Do you remember Alfie Moon? Do you recall his true love, Kat Slater? Does your memory recollect their interminable on-off romance – the will they / won’t they plotline that seemed to go on for several decades?

Well, remember no more! The pair of them are coming back to Albert Square at the end of 2010.

Jessie Wallace who plays Kat said:

“I’ve really enjoyed playing different roles over the last few years but am excited to slip back into Kat Slater’s stilettos. I’ve missed her.”

And we’ve enjoyed you in all those different roles too Kat I mean Jessie- even if we can’t remember any of them.

Shane Richie – he who is Alfie – spoke up too:

“More than anything I’m looking forward to getting my face covered in Kat’s lipstick again!”

More than anything, we’re thankful you’re going to be too busy with ‘Enders to make another ill-judged ‘reboot’ of Minder, Mr. Richie.

According to the BBC, it’s decision time on whether or not Alan Partridge will see the big screen, as fans await the judgement on whether his three TV series will spin-off into movie land.

To  compound the curiosity, Armanda Iannucci’s been tempting his followers on Twitter, saying:

“Thought I might add fuel to rumour-fires by saying [I have spent the] last few days plotting a Partridge story”

Coogan’s been promoting his new movie, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, and in interviews has been getting everyone excited by putting a deadline on the decision:

“This is kind of make or break,”

“In a month it’ll be very clear whether we’re going to do it or not.”

“You have to get all the right elements,”

“We’re not going to do it unless we think we can do something really good.”

Personally, I’m hoping it’ll be similar in style to I’m Alan Partridge rather than any traditional, non-realist comedy yarn. And I’m praying it’ll have Michael the Geordie in it too.

Either way – let’s hope they kick-start what could be a cracker.

‘I AM AN ANTICHRIST! I AM AN ANARCHIST!’

So sang Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols back in the late 70s or early 80s, I forget exactly when, in a move that cemented music’s counter-cultural objective more than ever before.

But sadly, all that hard work has been undone by today’s announcement that everyone’s favourite Nazi-dressing Prince, young Henry Charles Albert David is set to speak during the Brit Awards – even if it’s a recorded message.

The reason a member of The Royal Family is being shoehorned into proceedings is, of course, charity – as the Prince will be praising the Brits Trust for all their hard work in funding the Brits School in Croydon.

“The BRITs is a celebration of all that is totally outstanding and unique about British music,” he says in the message. “And what’s less well known about the BRIT Awards is the fantastic work it does raising millions of pounds for the BRIT Trust, which has benefited thousands of young people to develop their talents and generally enrich our society.”

All well and good and decent and respectable, but whatever happened to rock ‘n’ roll?

Is it possible to put a value on the head of an innocent rat?

According to an Australian judge, it is. That figure is 3,000 Aussie dollars – about £1,600 in pound sterling.

The rodent world is, understandably, up in arms.

The issue came about when contestants on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here – Hollyoaks actor Stuart Manning and eventual winner, chef Gino D’Acampo – were stuck in isolation by the show’s producers and, given barely anything to eat, decided to boost their protein intake by killing and skinning a rat, then nibbling like dogs on its carcass.

Though the culprits were initially charged themselves, in court it was uncovered that the pair had been given permission to kill the rat by producers – making the spontaneous blood-letting look a little less impromptu than the final edit made it appear.

ITV said:

“The production was unaware that killing a rat could be an offence, criminal or otherwise, in New South Wales, and accepts that further enquiries should have been made,” he said.

“This was an oversight, and we have since thoroughly reviewed our procedures, and are putting in place a comprehensive training programme to ensure that this does not happen in future series.”

Let’s hope ITV aren’t planning a rebirth of Wind In The Willows any time soon, as it could get a little grizzly.

Are you a middle-aged man with too much time and money on his hands?

Do you know the names of all the Doctors off of Doctor Who since William Hartnell?

In that case, there’s a treat in store for you!

Yes indeed – fans of the show should get their place booked because Bonhams are selling off a ton of Doctor Who stuff – from Magma Beasts, to Krolls, to fully fitted Dalek suits. This, my friends, is affluent-geek heaven!

If you’ve got thousands and thousands of pounds to shed, why not go over to the BBC website to take a look at what’s on offer? They’ve set up a lovely slideshow over here.

I will say zis urnly once…

This week, we’re holed up in occupied France discussing a long running, well-loved, dearly missed sitcom from our youth that we’re sure you’ll remember better than we did. That’s right! It’s the turn of Allo Allo to get the WWM Podcast treatment!

We discuss all the characters, plotlines and vaguely xenophobic running gags involved in the show and demonstrate some of our incredibly authentic continental accents into the bargain. French, German, Italian – there’s not a nation we don’t accurately mimic. Listen to it on your commute into work and you’ll start believeing you took the Eurostar by mistake!

In addition to all the on-topic banter, we also manage to blather on about:

• John Lennon’s solo career
• What Joanna Lumley has given the world
• The correct pronunciation of some Beatles classics
• The proper reward for winning a pub quiz

And what’s more, there’s still time for me to test Napoleon on his Britishness – with startling results!

Dig in – it’s all for free! And do leave us some nice comments in iTunes, we like it when that happens.

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Direct link for lazy fools…

…or you can listen below – a bientôt, mes amies!

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Even though the vast majority of us will meet our maker on the day of judgement, some are bound to survive the coming Apocalypse.

And it’s just as likely that the survivors who emerge into a shattered world filled with zombies, cyber-punk overlords who look like Dennis Hopper, giant scorpions, gangs of marauding scavengers, rats the size of elephants and a bartering system based on dog dirt will be our most beloved TV celebrities. After all, who’s more likely to survive? You … or Noel Edmonds?

Of course, where there’s TV stars, there’s going to be TV, and that means that, despite the world being a broken husk full of hideous mutants, there’s still hours upon hours of schedulling to fill. Never mind that the audience will mainly be rotting cadavers, half-human apemen living on canned dog food and Mel ‘Sugatits’ Gibson – the show MUST go on.

And that’s where YOU come in, WWMers. We want your ideas for post-apocalyptic TV shows.

• What’s in store for the likes of Bruce Forsyth, Cilla Black, Jim Davidson, Michael Barrymore and Jimmy Carr in a world where wars are fought over the last can of Heinz Baked Beans, and where the dead rise from their graves?
• Will it matter that your average X-Factor auditionee’s vocal chords will have been exposed to massive doses of radiation?
• Will Countryfile survive when there’s not really that much countryside left?
• What will Frank Spencer do if prams, buses, ramps, skips and open second storey windows are swept away by the cleansing nuclear fire?
• Will we, God forbid, see the last of The Last Of The Summer Wine?

There’s only one way to find out!

WWMers, the Afterworld awaits!

In one of those frequent nothing-on-the-box moments that tend to come about every evening, I delved into the world of Catch Up TV and found this gem lurking in the depths.

Made by BBC Wales, Rhod Gilbert (who caught the eye with a fantastic effort fronting Nevermind the Buzzcocks) hosts this stange little half-hour nugget in which he tries his hand at disciplines other than his usual stand up career. With consequences that are, if not hilarious, certainly ruddy amusing.

I only caught the most recent episode but luckily the previous ones are available on iPlayer. It featured Mr. Gilbert wandering around a beauty salon and attempting to learn how to trim bobs, squirt spray tan accurately and exfoliate women without finding himself up on an indecent assault charge. The joy of the show is that Gilbert either actively takes none of it seriously or is completely unable to, so everything he does, he does with a nice line in chucklesome incompetence.

When lathering up a lady with an exfoliation gum around the nether regions, his face wore an expression of outright disgust as he told her ‘this should feel like you’re being licked by the tongue of a massive cat’ before leaving her on a heated bed for a couple of hours – which was over an hour longer than she was meant to be there for.

The spray tan segment was even more disastrous. Possibly thrown by the fact his victim was an extremely attractive Melissa George lookalike, he streaked every conceivable part of her body with the fluid, making her look like a chocolate zebra. Her face was a work of art in itself, going from a soft porcelain to a speckled mess within a split second. When the assistant tried to explain to her furious boss ‘I didn’t know it was going to go as badly as it actually went’, she was understating the case somewhat.

But the real task was in cutting the bob – and despite repeated, failed attempts on a disembodied head that Gilbert carried around with him for the whole shoot and christened ‘Mrs. Head’, Gilbert actually managed to pull it off. He may have lost a couple of fingers and found himself chastised by several hairdressers in the process, but he did his job. I’m looking forward to tracking back to the Binman and Mother episodes.

HecklerSpray report that friend-of-the-press Mel Gibson has given people even more to talk about – to add to the alcoholic, anti-semitic, sexist, god-bothering stuff he’s been indulging in of late.

Live on WGN TV, speaking to entertainment reporter Dean Richards, Gibson acted politely (despite the crazed look in those trademark wild eyes) throughout the difficult questioning, then muttered a very distinct ‘asshole’ when he thought he’d gone off-air.

Take a look at the video. It’s a lot of fun.

Unreality TV reports that those titans of comedy, Mat Horne and James Corden are no longer on speaking terms. Apparently relations broke down as they bickered on set during filming for the new series of their critically reviled sketch show.

I know what you’re thinking.

‘They’re doing a second series of Horne & Corden?!’

A ‘pal’ of the pair – and some pal they must be for talking to the Sun – said:

“They were being billed as the next Morecambe and Wise, and that sort of thing. It went to their heads.

“While their success was on the rise they slowly started irritating each other to the point where now they don’t speak.

“They used to be in touch all the time, like best pals are. But they never go out together and just do their own things.

“They seem sick to death of each other – well Mat certainly seems to be fed up of James.”

Next Morecambe & Wise!

Is this a passing rift that will heal given a couple of weeks? Or is this the kind of relationship-rip that’ll need a plethora of solutions before it’s ever resolved?

Can we speculate on what the hell’s gone wrong?

Sky News reports on really important, heavy current affairs. So it was that yesterday, during Afternoon Live, Kay Burley found herself plucking Peter Andre’s heart-strings regarding the reported honeymoon antics of his ex, Katie Price and her new Celebrity Big Brother beau, Alex ‘The Reidernator’ Rocky Reid.

She plucked so hard she made a grown man cry.

Reports abounded regarding Price and Reid’s  trip to Las Vegas as it turned out that what was reportedly just a holiday had actually become a wedding trip, with the couple celebrating at an enormous strip joint (pure class) and telling anyone who’d listen they were thinking about melding their sex-cells together to create a ‘honeymoon baby’ out of their combined genes.

Always pushing the envelope (often aggressively and in the wrong direction), Burley felt compelled to ask Andre – a studio guest – how he would feel if Reid attempted to adopt his children. Andre – an emotional man at the best of times – began to cry bitter, salty tears down his smooth face. An awkward moment for all involved.

Kay Burley discussed it, after the whole palaver was over.

“What a day. Peter Andre broke down on my show and when I went to check during an ad break that he was okay, he sobbed on my shoulder in the green room.

“He’d discovered not 12 hours earlier that the mother of two of his children had married without even bothering to tell him and was devastated at the very thought that she might want take the youngsters away from him.

“I was mortified at having upset such an obviously doting family man and was keen to offer sincere apologies, but he was his usual charming self. As we stood and chatted about parenthood he said he was relieved he’d finally vented some of the pent-up tension he’d been feeling and I sympathised but warned him not to ever cry in front of the children.”

“Eventually calm was restored and Peter left the building wiser about news interviews and me very much with ‘Team Pete’.”

The video’s below, so feel free to absorb it. It features a news reporter asking inappropriate questions in a report which doesn’t feature any news, and a grown man exploiting his situation whilst simultaneously attempting to salvage some dignity – little realising that it’s an impossible task.

Whilst it’s running, why not click through to the Youtube page and enjoy the comments? They are sweary and written by thick people.

In the first of a series of responsible WWM medical information pieces, we look at modern conditions or phenomena caused by the presence of the television in the average home.

Firstly, the common feeling of Déjà View – where, whilst watching a transmission, you get the unshakeable feeling you’ve seen the programme before.

dé·jà view

Definition:

n.

1. Psychology. The illusion of having already experienced something actually being experienced for the first time. Eg – an episode of Last of the Summer Wine.
2. 1. An impression of having seen or experienced a TV show before: Quentin was sure he’d seen the episode of Top Gear where they put a massive engine in a caravan before and watched it with a distinct sense of déjà view.
   2. Dull familiarity; monotony: the déjà vu of an endless Big Brother run.

Aside from those in the definitions, common shows which bring about the onset of this condition include most of the soaps. However, in these instances, it’s not necessarily the programme that’s been witnessed before. It occurs instead when a plotline, character or death scenario arises – transporting the viewer back to the 80s when exactly the same set of circumstances unravelled onscreen.

The condition is most commonly brought about by drink. On a personal level, I watched all of the first series of Shooting Stars whilst driven insane by booze. Thus, waking up of a Saturday morning, I would watch Shooting Stars believing that I hadn’t sat and chuckled at it the previous evening. On watching the following day, I would find myself familiar with all the punchlines, with the eery feeling I knew where each gag was going. It was ruined, and I was alarmed.

Thus, I was soaked in an uncanny but all too common episode of déjà view.

Please feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant undoubtedly made one of the best British sitcoms of all time when they crafted The Office. A fact which nobody can deny.

Increasingly, however, his public appearances have often been examples of how not to engage with your public. Infamous turns on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross have had plenty written about them – and then there was the excruciating appearance at the Diana concert. Of which we’ll say nothing.

We’ll just embed the clip.

And now, in a recent interview with The Sun, Gervais bashes panel shows, stating that they have no longevity.

“I’d love to do things like QI – but what’s the best that can happen? I’m on telly for half an hour and they go ‘Oh, he’s funny’. Yeah, I’m meant to be funny, thank you!”

“They’re today’s news and as good as they are, you don’t go, ‘I think I’m going to sit down and watch the 2005 edition of 8 Out Of 10 Cats DVD’, do you!”

Fair enough, Ricky. All true. But that doesn’t excuse the self-indulgent tone of this bit:

“Myself and Steve write things that are global, universal and have a legacy. The Office is shown in 90 countries, it’s had seven remakes and people are still buying the DVD. Now, you can’t say that about panel shows.”

So effectively, his point boils down to ‘I don’t like panel shows because I’m very successful. Did I tell you I’m very successful? Well I am. I’m very successful’

Thanks for the reminder. Extras was a bit shit, by the way.

Pity poor Kajen Thuraaisingham. Last night he appeared on Mastermind and, reports DigitalSpy, scored the lowest number of points in the show’s entire history. Where Michael Burton of Peckham equalled the worst all time score recently with seven points to his name, Kajen managed four right answers in his specialist round and only one in general knowledge. Achieving the lowest tally ever – only five points in all – took 13 wrongs answers and 11 passes.

Owch.

John Humphrys – who’s the question master these days, for those of you who gave up on the most pared down general knowledge quiz on British TV years ago – said:

“It’s the ‘black chair’ syndrome. The mind can just go blank when you’re in the chair.”

Kajen himself declined to be interviewed, simply muttering, sadly:

“I tried my best but it wasn’t my night.”

It might come as a bit of a shock, but rather than being self-righteous, shyster sprites that only inhabit the television, politicians are actually people.

Real, walking, talking people – just like us.

They eat, sleep and even fart out of their bottoms – in a completely human sort of way – and are able, however haphazardly, to communicate with the kind of scum-riddled feck-dregs who inhabit those ghastly tower-blocks that dirty the horizon on the edge of every town.

As if setting out to prove that this shocking fact is real, Channel 4 delivers Tower Block of Commons – essentially Boys & Girls Alone, set on a council estate, with MPs and the underclass playing the parts of the youngsters who carried that far, far, far superior show. The poverty-stricken inhabitants of the estates each agree to house one of the four representatives who agreed to take part in the show, and from there it is presumably hoped we’ll uncover some comedy gold, as well as a few moments of poignant pauper-porn, as cultures clash and parliamentary old-hands attempt to spin their way out of the uneducated criticisms they’ll receive from their hosts.

In practice, Question Time it most certainly isn’t.

Let’s take a look at the baby-kissers involved, and see how they got on.

Tim Loughton, the Tory MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, was sent to the Midlands, where his host on the Newtown estate was Natina – a savvy, admirable girl who works and provides for her daughter whilst sharing her flat with an additional three other family members. During his time in this first episode, the only real clash between guest and host was over the correct clothing required for estate-life. Whilst Loughton was dead-set on sporting his gardening shoes, Natina insisted he wore trainers – but after this initial face-off, Loughton got stuck in as far as he could, even handling the early-hours bashment shindig with something approaching dignity.

The only blot on his notebook was his furious meeting with a member of the public who rightly took him to account over the expenses scandal. Sadly, unfurnished with the technical knowledge required to call a ‘legitimate crook’ to task, Loughton was able to spin around and avoid the blows. Besides, a mob of hoodies came by eventually and broke the whole thing up. Ironically enough.

Labour MP for Great Grimsby, Austin Mitchell was so clearly ill at ease with his surroundings when he visited a Hull council estate that he looked like a bewildered English Bull Terrier gaping at a bowl of rotten dogfood throughout. Possibly because this kind of reaction is the norm for Austin, his wife Linda joined him for the ride and actively filled in the time he wasn’t making himself look an arse, doing it for him.

When speaking to their host, a methadone user who was trying to kick her habit, Linda recommended two glasses of NZ white wine. Later on, when it seemed she’d started to get to grips with what was going on and revealed her own post-pregnancy addiction to diazepam, Austin made light of it, joking that she’d bring about the end of his parliamentary career with junkie talk. Thus making both of them look as hopelessly out of touch as they were always going to prove themselves to be. This was only made worse when they decided to dine out round a mate’s place to escape the estate, leaving memories of the desolation behind them as they feasted on sweetmeats and guzzled fine wines, far away from the squalor of the hoi polloi.

Ian Duncan Smith sadly had to pull out of his dealings in an East London estate after day one due to family illness, which was fair enough. But still we got to see the Quiet Man of British Politics all hoodied up and being walked by an enormous, presumably savage dog. It’s a shame he had to go, because he seemed, against all odds, to be quite at home with his hostess, Charise, even when her friends asked him to blurt out the date he lost his virginity – and discuss whether or not he liked oral sex.

Finally, Mark Oaten – the Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester who you may remember from certain salacious NotW stories – visited a Dagenham estate and was housed by a lady called Selina whose triumverate of vices included The National Lottery, fags and endless cups of tea. Living in a flat riddled with mould, with fresh turds parked in the stairwell, Oaten seemed immediately to warm to her and probably coped best with the whole trauma, despite a shaky start where he was brought literally to the floor by a passing young ruffian mentioning ‘rent boys’ and ‘AIDS’ in a most unkind manner.

Having dealt with that, unlike the other oafs, Oaten started doing what politicians are meant to ruddy well do, and began dealing with the mould issue for Selina and starting a petition in a brave but probably doomed attempt to have the tower blocks where she lives demolished and replaced by something nicer.

As the show progressed it was certainly entertaining in the way these fish-out-of-water, docu-whatevers can be. It was well shot, perfectly edited and, on many occasions, laugh-out-loud funny. What it definitely wasn’t, however, was enlightening in any way, shape or form. There are three episodes left to run, but you can bet that from the miserly, one-week period they each donated to the housing estates, the politicians will neither learn a single thing fom the experience nor actually start to deal with the issues the kind of people they’re staying with have to face daily. Not, at least, to any serious degree.

Though Oaten – playing the nice-guy to an absolute tee – makes some superficial gestures towards helping Selina and though Loughton appears willing to engage with the people he meets, you can’t help but feel they’d be better off doing it from their offices rather than getting up to the usual non-parliamentary antics we know they indulge in over at Westminster.

Fiddling with receipts and browsing escort directories whilst writing lengthy pre-emptive responses in order to bullshit their way out of difficult questions. You know the kind of thing.