Saturday, April 12, 2003

Telly speling. Its rubish.
This week on Richard And Judy [look, I'm housebound during the day, I was desperate, OK?] they had a spelling bee, pitting Grans against Grads, oldies against youngsters, to see whose spelling was better. As it turned out, the contest was fairly even, but the worst speller was the person responsible for flashing the 'correct' spelling of the word on-screen for the viewers. "How do you spell 'accommodate'?" asked Judy. "A-c-c-o-m-m-o-d-a-t-e," replied the contestant, correctly. "Accomodate," said the on-screen title.

For another example, take "This Morning" with Fern Britten and Phillip Schofield. Please do. Please. Please don't make me waste my mornings waiting to find out the results of "Challenge The Stylist". Please. [Actually, I'll confess I don't know how Mr Schofield spells his name, but I'm not alone - Google returns 83 results for "philip schofield" "this morning" and 77 for "phillip schofield" "this morning".] Anyway, each morning, they ask a ridiculously easy question. This week they asked: "Name the famous fictitious British spy better known as 007. Is it (a) James Bond, (b) James Dean, or (c) James Brown?" Or, as the on-screen title had it, "What is the name of the ficticious British spy..." Someone on the production team obviously spotted the error and it was spelled correctly when repeated later.

In tonight's "25 Years Of Smash Hits" on Channel 4, former editor Mark Ellen remarked that once they'd noticed that the magazine's name could be written as S.Hits, they came up with variations on the name: PopPoo, PopDung and PopGuano. Or, as the on-screen title had it, PopGuarana.

Yeah, too much crap telly with cheap production values, I know. Highlight of my week was getting a nine-letter word on Countdown.

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