First up, a sorry dispatch from the Great Celebrity Adipose Wars – a conflict that finally has its Hutton report. Once again, the BBC has issued a humiliating apology for its output, although this time the beneficiary is not Alastair Campbell but Eamonn Holmes. The main thing is, the good guys are still winning.
As one of the key pieces in the Lost in Showbiz Summer Collection, Eamonn Holmes matters. I mean really matters – like celebrity lesbians and small fluctuations in the Singapore tea markets. His pain is our pain – so imagine our relief to learn that the Sky breakfast presenter had taken the sensible course of action after being teased on Jon Culshaw's The Impressions Show. To wit, he called in his lawyers.
Eamonn, it seemed, was not amused by a recurring sketch on the programme, which saw him portrayed as a television presenter given to eating everything in sight, only for his long-suffering producer to wonder where key items have got to. Everything from a sofa to studio guest Frankie Dettori vanished down the Holmes gullet, before Culshaw-as-Eamonn would deploy a variation of the catchphrase, "I was fierce hungry, so I was."
I need hardly tell you that the United Nations dithered over the appropriate course of action to take over this flagrant breach of international law, with that gutless talking shop reduced to bleating that poking fun at Eamonn Holmes wasn't technically in breach of the Geneva Convention. You've got lard on your hands, Ban Ki-Moon. Lard on your hands.
Happily, Eamonn was more bullish, and to this end instructed his lawyers to fire off a legal letter to the BBC. On what grounds, you might ask? As a source close to Eamonn told reporters: "It was the fact that it wasn't just one sketch, there were several, and they repeated the same joke over and over again."
Well. You might have spotted that Eamonn's pal has provided a useful description of what is known as "a running gag" and "a catchphrase" (stop me if this is getting too comedically technical), upon which almost all sketch shows are hugely reliant. So you'd assume the Beeb immediately realised that despite the ludicrousness of the spat, there was a serious principle at stake here, and gave the letter short shrift.
Prepare for disappointment. Instead of dismissing the letter, the BBC – and I can scarcely believe I am typing these words – has issued Eamonn Holmes with not simply a public apology, but a guarantee that the character will be dropped for future shows.
Attempts to establish from the Corporation on what legal grounds they set this preposterous and dangerous precedent have proved fruitless. In fact, the idiocy is exacerbated by the fact that the sketches in question are so innocuous. The Impression Show is miles away from vicious, and I defy you to view them on YouTube and judge that they are anything other than gentle, surreal teasing.
Of course, we know Eamonn is sensitive about his weight, because he recently informed the public of that fact during an interview. (Not the two-part wedding special he flogged to Hello! magazine for a hefty sum; another one.) "It's because I'm a man," he explained. "Women have it much easier . . . No one would ever say, 'Oh you're fair piling on the beef there' or 'That's some ass you've got on you.'" Mmm. It's too much to hope that Eamonn was striking a blow for irony in choosing to make these very comments to the Daily Mail, who scarcely observe anything else of the women they parade through their pages, only occasionally leavening the mix by observing that some female is now "too thin".
But if Eamonn has such a powerful aversion to running jokes, perhaps he could spare us the thrice-weekly spectacle of his excruciatingly unfunny attempts to tease Sky News sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao – whom he persists in referring to as "Jacqueline", presumably in the belief that it is one of his amusing quirks – or making smug comments to camera whenever Manchester United win.
Or does that sort of repetitive tedium count as banter in Eamonn's intriguing moral universe? In order to settle the argument, perhaps next time United win, a group of the opposing side's fans should launch a class action against him claiming mental torture. Because as Eamonn well knows, we can all be a good sport about a gag once or twice, but it's the cumulative affect of listening to him "repeat the same joke over and over again", in the words of that chum of his, that leaves the scars.
In the end, though, we can hardly blame the old poltroon for trying it on via his lawyer over the Culshaw fiasco. Asking Eamonn not to act like a plonker is about as pointless as arguing against gravity. But in the name of sanity, can't we expect the BBC not to cave in and compromise past and future editorial content just because – and forgive the legalese – some prat off Sky can't take a joke?
Given that this sorry affair has yet to be fitted with its obligatory -gate suffix, I would move for Bloatergate. Yet this is hardly ringing up a so-called national treasure and claiming you had sex with his granddaughter. Come to that, it isn't even ringing up Eamonn and asking if he's eaten your granddaughter, and the BBC's hideously craven reaction is genuinely depressing.
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