WHO ARE YOU? WHO, WHO, WHO, WHO [510]

Copyright: Spartina Productions / Busboy Productions / CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Following on from my discussion about “The One Show”, and with “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” ending in May 2026, I am not likely to become famous enough in time to answer the “Colbert Questionert”, a litmus test made of questions that makes a guest truly known, with a title punning on the pronunciation of the host’s name.

While I have already said I don’t usually watch the American chat shows for their interviews, I make an exception for this feature to see how various people answer the same questions, and whether they see each question as a need to make a snap judgement, or whether it gives pause to ruminate, or another chance to perform. Either way, I can see the “Colbert Questionert” continuing to the podcast that Colbert will inevitably do next - maybe I will be properly answer it someday.

I imagine some questions (or answers) are cut for time, so not all the following questions are heard being asked to everyone, and so I have no guarantee of this being a complete list of all the questions. I treated them as snap judgments, so these answers are as true as I can make them.

Best sandwich?

In alphabetical order: chicken, lettuce, salad cream, tomato.

 

What is the scariest animal?

If not man, then spiders.

 

Apples or oranges?

Oranges: messier to deal with, but a softer, less acidic taste. You don’t really get apple-flavoured chocolate.

 

What was your first concert?

The Cross, at Gosport Festival in July 1993. It was the solo / “other band” project of Roger Taylor, the drummer from Queen, with lots of guests. With it still not being long since Freddie Mercury died, it was undeniably thrilling to clap and hold your arms out to the chorus of “Radio Gaga”, as the man who wrote it sang it to you.

 

Cats or dogs?

Not a pet person, but cats.

 

What's one thing you own that you really should throw out?

A small circular pillow with a painting of a hedgehog printed on it, a runner-up prize from a family Christmas Day quiz some years ago.

 

Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

Yes, from Paul Gannon & Eli Silverman of the "CheapShow" podcast for their vinyl album, but in a non-committal “if you want to” kind of way - of course they did.

 

What do you think happens when we die?

My energy is redistributed, and things carry on from there.

 

Favourite action movie?

“The Matrix”, a choice apparently shared with both Sandra Bullock and Matt Damon.

 

Window or aisle?

On a bus or coach: window. On a plane: aisle.

 

Favourite smell?

Real vanilla.

 

Least favourite smell?

Excrement of any kind.

 

Exercise: worth it?

Disguise it as a good walk, then I’m sold.

 

Flat or sparkling?

Flat - if a “still” Diet Coke ever comes to market, I will be first in line.

 

Most used app on your phone? 

Its web browser, for nearly two thirds of the time, constantly reading and searching for things.

 

You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it? (You can listen to music whenever you like, but when you do, it is only this song.)

“Station to Station” by David Bowie, specifically from his “Stage” live album – the exhilarating rush of “woo-hoo-hoo-hoo, it’s too late” by its end makes it a better version for me than the original studio version.

 

What number am I thinking of?

Fourteen. (I know it’s wrong, it’s always wrong.)

 

Describe the rest of your life in 5 words?

Wouldn’t I like to know.

 

Congratulations, I am known.

ONE, ONE, ONE, ONE, ONE [508]

Aside from when, in 2011, host Matt Baker asked then Prime Minister David Cameron “how on Earth do you sleep at night?”, because he sincerely wanted to know, the defining moment of “The One Show” was in its Wednesday 27^th September 2017 episode where Mel Brooks, of all people, started saying, “what a crazy show this is”, confounded by a show that, after all the attempts made on British television to replicate American chat shows, has proven to be the one show that worked.

“The One Show” began on BBC One in 2006 as a continuation of the old current affairs series “Nationwide”, but is more like an adult version of “Blue Peter”, covering various consumer items and colourful, interesting stories from around the UK, bridging the gap on weeknights between the regional news and the rest of the evening’s viewing. After a pilot run of shows in Birmingham, it moved to west London in 2007, then in 2014 to BBC Broadcasting House, just off Oxford Street, increasing its ability to attract big-name guests talking about their current projects, but not at the expense of the show’s existing mix of items, gaining it a reputation for varying degrees of randomness in its subjects, and the occasional handbrake turn in tone.

This makes sense for me. I watch “The One Show” every day, and I never usually watch other chat shows as a result. The usual go-round of promotions means you will see people talking about their projects in multiple places, and to that end, both “The One Show” and the weekly “The Graham Norton Show” usually bring out all their guests at once to increase engagement. Perhaps, with most high-profile people having their own podcast, they don’t need the likes of a Michael Parkinson, Terry Wogan or Johnny Carson to open them up for the public. If anything, being interviewed on “The One Show” means having to compete with the stories brought by the show itself.

Back to 2017, “The One Show” had gone from talking to Mel Brooks about his stage adaptation of “Young Frankenstein”, to picking up a story about someone named Patricia, who was trying to find a lost relative. Alongside Brooks was, of course, Russell Crowe, there to perform with his band as well as talk about his career; and Lesley Joseph and Ross Noble, who were starring in “Young Frankenstein”. Said Matt Baker, “we just turn the page and move on,” while co-host Alex Jones joking said, “right, now let’s focus Patricia now, alright?” Replied Brooks, “this is nuts, I want you to understand that.” The same episode included items about picking up rubbish from motorways, an award ceremony for vending machines, and finding manta rays off the Hebrides. 

Admittedly, this episode of “The One Show” was an hour in length, as it normally shoves this much material into half that time – the most recent broadcast, on Thursday 21^st August 2025, had actors Brian Cox and James Norton in the studio, but also filmed and live pieces ahead of the Women’s Rugby World Cup, and the unveiling of the latest “Strictly Come Dancing” contestant.

However, “The One Show” has answered the question that eluded British television for years: how to have a nightly chat show, particularly in the form presented in the United States by the likes of Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Stephen Colbert. There have been recent efforts, like ITV’s “The Nightly Show”, that only lasted for two months in 2017, and “V Graham Norton”, lasting for eighteen months on Channel 4 in 2002-03, before Norton moved to the BBC for a weekly show that is currently only broadcast for half the year. “The Jack Docherty Show”, which launched with Channel 5 in 1997, was the closest these shows came to matching the American formula, with house band, host monologue, sketches and other items before the chat, while coming from a theatre in London’s West End – however, it was cut from five to three episodes after a year. Even when Terry Wogan had his evening chat show on BBC One from 1985-92, it wasn't every night, Tuesdays and Thursdays being taken by "EastEnders" instead.

The only US chat show I see with any regularity, via YouTube, is “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, although I have also seen, when they have come up on TV, similar shows hosted by David Letterman, Jay Leno, Craig Ferguson and Conan O’Brien. In all cases, I will tune in for the monologue, then the sketch or further item afterwards – my favourite of these has been Letterman’s “Is This Anything?”, a collection of various circus and vaudeville acts all appearing at once, followed by the phrase, “wow, that was really something!” After that, I usually turn off – the only variation on the standard celebrity interview on any of these shows is the “Colbert Questionert” (pronounced “questionnaire”, to rhyme with “Colbert”), where everyone is asked the same questions to gain insight: window or aisle seat, first concert, apples or oranges, describing themselves in five words.

I guess what I want more are review shows – instead of celebrities talking about what new films, shows or albums are coming soon, I want someone to tell me what they are like. In the meantime, “The One Show” will provide enough time for an interview, before talking about gardening, or the price of electricity bills.

CLIMB INSIDE A DOG, AND BEHEAD AN ESKIMO [164]

Later than you always should, you realise how responsible your parents are for the person you become. My dad’s renting a collection of “The Goon Show,” on cassette from the local library, sent me down a surreal road through British comedy, and I remember watching an episode of “Have I Got News for You” with my parents in 1993, when Roy Hattersley failed to appear, and was replaced with a tub of lard. However, I had finished watching the first episode of “The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer,” in 1994, thinking, “well, I don’t know what that was about.

After coming across episodes of the satirical puppet sketch show “Spitting Image” online, I remembered my parents taping this show, at 10pm on a Sunday night, for me to watch after school the following day. This first episode I saw turned out to be the first of the eleventh series, broadcast on 10^th November 1991 - I was eight years old at the time.

“Spitting Image,” which ran from 1984 to 1996 really was the right show at the right time. Its sculpted latex costumes, each requiring two people to operate, numerous sets and army of writers meant it costed more to produce than a drama series. However, its unexpected home, the major mainstream network ITV, could afford to provide a place, in prime-time, for proper Hogarth-like satire. ITV has tried to capture the magic since, with “2DTV” (hand-drawn animation), “Headcases” (3D animation) and “Newzoids” (3D-printed hand puppets with CGI mouth movement) coming off as ever paler in comparison, lacking the bite of the original’s scripts. Mind you, "Spitting Image" was also the programme that decided to parody bad holiday songs in 1986, but "The Chicken Song" sounded so authentic, it backfired itself to number 1 in the charts for three weeks. 

With 1991 seeing the end of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, continued conflict across the Middle East, and infighting within the Conservative Party at home, there was much to take in, and spew out again – “Spitting Image” kept me informed in ways we now rely on people like John Oliver, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to continue for us.

Watching it back, the episode I remember is a great crystallisation of where we thought we were at that particular time, so no wonder it’s also been released on DVD.

Starting this series, joke news stories, not unlike those in “The Two Ronnies” and “Not the Nine O’Clock News,” were delivered by a new puppet of “News at Ten” anchor Trevor McDonald ordering the now-retired Alistair Burnet out of his chair, having taken over the bulletin in real life. One sample line: “The newspaper world is reeling from the news that the millionaire publisher Rupert Murdoch is alive and well.”

John Major, recast in grey rubber after becoming Prime Minister, and his wife Norma, eating peas with their dinner, was as much a tonal shift as the move from the show’s masculine, aggressive Margaret Thatcher could cause, the Punch and Judy atmosphere being retained in the show’s opening titles. Meanwhile, the Government is so anonymous, they forgot which one of themselves was Malcolm Rifkind – John Major distinguishes himself by deciding to be the boring, anonymous one.

Elsewhere, new Labour MP Glenda Jackson is doing a drama therapy workshop with the Labour Party; the Queen plays a prank on Prince Charles, playing dead to make him think he has become King (“I always fall for that one”); and a reminder that anything crap becomes brilliant with a piece of lime stuck in it, like “Mex” lager, a used car, Jeffery Archer’s latest novel, London’s Docklands and, finally, “Spitting Image” itself. The “yeeeesss” of Jeremy Paxman is a big memory, and I now know the puppet’s voice was done by, at this point in time, Steve Coogan. There was also a line, from Chancellor Norman Lamont, where, “if you repeat something often enough, people will believe it,” repeated until John Major agrees with it – that sounds like a certain US president on Twitter to me.

Oh, and everywhere is now a legitimate Israeli settlement.

Also, Arnold Schwarzenegger sang a lament about how small his penis was in comparison to the rest of his body.

I definitely understood satire, “Spitting Image” and “Have I Got News for You,” before the more surrealist kind of comedy. At eleven years old, I was allowed to stay up until 10.30pm, and had “Shooting Stars,” “The Day Today,” Alan Partridge, “Brass Eye” and “The Fast Show” ahead of me.

British TV wasn’t half bad in the 1990s.  

GET READY FOR THE SQUARE DANCE [135]

Watching YouTube involves a lot of understanding. You understand that the people creating the videos are most often people at home, who have turned a passion into a paying job. You understand that, to earn a living from their passion, they need to advertise, seek sponsorship, and offer subscriptions for more content. You understand the advertisements you see are what pays for your ability to watch the videos, and what contributes to the creators’ income. You understand that Google, YouTube’s owner, will take the information generated by your having watched the videos to target you with the ads that will attract your interest the most, to ensure you continue watching.

However, what I don’t understand is why YouTube is bombarding me with ads for only one company. In one evening, across six videos, five of them started with different ads for the same website, two were interrupted with another ad for that website, and when one of these videos joked that they were going to be interrupted with an ad for the new “Grinch” film, they were interrupted, but did so to repeat the same name once again: Squarespace.

With the videos I watch on YouTube – usually lots of comedy and factual pieces, film and technology reviews, documentaries, and monologues from Stephen Colbert – you will often come across introductions saying, “this video is sponsored by Squarespace,” and will end with something explaining how the creator of the video has been taking a course on Squarespace to improve their editing skills, or something like that, and you can do the same when you sign up using the discount code that sounds a bit like the channel name.

What I didn’t realise is that Squarespace, much like Google, aims to be the complete package. It was founded in 2003 by Anthony Casalena as a website builder, allowing users to create their own sites using drag-and-drop templates, without a need to know complex HTML code. Later, e-commerce functions were added, and online tutorials and classes appeared to give users greater ability to fulfil their online business. Even the name “Squarespace” gives it a more collegiate atmosphere than Google, even though both sites were founded out of college dorm rooms – just what is it about college dorm rooms?

I can see why the barrage of Squarespace ads may line up with the videos I watch – Google knows I run a website, and I write weekly articles on it, so it may be trying to be helpful. The same videos may also be sponsored by Amazon’s audiobook shop Audible, or various internet security services, and I can see why Google may not prioritise those ads. But this is it – Google knows I run a website because Google hosts it – why would they recommend someone else? Do they realise what they are doing or, at least, do their algorithms know? Should I try watching other types of videos to throw them off their scent, or should I start subscribing to YouTube’s premium service to get rid of the ads altogether? That would be very cynical indeed. Perhaps, by posting this article online, some algorithm somewhere might get the point?

I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT [128]

Last week, the “Radio Times” published an article by former TV talk show host Sir Michael Parkinson, calling for UK television to have a US-style chat show for five nights a week. According to him, the only time it was tried was when Channel 5 launched with “The Jack Docherty Show” in 1997. However, research digs up Channel 4’s “V Graham Norton” (2002-03), Norton having first presented a chat show by standing in for Docherty; BBC Three’s “Johnny Vaughan Tonight” (2003), and most recently ITV’s “The Nightly Show” (2017), before you count shows from Paul O’Grady, Alan Titchmarsh and Richard & Judy during daytime hours. Parkinson then suggested Piers Morgan as host, someone who already had his own chat show, on CNN, which was cancelled in 2014 following declining ratings.

Television isn’t exactly bereft of different ways to have one person interviewing someone else, but the reason I am not a fan of it when presented to me as a chat show is because there is something that feels insincere about them. Rarely would anyone turn up on a chat show because they fancy a chat, and even less if they like the host – it is more likely there is something to tell, or sell, about themselves, or something that involves them. News and current affairs programmes, in search of truth, are more likely to probing of their interviewees than when they are sat on the sofas of Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross’s shows, because they are set up to be more entertaining, which can also be read as less demanding – the one late-night interview show we have in the UK is “Newsnight,” which originally began in 1980 instead of giving more nights to Parkinson’s show. While his article talks of combining showbiz, politics, popular culture and sport in one show, Parkinson could have easily become a presenter of “Newsnight” instead.

Reading the “Radio Times” article, I don’t get why the effort of putting on a US-style chat show in the UK is being demanded by Parkinson – there is something about it being an important and entertaining fixture, and if it works in the US, it should work here, but the implication is that our own shows don’t work – Parkinson has often criticised other chat show presenters, including Terry Wogan, Graham Norton, Davina McCall and Lily Allen, both for the quality of their shows and the rigour of their interviewing skills, especially with the remark in 2016, “I wouldn't ever say that Terry Wogan's claim to fame was as an interviewer. Not at all.”

I should say that I do watch chat shows from the US on a regular basis, as they upload clips to YouTube, but when I do, they are usually from the first half of the hour, before the guests have come out. The US tradition is to begin with the host’s monologue about the day’s events, supplanting the nightly news bulletin, and follow it with another feature, sketch or a game – Stephen Colbert has built his current reputation on the quality of his monologues about Donald Trump, while James Corden and Jimmy Fallon’s interactions with guests are more memorable when they are framed within rap battles and “Carpool Karaoke.” Add in a musical performance at the end of the show, and US chat shows don’t have a lot to do with chat.

In fact, there is already a show on UK television, in prime time, that has guests from Hollywood and the West End, that have as much factual content and musical performances as the US shows do, and it is “The One Show,” which is just as close to “Blue Peter” – famously, in 2011, presenter Matt Baker asked David Cameron, when he was Prime Minister, “how on Earth do you sleep at night,” because he genuinely, innocently, wanted to know.