No. It's because Channel 4's pop presenters are unfeasibly smug, argues Neil Davey...
What is the point of Alexa Chung? Yes, that bloke from the Arctic Monkeys is no doubt happy and yes, she hasn't exactly been hit by the ugly stick, but what is the point of her exactly? Take away the face and the clothes horse build and you're left with absolutely nothing. Apart, of course, from an eternal vat of smug.
Unfortunately, Ms Chung is not alone when it comes to smug, look-at-me-aren't-I-cool, personality-free broadcasting. There are loads of the buggers and all of them are on Channel 4. The second Simon Amstell left Popworld, C4's music broadcasting didn't so much go downhill as plummet to a point so far underground that it's gone through Hades and has nearly reached Antarctica.
When you think of all those years of broadcasting and all the women Chung could have emulated, why did she decided to copy Miquita Oliver? Always the weakest thing on Popworld - who knew you could make a career of being wide-faced? - the foghorn delivery and perma-sneer were boring after five minutes but after five years? Oliver is now the elder stateswoman of T4 and god help us all if that's the new benchmark.
Mind you, Miquita looks like a broadcasting genius compared to Rick 'surely-a-typo' Edwards who is Jonathan Ross, Peter Purves, Richard Whiteley and Michael Parkinson rolled into one compared to Nick Grimshaw. Grimshaw's like the solution to a Zen koan. I have no idea what the sound of one hand clapping is but I can at least show you what someone with negative amounts of talent looks like: tall, effete, floppy haired and with the sort of face you would NEVER tire of hitting. With Miquita Oliver. Seriously, the right minded citizens of the UK should be allowed to sue Grimshaw for his misuse of oxygen. By which, of course, I mean every breath he's taken since birth.
The nadir came recently during the coverage of the V Festival. Miquita sat smugly dismissing every act she'd been hired to promote, several of which she championed as recently as days ago, until everybody else started liking them. Then along came Alexa Chung and stop-him-he-makes-me-want-to-kill Grimshaw to add their ten cents worth.
Their position? Everyone attending V was a tasteless pleb and the bands playing were all way too successful to be good. When asked for their highlights of the weekend, they cracked funnies such as 'the sunset' and 'the end'. According to them, you'd have a better time turning the TV off. They were almost right. Just turning it down while they spouted their vacuuous toss improved the experience tenfold.
