You know things are bad when you’re home on a Saturday night. You know things are catastrophic when you’re home on Saturday night and watching TV. Take “Stars in Their Eyes”. No seriously, someone take it and dispose of it now. The premise is interesting enough (karaoke with dressing up) quite novel and clever. Or at least it was, 10 years ago when it first started. Now it’s dull, boring and, thanks to ITV’s sudden realisation of its popularity, over-exposed. We now have two series of it each year, a spin-off CD and book, Christmas show, 3 Celebrity specials and recent EuroVision style version, “Stars in Euro Eyes”.
The presenter is Matthew Kelly, an irritatingly chirpy man who seemingly can only talk in puns and large hints as to which singer who’ll be represented next. He is simply too enthusiastic and I have violent fantasies about embedding his sparkling waistcoats in a variety of orifices. Still, fun can be had when he clearly doesn’t know who the singer is but still insists the contestant is a dead ringer for them.
The programme lasts 50 minutes, a third of which is taken up with appalling footage of the partakers shopping/playing with their children/at their job while claiming that music is the most important thing in their life. Only occasionally is this the spouse or children. Not content with inflicting this much information about their dull lives onto the audience, the contestant insists on telling Matthew Kelly hilarious anecdotes about the time they were in Marbella. They also give supposedly unusual information about the star they will be before disappearing into a sea of dry ice and coming out as their chosen singer.
The celebrity chosen is another depressing factor. In one series you are guaranteed a Celine Dion, a Frank Sinatra, a Madonna, a Marty Pellow, a lesser member of the Rat Pack, the latest teen queen and a Mariah Carey. The transformations range from “Wow, that’s him!” to the much more likely “Oh, it’s that milkman who got drunk in Marbella with a wig on.” Of course the contestants aren’t picked on their physical likeness, rather their aural likeness, though sometimes you have to wonder. Clearly sometimes the producers are so desperate for the latest stars to be impersonated they let the quality control slip a little (eg Elderly Austrian woman tries to be Craig David). Luckily the audience (usually home to the complete family circles of the contestants don’t care and clap heartily, generally before the singer has got to sing a note. Unfortunately it is these people who have the power to choose the winner.
Ten crazy wannabes later and we have a grand final. The difference this time is that the programme is live and the viewers (up to 20 million of them) vote for the winner. But by stage it’s a case of ’’Tonight Matthew I’m going to be sticking my head in boiling vats of acid rather than watch it.’’