Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor

Of course, I don't watch them myself.

I really don't watch Strictly Come Dancing, but I know that John Sargeant has emerged as a cult figure. However, he is not quite the innocent journalist taking his first steps in the world of show business that many must think him. Because Sargeant was an actor before he was a journalist.

As I wrote on this blog back in the days when no one read it, Sargeant:

appeared in Alan Bennett's 1966 comedy series On the Margin. (It was widely expected that Bennett would cast Sergeant's Oxford contemporary Michael Palin, but he thought him "too showbiz".) The tapes of it have long been wiped, but it contains some of Bennett's most famous sketches - his NORWICH monologue, for instance.

And The X Factor? Read Charlie Brooker in this morning's Guardian on the dreadful Eoghan Quigg:

Weird. Eerie. Like the spectral figure of an infant chimney sweep that suddenly appears in an upstairs window, gazing sadly at your back as you walk the grounds of a remote country mansion on a silent Christmas afternoon; alerted by an indefinable chill, you turn and, for the briefest moment, his wet, sorry eyes meet yours... and then he's gone.

Of course, I don't watch them myself.