Paddy’s TV Guide

Series one, episode one
In the ’80s we had the eye-opening and respectfully titled ‘Clive James on Television’ to clue us in on bonkers overseas ads, foreign – usually French – TV titillation and Japanese salarymen undergoing elaborately devised torture techniques on the off-chance of winning a Teasmade. Then in the ’90s we had ‘Tarrant on TV’. Shorter title, friendlier nomenclature, more smut. Now it’s the new millennium and – mainly thanks to Tony Blair – we’re all on first name terms. So we get ‘Paddy’s TV Guide’, in which Paddy McGuinness – but really, who else? – cues up errant TV clips on his Paddy-player, all to reassure us that foreigners do still talk funny and there’s nothing more hilarious under the sun than tikka-tinged septuagenarian bodybuilders (actually, the Padster might be right on that last point). The Pad-man’s got form with the clips format, with 2011’s charity gogglebox quiz ‘Paddy’s Show and Telly’ and last year’s mysteriously dropped ITV ‘QI’ manqué ‘Mad Mad World’, but, try and try as he might, his bid to dislodge Charlie Brooker as the nation’s coaxial Pilate seems doomed to eventual failure.