Quite the most upsetting thing I saw on TV all week was Bob Geldof on the Jonathan Ross show (Friday), talking about all the dead Africans who are found washed up on the shores of Lampedusa, between Libya and Sicily. So many, he said, that the mayor of Lampedusa complained that he had ‘literally’ no room anywhere left to bury them.
Now, obviously, Africans dying en masse is a bad thing. But I’m afraid what upset me far, far more was the fact that Ross allowed Geldof to get away with this lachrymose homily (which got a huge cheer from the audience, unfortunately) on a show normally characterised by its flipness, brazenness and irreverence. ‘Yeah, yeah, St Bob, save that guff for Parky,’ Ross might have said had he been on form. ‘What we weally want to know tonight is: nostril hairs. Do you pluck ’em, snip ’em or shave ’em?’
The genius of Jonathan Ross, 99 per cent of the time anyway, is that he never allows himself to be cowed by the egos of the celebrities he’s interviewing.
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