Be Excellent To Each Other

I just caught a bit of "Sports Mastermind" on BBC2.

Have the BBC replaced Des with a robot? He talks in a monotone and he barely changes facial expression. Totally robot like.

OK so it's not akin to seeing Dickie Davies on Sport In Question all those years ago after he'd had his stroke (and thankfully he's long since made a full recovery) but is Des ill? Granted I've not seen him on TV for a few years, but is this a sudden thing? Is he this shit on Countdown? What the fuck happened?

Still, Des is still a poor mans Dickie Davies who is officially a legend and is certainly my favorite TV presenter of all time.


Dickie taking delivery of an unfortunately named car, yesterday.

Crikey, I saw the beginning of thayt last night and said to MRSA "He's been replaced by a robot". What are the odds of that?

The prevailing theory in our house is one of 2.

1) He's seen the weakest link and this is his brave attempt to adopt the same scary persona.

2) He's being forced to do it as the remains of some exclusive BBC contract and it's a protest.

To erase the memory of the robot Des, here's Dickie and his best mate Eric Morcombe raising a few laughs in a Christmas edition of World of Sport. Eric wasn't booked to appear, he just went down to the studios with Dickie after staying the night at his house. As Eric was under exclusive BBC contract he got a slapped wrist afterwards from his bosses (this was in the days when you simply didn't mention "the other lot"). Real TV Gold:

Craig will back me up that as it came on last night (I hadn't seen any of the preceding episodes) I turned to him and said the exact words 'have they replaced Des Lynam with a robot, now?'

My dad had a Scimitar. They were fucking awesome cars.

Don't we all?



Oh, I see.

'tis true.

Not any more, he was replaced by Des O'Connor about two years ago!

We are the hive mind.

Bzzzzzzz, zzzzzzp

I didn't see it, but if I did I would have said, "have they replaced him with a robot".

Des O'Fucking'Connor?!?!?!??!?!

There is still only one man for the job!



Fred for Countdown!!!!!!! Are you listening Channel 4 you bunch of coked up cunts?

Des won't be on there for much longer

Jesus fuck, are they going to be able to keep no-one in that job?

Blimey. I'm glad I didn't know that (although I'm crap at countdown, I'm a bit good at the maths ones. Which is weird, because I've loathed maths for over a decade and usually am blinded with rage when I have to do anything mathematical). Des O'Connor? What tasteless idiot came up with that idea? The man's a total arsehole.



Imagine me balking. That's what I'm doing, see. Thirty-six?

Probably not.

Remember, Whitleley was working in the same studios every day anyway (doing Calender) and he lived locally. He even had his own permenent dressing room at Yorkshire TV.

Apparently Lynham said he would only continue if they moved the show to London, which showed utter contempt for the crew who worked on the show (many of whom had been working on the show for years and years).

Or.. he didn't want to move 300 miles away when he could easily get a job closer to home.

True, except this happened a year after he took the job.

Huh. Okay, I'm going to shut up now*.





*It won't last.

Hmm, looks like Countdown's days are [ahem] numbered :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7527091.stm

Anyone know if they really forced a 90% pay cut on the Vorderman or if there's some other reason?

I really hope they don't trasform it into some sort of post-ironic oh-so-knowing parody of its former self.

And Yes, Des Lynam was hopeless on Countdown - he was transparently going through the motions.

Everyone who goes on about how good Vorderman looks for her age should shut up and start talking about Des.

See that man in the photo? He's seventy-six. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!

From what I understand the show is now shown earlier in the day and ratings have probably declined. Countdown used to be one of C4's top shows, these days it can't even make the top 30. It also used to have a decent sponsorship deal that kept the money rolling in.

In addition Voderman was the top paid person on the show by some margin. Not the host, but the helper! Fine while her star was shining brightly, but that star has faded by a huge amount over the last few years.

They've seen the fact that the show can survive Whiteley going, so now they can save a few quid by booting Carol.

If you believe Carol (and I have no reason not to), the show took a 33% budget cut. She offered to match this by taking a 33% pay cut herself, they demanded the 90.

In all honest it could "survive" Whiteley going, but the fact it's now having to take a 33% budget cut suggests it was a blow, and to cut Carol as well probably is death.

I think C4 really want rid of it. They can't be seen to cancel Countdown while popular, but it really doesn't fit anything else in C4's line up these days.

They could always relaunch it.

"Extreme Celebrity Countdown in the Big Brother House."

From what I understand this is a 33% budget cut across all ITV made productions (Countdown was always made by Yorkshire TV for Channel 4, and is now produced by ITV productions in the same studios).

Fair enough then, although you already pointed out the ratings decline.

Assuming again, Carol is not lying, I think offering to match that is as much and more as she should be expected to do.

Even so, if the show with a budget of...ooh, £10m can pay you £1m. I don't think it's in any way stingy to ask for £666k if they cut it to £6.66m and you've been there that long and are that important to the show.

Equally, while they record them in batches, she's still doing 255 episodes for that.

Ooh, I used to work with a bloke who went on Countdown years ago, did quite well, go a job as a researcher and then somehow became the producer. I wonder where he stands on all this.

The difference with Whiteley was they didn't have a choice. Plus he was a twat.

If they'd forced Whiteley out things might have gone differently.

Whiteley played the 'mad uncle' role, and finding him grating was part of Countdown's charm. The mistake was extending it to 45 minutes: it just felt too long.

Yes, but remember that having her on the show helps get them more sponsorship money by association. I dunno about now but a few years back they had a fat sponsorship deal which is probably how her wages got so high.

For a show like Countdown, staffing costs will be the biggest part of the production budget and therefore the easiest way to cut the budget is to get rid of staff. They never wanted her to continue because she is the easiest way to slash the budget in one go.

That story rings a bell...

Ah-ha!

Cheers, never read that before. We worked at Disability Living Allowance, it was also the only job I've ever been sacked from.