Archive for December, 2008

After weeks of suspense and lots of practising, Alexandra Burke was crowned the “outstanding” queen of The X Factor after beating boyband JLS in the final of this year’s show on Saturday.

The 20-year-old North Londoner was left speechless and overcome by tears when she was announced the winner of The X Factor 2008, landing her a million pound record contract - three years after she was rejected from the show by judge Louis Walsh.

Walsh said he did Alexandra “the biggest favour of her life” by bringing her to the final, adding that there was “no way” she would have got to that point in 2005.

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The BBC has angered Strictly Come Dancing fans by refusing to refund their money after it cancelled the public phone vote on Saturday night.

The latest in a series of phone-in blunders by the BBC, the corporation’s last minute decision to abandon the eviction has been described by viewers as a “farce” which resulted from the inability to master basic mathematics.

In Saturday’s semi-final the judging panel gave contestants Rachel Stevens and Lisa Snowdon two very high scores, meaning that due to his low score, Tom Chambers would automatically end up in the dance-off, regardless of how many public votes he received. However, many viewers had already rung in to keep the Holby City actor in the competition by the time producers made the decision to cancel the phone vote.

Many viewers were particularly baffled by the BBC’s failure to foresee the voting confusion, which threatens to put a dampener on next week’s final. Hundreds have already complained about the mistake, which also saw the show finishing abruptly ten minutes before it was scheduled to.

An insider from the show said “It was such a simple bit of maths to get wrong. What made it most embarrassing is that people from outside the BBC who were watching the show had to alert them to what was happening.”

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Cable and satellite broadcaster UKTV has bagged the television rights to Spain… On the Road Again, a 13-part culinary road trip around Spain featuring Gwyneth Paltrow. The deal was brokered by Elisabeth Murdoch’s independent production and distribution company ShineReveille.

Produced by Frappe Productions for PBS, Spain… On the Road Again sees the Hollywood actress experience the culinary delights of Spain alongside three other “glamorous and passionate foodies” - the New York based chef Mario Batali, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman and Spanish actress Claudia Bassols.

Each episode is 60 minutes’ long and, according to Frappe Productions, features “all the glamour of the Hollywood lifestyle with the strong traditions of Spanish cuisine. [It] is a must for any lover of fiery flavours and sun-kissed surroundings.”

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Teenagers are being targeted with shock warnings about the dangers of cocaine through a £1million television and internet campaign launched by the government.

The adverts feature a fictional dog named Pablo, who is used by dealers as a ‘drug mule’ to carry cocaine into the country. In the surreal commercials Pablo, who is given the voice of Peep Show’s David Mitchell, appears in various scenes including one where partygoers prepare to take cocaine and another where a girl has a heart attack from using the drug.

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The BBC may have to battle against pay TV channels to hold onto live coverage of the Winter Olympics in 2014 and beyond, as a collective bid from European public service broadcasters was turned down by the International Olympic committee.

Members of the European Broadcasting Union, which bids collectively and then sells the rights on to PSBs across the continent, have shown the games on free television for the last fifty years. But now that right has been taken away from them, as the IOC seeks to raise more money from separate deals in individual countries. So far pay-TV stations owned by Rupert Murdoch have won the rights to broadcast the games in Italy and Turkey.

The EBU has traditionally won the bidding because its 75 members broadcast to the largest television audience. It paid £298 million to show the Olympics in Beijing this year and £90 million for the 2006 games in Turin. The union successfully bid for broadcasting rights in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the 2012 London Games.

An EBU spokeswoman said its bid for the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and the 2016 Olympics, which as yet has no location, had been rejected by the IOC because the organisation had not offered enough money.
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It has been announced that Georgina Baillie (right), grand-daughter of erstwhile Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs and erstwhile bedfellow of erstwhile Radio 2 DJ Russell Brand has been shortlisted to appear in the next edition of Celebrity Big Brother – a programme that’s no stranger to controversy itself.

Given that Brand, how currently on set in the States, filming a version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, used to present Big Brother’s Big Mouth, “[they] couldn’t have timed it better if we tried,” an Big Brother insider said to the Daily Mail.

“It will guarantee Big Brother maximum publicity. An approach is being made to [Ms Baillie] and we are confident of landing her because we know she is keen for publicity to kickstart her own TV career.

She would be on primetime TV every night and the producers know that Georgie is not backward in coming forwards. Georgie knows they will want her to talk openly about the whole affair, but she doesn’t mind in the slightest – she will do anything for fame. She sees this as her revenge on Russell Brand.”

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Britney Spears’ appearance on Saturday’s X Factor attracted record ratings, but it was the star herself and not the contestants who drew the most complaints from fans after miming her song.

An estimated 12.8 million viewers tuned into the X Factor on Saturday night to hear the troubled American pop star perform her latest single ‘Womanizer’ surrounded by a troupe of top-hatted dancers . But while the judges Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue gave Britney a standing ovation, viewers were fuming.

As Spanish-born contestant Ruth Lorenzo was voted out of the show, viewers flooded ITV message boards with complaints about Britney Spears.

One viewer wrote, “Britney’s performance was a disgrace. I don’t know how she had the nerve to stand on that stage and mime when ‘amateur’ singers gave such good performances. Simon Cowell should be ashamed to serve up such rubbish.”

Another said “It was terrible - all the contestants are better than her.”

Britney also appeared to know nothing about the contestant, frequently dodging questions posed by the show’s host Dermot O’Leary. When asked if she had any advice for competitors, she replied with a trite “Good luck and just keep doing it”.

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