Simon Hoggart

What’s your favourite Simpsons joke? This is mine: Lisa and Bart are having a row and Homer tries to stop them. ‘Oh, dad,’ one of them says, ‘we were arguing about which one of us loves you more.’ What’s your favourite Simpsons joke? This is mine: Lisa and Bart are having a row and Homer

One intriguing statistic from last year’s television went almost unnoticed. One intriguing statistic from last year’s television went almost unnoticed. In October, an edition of Jonathan Ross’s 9 p.m. chat show on BBC1 had fewer viewers than Autumnwatch. Even though Barbra Streisand was his main guest, the six-million-pound man was defeated by barnacle geese and

My favourite Alan Bennett story dates from when his play The Lady in the Van was performed in London. The piece includes two Alan Bennetts, one to take part in the action, the other to narrate. One was played by Nick Farrell, a neighbour of ours, who had agreed to do it on condition that

Why do so many otherwise kindly people hate Children in Need (BBC1, last weekend)? We truly believe in helping needy children. We are genuinely pleased to discover that this year it raised £20.3 million, which is almost as much as last year, in spite of the recession, and which amounts to nearly 34 pence for

The X Factor (ITV, Saturday and Sunday) is the most popular show on television at the moment. I felt I should watch it so that you don’t have to. It’s very loud. There is a lot of clashing and banging and whooping and whooshing. A voiceover booms at you, and the presenter shouts at everyone.

Wonderland: The British in Bed (BBC2, Thursday) consists of long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of extreme embarrassment. The notion is to get couples — old, young, black, Sikh, gay — to sit up in bed next to each other, in nighties and jimjams, and talk about their lives as partners. Presumably, the notion

Two things puzzle me about vegetarians. Whenever they come to visit us, we always provide a vegetarian dish for them. But if you go to a vegetarian’s home, no one says, ‘I know you won’t like this lentil and halloumi lasagne, so we’ve cooked you steak and chips.’ Never. As for those who don’t eat

Imagine the scene at some BBC committee meeting. The Chief Officer for Commissioning, Unit Programming is setting out the problem. ‘Gentlemen, recent controversies — the Ross/Brand phone calls, the ongoing problem of Ross’s £6 million annual salary, which is more than the entire budget for a year of the Today programme, our own excessive pay

There was, for a while, some debate in academic circles about whether there was such a thing as cannibalism. According to a handful of anthropologists, it was a Western invention — probably unwitting — to discredit ignorant savages. It now seems clear that this view was, to coin a phrase, political correctness gone mad. There

I expected to dislike Walk on the Wild Side (BBC1, Saturday), fearing sub-Johnny Morris, anthropomorphic, animals-say-the-darndest-things whimsy. Instead it turned out to be funny, inventive and even acerbic. The notion is that comedians take genuine footage of animals from natural-history programmes, and voice-over short routines matched to the creatures’ movements, often with surreal effect. It’s

There is a word ‘deification’, but there ought to be a homophone, perhaps ‘dayification’, meaning the way daytime television spreads into the evenings. There is a word ‘deification’, but there ought to be a homophone, perhaps ‘dayification’, meaning the way daytime television spreads into the evenings. There are now only five types of daytime programming

On a train the other day I overheard a teenage schoolgirl tell her friends, ‘I’m going to watch Channel 4 from eight to midnight!’ When I got home I checked the Radio Times: she was looking forward to Embarrassing Teenage Bodies, Big Brother, Ugly Betty and finally Skins. On a train the other day I

In Britain we seem to like success but are fascinated by failure. This is reflected in our popular television. We loved a failed manager (The Office), a failed hotelier (Fawlty Towers), failed totters (Steptoe and Son), failed human beings (Hancock’s Half Hour). Admittedly, comedy is about the gap between aspiration and achievement, and that means

Famous, Rich and Homeless (BBC1) Psychoville (BBC2) Famous, Rich and Homeless, made by Love Productions for BBC1, and shown over Wednesday and Thursday nights, was a mess. It almost worked, but in the end it failed. For one thing, the five participants in the experiment were not particularly famous, and I doubt if any were

‘Hi, my name is Kröd Mändoon, and I’ll be your liberator this evening!’ says the hero of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (BBC2, Thursday) as he bursts into a dungeon. ‘Hi, my name is Kröd Mändoon, and I’ll be your liberator this evening!’ says the hero of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming

So it could be that ITV is saved not by a cigar-chomping, hot-shot show-biz executive but by a spinster from a Scottish village. The appearance of Susan Boyle in the first semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, all week) was greeted with adoration — and audience figures — that would have been apt if Maria

There are wonderful lines in Fawlty Towers, many from rants by Basil. To the man who dares to ask for breakfast in bed: ‘You could sleep with your mouth open so I could drop in lightly buttered pieces of kipper…’, or to the woman who doesn’t like the view: ‘What did you expect from a

Best: His Mother’s Son (BBC 2, Sunday) was, for those of us from a certain place and time, almost unbearably poignant. Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris — such a charming soubriquet — was a defender with Chelsea in the 1960s. He tells the story of his manager, Tommy Docherty, briefing him before a match against Manchester United.