Digital TV Blog

Comedian Justin Lee Collins is to train as a professional wrestler for his latest reality TV Show.

The Sunday Night Project presenter will star in a new series called Justin Collins is… in which he attempts to master various professions including West End singer and pro-wrestler. The series will be broadcast next year on Sky1 and Sky1HD.

During three 60 minute episodes of the show, Collins will take singing and dancing lessons in preparation for a role in a West End musical before a paying audience, train as a pro-wrestler under the stage name ‘Nacho Lee-Bre Collins’, and learn competitive ballroom dancing.
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And now for some good news. Sky channels including Sky1, Sky News and Sky Arts 1 will be making their welcome return to the Virgin Media TV platform next Thursday, the 13th of November, following the resolvation of carriage fee disputage thanks to a pair of freshly inked deals worked out between the two UK pay-TV platforms.

It has been announced, following a kiss and make up (represented by our picture, right) that Sky’s Basic channels – Sky1, Sky2, Sky3, Sky News, Sky Sports News, Sky Arts 1, Sky Arts 2, Sky Real Lives and Sky Real Lives 2 – will return to Virgin Media’s cable TV service, with Virgin Media’s basic channels, that is, Living, Living 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Trouble, Challenge and Virgin 1, becoming part of Sky’s TV channel roster.

Virgin Media’s CEO, Neil Berkett, said: “We are pleased to bring our carriage negotiations with Sky to a successful close. I believe this agreement represents a fair deal and is the right thing for our customers. We recognise the quality and popularity of Sky’s channels and look forward to welcoming them back to Virgin Media’s TV service. We are also pleased to secure Sky’s continued carriage of the VMTV channels until June 2011.”

Jeremy Darroch, Sky’s CEO, chimes in with: “This is great news for Sky and Virgin Media customers alike. We want our channels to be enjoyed by as many people as possible so we’re delighted to secure their return to the Virgin Media platform.”

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The Actor David Tennant has hinted that Billie Piper could be the next Dr Who.

Tennant, who plays the Timelord in the hit sci-fi series, announced last week that he was to quit the show, and the race is now on to find a replacement.

Current favourites to take over the role of the Doctor include Cold Feet actor James Nesbitt, Life on Mars star John Simm, Paterson Joseph and David Morrisey. However, asked on BBC Breakfast if Billie Piper could step into the role, Tennant said a female Doctor was a definite possibility.

“Why not? It’s one of those parts that any actor could bring something valid to, because it can be anything and it’s a sort of blank canvas every time,” Tennant said.

“The fact is that the difference is a virtue with each Doctor. It’s not like you’re casting Tarzan where you’ve got to have somebody who looks good in a loin cloth. It can be anything.”

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Channel 4, or to be precise, Endemol have received strong criticism after for inviting David Irving, the disgraced historian and Holocaust denier, to take part in the next celebrity series.

Not the cleverest of moves from the Big Brother bosses after the recent media frenzy surrounding the Brand and Ross saga, (Wossygate) and both of the previous Big Brother controversies (Charleygate and Shilpagate).

Producers Endemol met with the author, described by a High Court judge as “anti-semitic and racist”, for 90 minutes to discuss his taking part in the next series starting in January.

On his website, Irving bragged that Endemol had sent him a “secret invite”. In another blog post he boasted, “They seem very keen… pleased that I am so upfront, open and uninhibited. Comes easily to me.” However, last Friday he was told that he had not made the final selection.

Irving came to international attention in 2000, when he filed a libel suit, which was rejected, against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for calling him one of the “most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.” He consistently addressed the judge as “mein Führer”. In 2006 Irving was jailed in Austria for denying the holocaust.

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Jonathan Ross has kept his job in the furore surrounding the prank phone calls that saw the resignation of fellow presenter Russell Brand and Lesley Douglas, the controller of BBC 2, it emerged last night.

However, the 48 year old has been suspended from the corporation for 12 weeks - sans pay - amid the ongoing controversy. Ross is the BBC’s highest paid presenter, with a three-year £18 million contract, and it is thought that his suspension will cost him up to £1.5 million.

The phone messages to the actor Andrew Sachs, broadcast on a pre-recorded BBC Radio 2 show, included boasts from the duo that Brand had slept with his granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, and suggestions that Sachs might kill himself over the revelation.

Last night the BBC’s director-general Mark Thompson said Ross’s contribution to Brand’s show “was utterly unacceptable and cannot be allowed to go uncensured or without sanction.” Whilst suspending Ross was an “exceptional step”, Thompson said he believed it a “proportionate response” to the star’s behaviour, stressing that Ross was on his “final warning”. He has also come under fire in the past for suggesting that Conservative leader David Cameron might have harboured sexual fantasies about Margaret Thatcher.

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Dr Who, Eastenders and Top Gear were among the shows to be honoured at last night’s National Television Awards.

Dr Who won Most Popular Drama, beating Desperate Housewives, Shameless and The Bill. David Tennant, who plays the Doctor, also beat his on-screen sidekick Catherine Tate to win the gong for Outstanding Drama Performance in a ceremony overshadowed by his resignation from the hit show, as well as the ongoing furore over Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s lewd phone prank. It was the forth gong in a row for Dr Who, and Tennant’s third.

It was a mixed night for Simon Cowell. Although three of the shows he fronts were nominated for Most Popular Talent Show - The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, and Dancing on Ice - it was rival Strictly Come Dancing that won the vote. But his long-serving contribution to popular TV won him a life-time achievement award, presented by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Picking up his gong, Cowell congratulated Strictly on winning the talent show category. Backstage, however, Cowell was more forthright about missing out on the gong. “It’s bad enough losing but losing to that lot is a nightmare,” he said. “I’m p***ed off. I’m not happy.”
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Producers at Channel 4 may be coming up with some four-letter words of their own, as Alexander Armstrong pulled out of a deal to host Countdown at the 11th hour. Last month the comedian, better known for his part in The Armstrong and Miller Show, was offered a contract to become the fourth presenter in the popular quiz show’s 26-year history. He had previously said that would like to follow in the footsteps of previous hosts Des O’Connor, Des Lynam and the late Richard Whiteley.

But Armstrong reportedly withdrew days after looking embarrassed when ribbed about his prospective Countdown role on BBC1’s Have I Got News For You last Friday.

Armstrong will be the third person to turn down the Countdown job, after impressionist Rory Bremner and Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling. His sudden withdrawal leaves Channel 4 just two months to find a suitable replacement before filming of the new series begins in the new year.

A source at Channel 4 said “It is a race against time to get someone because the series begins filming in January. We were desperate for Alexander to do it.” The Channel has said that it is currently talking to a number of people about the presenter role, but that as yet “no decision has been made”.

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Last night hairy lothario Russell Brand announced that he had flown the coop from his Radio 2 post amid controversy over calls made to Fawlty Towers star Andrew ‘Manuel’ Sachs. It emerged that Brand had enjoyed a dalliance with Sachs’ granddaughter Georgina Baillie, and Brand, together with Johnathan Ross called to leave a message on Sachs’ answer phone; Ross is heard exclaiming “He f**ked your granddaughter!”, barely a minute into the recording.

In a statement, Brand outlined the reasons for his departure: “I got a bit caught up in the moment and forgot that, at the core of the rude comments and silly songs, were the real feelings of a beloved and brilliant comic actor and a very sweet and big-hearted young woman.

I have apologised to Andrew Sachs and I believe he has graciously accepted my apology. I have not had the chance to apologise to Georgina yet because I’m a little bit embarrassed and I thought I might make it worse.”

The phone messages were recorded last Thursday, and were broadcast last Saturday, between the post-watershed hours 9:00 and 11:00pm, and the story has slowly picked up steam throughout the course of the week.

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David Tennant is to quit his role as Britain’s best-known time traveller Doctor Who, the BBC said on Thursday.

Tennant, who took up the role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in 2005, will film five more special episodes, to be broadcast in 2009, before he leaves the popular sci-fi show. He will also appear in a Christmas special later this year. There is no series scheduled for next year because of Tennant’s commitments with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He made the announcement after winning the outstanding drama performance prize at the National Television Awards last night. The nomination saw him come head to head with Catherine Tate, who plays the Timelord’s assistant Donna Noble in the show. The series also beat Desperate Housewives, Shameless and The Bill to win the Most Popular Drama award.

“I’ve had the most brilliant, bewildering and life changing time working on Doctor Who,” said Tennant, who described the part as the “best job in the world.”
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The BBC is to show scenes of an actor undergoing genuine torture during the new series of the popular show, Spooks. The drama, which tells the fictional story of a group of MI5 agents, will show the actor Richard Armitage (pictured) endure waterboarding, the infamous interrogation technique which simulates the sensation of drowning.

In the story, Armitage plays British agent Lucas North, who rejoins MI5 after spending eight years in a Russian prison. Armitage said that he had agreed to film the scene after reassurances from consultants at the FSB, the Russian intelligence service, and the CIA that waterboarding was “a humane way of extracting information without hurting people”.

However, his view changed completely after his experience. “I was strapped to a pallet and laid at an angle with a cloth placed over my mouth,” he said. “My arms and legs were tied, and we had agreed a signal that when it became too much I would bang my arms on my legs.

Dating as far back as the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding involves subjects being tied down on their backs, usually on a wooden board, with their faces covered by a permeable cloth. Water is poured on a cloth that blocks their airways, making it impossible to breathe without inhaling water. The process rapidly induces the most extreme panic in those subjected to it.

“You start to breathe in and out,” says Armitage, “but when the water just fills everywhere up it just hits you. It changed my opinion completely.

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