos swimming pool during a TV interview, it was 1987, not 1988. Telling us it was the way they prepared for an FA Cup final was disingenuous, at best.

This is the sporting pedant in me, sorry. The reason I know is that Tyler is asking Beasant about his manager Dave Bassett seconds before the rest of the players joined in, and Bassett quit at the end of the 1987 season to go to Watford. Also, one of the cutaway shots of the squad relaxing by the pool included Nigel Winterburn, who also left Wimbledon in 1987 to join Arsenal, where he stayed for 15 years.

I don't know why it was felt necessary in Ned Boulting's narration to claim that this was the Wimbledon squad preparing for the FA Cup final - a 1988 event in which they famously beat Liverpool - as it would have been perfectly okay to use it as flashback material instead. Wimbledon were promoted to the top flight in 1986 and so the 1987 season allowed us the first view of the Crazy Gang ethos. To admit to the true antiquity of the footage, even in relation to the FA Cup success, would not have shamed anyone.

It's nitpicky, but to nostalgists and sports lovers - I tick both boxes - it's important, and it further strengthens ITV's reputation for carelessness when making factual stuff. And it's a pity, because the World Of Sport archive shows, decade by decade, mixing Steve Davis and the first televised 147 with lethal double decker bus racing, have been great fun to watch.

Grace of God

My tally of collisions in motor vehicles grew at the weekend, after a prang on the car park at Hull City's stadium left my car with ruined driver's side doors, another with a crushed bonnet and a third with a scratched wing. The courtesy car is on the way today and I dread to think what it will be.

However, that's nothing compared to what happened elsewhere, in a borrowed car, ten hours later. I was running a few minutes late as I wearily headed back to the M62 from the club night, longing for my pillows and quilt. The matrix above the motorway informed the handful of nocturnal motorists of a closure near Oldham, and I blasphemed loudly within the confines of the car.

Sitting in a motorway traffic jam at 3.30am is the weirdest feeling on earth. That journey is one I make at that time every week and sometimes you don't see another vehicle for 20 minutes. But there were plenty of them huddled into two lanes as the police and highways people closed the carriageway.

Eventually we headed off the motorway and snaked slowly up hills and around unlit sharp bends across the old New Hey Road that took traffic across the Pennines when the M62 was still a transport minister's little pet plan in a ring binder.

With every slowdown, every traffic light, every brief pause because a truck could only negotiate one bend at five miles per hour, came a curse from me. And undoubtedly from many others too. Ahead of us, we knew that a further, planned closure was in place between Brighouse and Bradford for interminable roadworks so we'd have to go through this all again.

Eventually, we re-emerged on to the M62, close to its highest point at Ripponden and re-established proper progress through the night. The second closure duly arrived four junctions later and by now I was as weary as I'd ever been. Over the years I've learned how to cope with it and stay alert, but as I progressed, eventually crossing from West Yorkshire to East near Goole, I needed help. The last service station had gone and the next turnoff was some distance away.

I stopped and sent a tweet, asking anyone who had my number and was still up - it was 5.15am, half an hour after my usual hometime - to ring me. The one thing that always perks this tired boy up during a long drive at the wrong end of the day is conversation.

A few minutes later, Louis rang. We had a chat about anything and nothing really; subject matter wasn't the issue. Then he retired for bed, and I returned a call to John, a fellow broadcaster who'd got my voicemail when trying to ring. He was up due to work at the Great North Run and joyful new fatherhood and so again we had a chat about something and anything. By the time he left for his duties, I was 15 minutes from home and made it quite comfortably.

A few hours later, I was scouring the news pages with my first brew when I saw that a young woman had been killed on the motorway in a collision with a car apparently being driven in the wrong direction by someone who subsequently failed a breath test. The accident happened at 3am; had it happened 20 or so minutes later, I'd have been right there.

When your brain is tired, it doesn't always function logically, and even though it was the police running the show, barely for a moment did I consider something serious had happened; all I could think of was my long journey home being made even longer. I feel awful about that now.

"Mourning, mourning, Jameson here..."

"Ian, your foursome goes like this...

Cyril Smith...

Marilyn Monroe...

Derek Jameson and, back by popular demand...

Robert Maxwell."

"Well, Robert Maxwell, erm, it was alleged, was murdered by Mossad. Marilyn Monroe was murdered by the FBI. Derek Jameson murdered Radio 2..."

("...and the English language...")

"Is it that Cyril Smith's ate (sic) the other three?"

"Well I can tell you that Cyril Smith, Marilyn Monroe and Derek Jameson were all born out of wedlock, whereas Robert Maxwell was, of course, a different sort of bastard."

My grandma loved Derek Jameson. I can't pin down the dates when he was doing the Radio 2 breakfast show, but at 7.30 each morning following the death of my grandad, I'd arrive at her house in my school uniform to walk her dog just as his dulcet tones were chiming out of her radio.

My abiding memory of him on the telly was from that ghastly journalism quiz he did on ITV in the mid-80s, called Headliners, when he once said to a female team captain: "That's the wrong answer, but I'll give you the points because you're so beautiful." Somewhere at an adjacent desk Nigel Dempster was calling him a twat, and if you could irritate Dempster then you were pretty good in my eyes.

Otherwise, I didn't really know much about him, but he always seemed, well, affable. I don't know. He was married a lot, and issued at least one stupid libel writ, but beyond that he seemed decent, a bit old-fashioned, and quite ordinary. And that was the point.

"God know why Sid Owen was codenamed 'Sushi'..."

There are 14 people needed for Strictly Come Dancing each year and you can usually guarantee that particular categories of celebrity have been sought in order to fill the show's criteria for a strong line-up.

We have no retired politician this year - I suppose after Edwina Currie and Ann Widdecombe there would have been nothing but comedown in getting Hazel Blears - but otherwise generally we're there with this year's rollcall, I think. Let's see.

Retired sporting hero? Yep, there's Michael Vaughan. If he's bobbins he'll still have time to join the TMS team in India. But cricketers have a very good Strictly record - two of them won the whole thing.
Youthful pop star whose band aren't as good as they once were? We have two. Nicky Byrne from Westlife and Kimberley Walsh from Girls Aloud. Given the success (note: not the talent, just the success) of their two bands, it's an impressive pairing though neither were the main focus of their groups and could walk down my street without me knowing who they are.
Popular soap star of yore? Two of these - Lisa Riley and Sid Owen. The former will also fit the "obese person who will use it as a weight loss experiment" category. The latter, meanwhile, didn't have much rhythm when dancing to his version of Good Thing Going while briefly being a pop star, so may be a bit of a dud.
TV royalty of yore? Sir Johnny of Ball, who obviously the whole nation over 35 will want to win.
Current BBC A-lister? Er, well Dani Harmer, I suppose. I've never heard of her but she seems to be big in kids' telly.
Person from flagship ITV show to guarantee promotion from rivals? And Daybreak again submits one of its stooges, some dude called Richard Arnold. The recruitment of Fern Britton, despite her currently inconsistent career on the light channel, is helpful here too.
Macho sporting beefcake who "needs" to "discover" his "softer" side? Yep, Louis Smith. Though I'm not sure how macho he is in personality, judging by the soft tones of his interviews after winning silver in gymnastics over the summer. But the muscles alone will assist him get votes, even if he can't transfer his rhythm from the pommel horse to the cha cha.
Famous for association with someone far more famous? I don't wish to belittle or undervalue Jerry Hall's modelling career, or her Bovril adverts, but...

That leaves Denise Van Outen, whose role in life is currently hard to pin down but after many years of being really good on telly, even in really bad telly programmes, is now a West End and Broadway star and, to be truthful, it's a surprise to see her doing this. That said, as the longest-standing celebrity crush I've ever had, I'm chuffed she's going to be on there. Get her on the It Takes Two settee on a Tuesday night with Karen Hardy and I may not survive.

Colin Salmon, who has three Bond films behind him, is another one whose recruitment seems quite a coup. I don't know much about him. Victoria Pendleton, meanwhile, was unable to make it more plain she wanted to do Strictly unless she'd invaded the Newsnight studio with a huge placard saying 'GET ME ON STRICTLY'. And after her posturing there'd have been a mild outcry if she hadn't been asked, especially given that she's now retired from her sport.

They get introduced to their partners on Saturday. You just know that Anton du Beke is going to get Fern Britton. This Strictly junkie will be watching every week, as ever.

Striking oil

Okay, I watched Dallas. I did so reluctantly, because people were tweeting about it, because there wasn't much else on, because I was curious. Etc.

It was absolutely brilliant.

Supervising Producer - Calvin Clements Jr

I've no real interest in the return of Dallas to our screens, though I was fascinated to see Larry Hagman in such good health considering his age and endless list of ailments and appearances in operating theatres. It's good that he is still willing to bum about talking to any presenter or hack with an interest in the revival of a show that, at its peak, was brilliant and ludicrous in equal measure.

Compared to some American dramas, as well as soaps generally from the world, I always thought Dallas was especially well acted, the pouting ham-ups from Linda Gray notwithstanding. Hagman was always tremendous and for as long as his health allowed, and as long as JR Ewing was within his motivation, the show had to keep going. As batshit crazy as the plots and storylines sometimes became, somehow JR was always reassuringly believable and bad.

I can still feel the thump of my heart reaching breakneck speed when, after months of teasing, we saw for the first time the return of Bobby Ewing in the shower. We all knew how mad it was to re-cast Patrick Duffy and pretend his death in the previous series was all dreamt by Pam, though then and now I still thought it woeful that Pam had the briefest of cries in front of her naked ex-and-soon-to-be-again-current-or-was-his-proposal-part-of-the-dream-too husband about how she'd imagined him being mown down in a car, and then everything returned to normal. Or as normal as it could be in Dallas. Years before, I remember my teenage babysitter shrieking "Oh my God, he's killed Pamela!" (he hadn't) when a Saturday night episode concluded with Victoria Principal lifeless in the Southfork pool, while I confusedly carried on shoving my Matchbox cars along the carpet.

The guff about Who Shot JR? passed me by as a piece of drama though I remember the madness that engulfed newspapers and TV bulletins and that famous shot of "the tapes" arriving in the UK that featured the episode which would tell all. We all knew by then, of course, as our charming press found out and chose to reveal it. During the same period, I remember the death of Jim "Jock Ewing" Davis being announced most sombrely by John Craven one teatime.

Beyond the characters and plots, I loved the way the show loved itself. The opening and closing titles combined rolled in at almost three minutes. There was clearly some serious posturing going on when it came to actors' and crew members' statuses, as proved by the appearance of Dack Rambo - acting's most mental name - in the prestigious three-way opening titles after just one series as Jack Ewing. And yet the character didn't last a great deal longer than that second season. After the three-ways had finished and the first scene began, we'd get some senior production crediting and then the crucial but short-term characters in name only ("also starring Deborah Shelton as Mandy Winger" ... and John Beck as Mark Graison") prior to the first words being spoken.

At the other end of the extreme, the actors who played regular but decidedly peripheral parts were relegated to the end credits, often after various production members and the theme music writer had been given their due. After JR, Sue Ellen, Ray, Bobby and Pam, there can't have been many more characters who appeared in the show more often than Teresa the Southfork maid (standard line: "Telephone call for you Mr Farlow") or JR's efficient fox of a secretary, Sly, and yet they were right at the foot of the rollcall. After the production bods, you'd get the "Guest Starring" list (people you'd never heard of unless it was Ian McShane), the "co-starring" list (jobbers on a one-off, playing bartenders and waiters at the Oil Barons Ball) and finally, the "featuring" list (those Teresa and Sly characters that glued scenes together week on week; also the point where the children that played John Ross and Christopher Ewing would appear). And then the remaining credits just went on for aeons, all soundtracked by that fantastic title music.

I did go off Dallas for a bit and missed the series when JR met Cally and married her, then ended up in an asylum. But I was back with it in time for that doolalley final series and the episode where the devil on JR's shoulder re-introduced him to everyone who he has conned over the years, prior to the final scene where he shoots himself (out of sight) and Bobby brings down the curtain with a final "Oh my God" as he opens the bathroom door to find his brother's "corpse" there. Though knowing Hagman's habit of trying to test the straight faces of his fellow actors during heavy scenes, Duffy probably filmed that final take while looking at Hagman showing his bare arse.

I hope it's good, the new Dallas, or at least pays homage to its history by being incomprehensible and daft. In its heyday, incomprehensible daftness made it what it was, along with skilled actors who could make incomprehensible daftness seem normal and sensible.