Off Cuts - 9 November 2007

Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in the World

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Wicked whispers and industry gossip from the broadcast industry.

British TV needs gaymation
Roll up, roll up, UK broadcasters, and buy this show. Off Cuts is often a bit sniffy about strange overseas shows being pitched at the UK, but Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in the World looks as if it could become a favourite as a kind of "queer South Park". The animation, on MTV Networks' Logo channel in the US, features a feuding gay and lesbian couple, a wheelchair-bound HIV positive character and a host of other outrageous stereotypes. Our favourite is the character on the right – check out that six-pack.

A room with a high-tech anti-burglary device
Call us picky, but Off Cuts couldn't help but notice one small inaccuracy in promotional shots for RDF's A Room with a View, which aired last weekend. Look closely in the top left hand corner of the photograph above - were the Italians really so technologically advanced at the beginning of the 20th century that they had developed security lights?

Gove only knows every single vote counts
Conservative MP Michael Gove has secured himself at least one vote for the next election after taking the opportunity in his regular column in The Times this week to sing the praises of Five's children's programming, even going so far as to declare that he now prefers it to rival channel CBeebies. He gushes: "The innocence of the shows, the respect they show for the original material and the reassuring way they inhabit an existing tradition all endear them to me." Off Cuts reckons your kind words have endeared you to them as well, Michael. Surely it is purely coincidence that Five's controller of children's television, Nick Wilson, is a resident of your constituency, Surrey Heath?

I'm a mummy's boy, get her in here
Everyone values his mother's opinion and it seems BBC radio's high-fliers are no different. At last week's Radio Academy event, entitled I'm an Intellectual: Get Me out of Here, BBC Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer made sure his mum, Suzanne Damazer, was in the audience to give him reassuring glances just in case he got stage fright. Once his keynote speech was over, she flung her arms around him. Her verdict? "You were brilliant, Mark, just brilliant." Mum's the word, Mark.

Au revoir, Controller
And finally, Off Cuts was sorry to hear that the TV Controller is stepping down from his blog after nine months of glorious scheming and bitching. Despise him or admire him, no one can deny the impact he had on the industry for a fleeting moment in time. He burst onto the scene with a bang and quickly became the hot topic on everybody's lips. Speculation over who he is has raged. During his six-month reign as TV's gossip king he managed to: have the whole industry think of Jana Bennett as "Fifi", get into a popularity contest with Steve Gowans, discuss one Lauren Hennessey's "beaver" and send up everyone from Roger Graef to Addison Cresswell. He signed off as Dominic Vallely, who subsequently posted a disclaimer on his home page denying all. A double bluff?

Whoever it is, those who breathed a sigh of relief on hearing of his early retirement should not relax, he has assured us he will be back, no doubt bursting with new revelations and crude observations on the industry's great and good.