Sonys for 6 and Asian Network

The idea that Frankie from The Saturdays presented Jarvis Cocker with a rising star award is no more strange than the suggestion that it is, somehow, in the national interest for George Osborne to be in the Treasury with a booster seat and a talking calculator.

Yes, it's the Sony Awards, and although there are prizes for Adam And Joe (comedy) and Jarvis (aforementioned rising star), there wasn't very much applause for 6Music, and doesn't really conjure an image of Mark Thompson putting his head in his hands and asking "what have I done?" Good at comedy and giving Jarvis a show - while both good things - aren't quite what 6Music is primarily designed for, and not really the focus of the save the network campaigns.

Nihal's prize for the Asian Network - best speech programming - has a bit more heft to it, because it treats AN as really having a bit of breadth and influence.

Mind you, the whole awards ceremony is suspect, given that the Bono Elvis poem thing won a prize - despite everyone in the entire world having had their ears removed in shame after hearing it.

Zane Lowe won two prizes, and not for the first time, and Scott Mills is apparently better than Chris Moyles.

Winners in full over on the Sony site.

We don't want to spoil the surprise, Scott, but...

Call me old-fashioned, but if you issue a photocall to promote a TV series, it can't really be very much of a surprise, can it?

Where: Main Entrance, BBC Radio 1, Yalding House, Clipstone Street, London W1
What: David Hasselhoff arrives at BBC Radio 1 studios with his two daughters, to surprise buddy - DJ Scott Mills
Time: 17.00 hrs

This is all to push the sequel to the series where Scott Mills went to live with David Hasselhoff - to be honest, I'd assumed that had just been made by accident last year, but it turns out it was commissioned.

This time round, Scott and David have to unite to save the world from a gang of criminal masterminds, intent on stealing the Buletter diamond - the gem which regulates gravity itself. Can they beat the gang and stop everything from floating into space - while disguised as chipmunks? Tune in to Living TV this... oh, hang on... wrong synopsis:

TV legend and pop culture icon, David Hasselhoff, is set to return to LIVING for an all-new six part series, which will air exclusively on the channel from September. Following the runaway success earlier this year of The Hoff: When Scott Came To Stay on LIVING (March ‘09),

"Runaway success" = somewhere between 'no sanctions imposed by Ofcom' and 'Pick of the day in Now! magazine.

the new series will continue the story

'Man makes television programme with other man' - can't wait to find out what happened next.

and follow the whirlwind life of the epic Knight Rider and Baywatch star.

Didn't know KITT was in Baywatch as well.

David will spend this summer in the UK and wider Europe along with his Hoff-spring, daughters Hayley and Taylor-Ann, and plans to immerse himself in British culture and embrace everything that makes our summer great.

Hoff-spring? Really?

What's with "wider Europe", exactly? What does that mean? Can't they find enough to keep him entertained in the UK? Have they had a cross-promotion deal with the manufacturers of Hovercraft?

Still, the idea of David experiencing a British summer - sitting in a traffic jam ten miles from Stonehenge, putting rubbish in a bin full of wasps, skeeting grey rain washing in across Robin Hood's Bay and trying to get the wrapper off a lemonade sparkle - might make for a good TV show. Well, not a good TV show but a fitting punishment for David Hasselhoff.

But that's not what they've got in mind:

We’ll join David on everything from country pursuits in stately homes, having a traditional cockney knees up and picnic-ing and kite flying on Hampstead Heath to playing polo, rowing with the Oxford Blues and inspiring lifeguards on the Devon coast. The Hoffmeister will be taking viewers on a tongue in cheek VIP journey through British summertime that’s anything but quintessential.

Hang about - is this embracing everything about the summer, or not? It can't be both the quintessential British summer and anything but the quintessential British summer, can it?

Hot on the heels of his hit appearance as a judge on America’s Got Talent, The Hoff has wasted no time nestling firmly back in the bosom of his British fan-base. Episode one will follow the chaos of his arrival in London as hurricane Hoff is reunited with Scott and taken on a sightseeing tour across the capital.

Hoff on an open-top bus, then.

Other series highlights will chronicle David as he’s joined by daughters Hayley and Taylor-Ann, who are pursuing a pop career,

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

as they take in the best of Britain and its stellar summer events line up. David will put paid to the theory that an Englishman’s home is his castle, as he holes himself up in a haunted castle and takes in a spot of clay pigeon shooting.

Is it even worth pointing out that an American staying in a haunted castle has very little of value in exploring the contention that the writ of British law stops once you are own your own property? And if he really wanted to test the theory, he might be better off talking to Tony Martin?

Fulfilling a lifetime dream, David will also be hiring a barge and cruising through the canals, locks and backwaters of the British countryside to Oxford, spending quality time with his girls.

What exactly is David's "lifetime dream" here? Has he really always wanted to go on a barge? Couldn't he have made a booking with Hoseasons?

Anyway, there you have it: The David's summer plans. All starting with trying to get Scott Mills to at least act surprised, dammit, this afternoon.

Gordon in the morning: The saving of Radio One?

Oh, if only this story was being carried somewhere you could believe it:

CONTROVERSIAL CHRIS MOYLES, the self-proclaimed “Saviour of Radio 1”, is on his way OUT of the station’s flagship breakfast show.

He will be axed this year after he becomes the slot’s longest-serving host in September.

Radio One, as you'd expect, express surprise at the story:

Last night a Radio 1 spokesman insisted: “We’ve no plans to take Chris off breakfast. He hosts a highly successful show.”

Well, that's pretty clear. Oh... hang on, though:

But when asked how long Chris would stay at the station, the spokesman refused to comment.

Well done, Gordon (and Simon Rothstein, who gets a joint credit) - simply because you got an unequivocal statement that - officially at least - there are no plans for Chris Moyles to leave breakfast, asking a different question entirely and not getting a response proves... um, something.

Gordon also provides a thinky-thinky piece to accompany his shock revelation:

WHEN Chris Moyles took over breakfast in 2004, the show was in terminal decline.

Was it? Really? Terminal?

And, sure, the ratings have improved under Moyles, but much of the credit for that should be taken by the increasingly rubbish commercial sector putting up less and less competition.

Zoe Ball and Sara Cox never filled the boots of Chris Evans, the best in the slot’s history.

Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley (aka Lard) carried on but were too old for the gig. Moyles now faces the same end.

Interesting choice of words - "carried on"? Especially odd since Mark and Marc came before Zoe and Sara. And didn't they get moved not because they were "too old", but because they were too smart for the breakfast slot? After all, if their crime was being too elderly for Radio One's audience, it's surprising they thrived in the afternoon slot for so long afterwards, surely?

His brash, arrogant, no-holds-barred, bully-boy personality was the shock-jock style Radio 1 needed then. But it’s time for The Saviour to move on.

Ah, yes. Radio One really needed a bully at breakfast. Did you read that back before you hit print, Gordon?

The breakfast hotseat has a shelf life and sadly Moyles is past his sell-by date.

Sadly, we no longer need an arrogant breakfast braggart. The modern world no longer requires a honking idiot yelling at it from a position of bemusingly assumed superiority. That's bad news for this bloke:

ON MONDAY, The Sun will be launching a live phone-in show on the internet between 10am and 1pm, Monday to Friday.

Sony award winning DJ, Jon Gaunt will be fronting the show, with famous guests and regular contributions from Sun Columnists.

There's one gaping hole in the Moyles story. Smart claims that Radio One are going to ease Moyles out in September, and replace him with a "rising talent", but:

Drivetime presenter SCOTT MILLS will be asked to step in while a replacement is readied for the prized post.

If you're not dumping the current host until September, wouldn't that give you the best part of a half-year to "ready" your rising talent? Assuming the story, of course, is true.

Scott Mills worries the BBC Press Officer

The dormant row over Chris Moyles' use of the word 'gay' in a modern, ironic slang sense has been reopened by Scott Mills in a Guardian interview. The questions about his role as an out dj on the network led, inevitably, to the question of Moyles' clumsy use of the word:

You're friends with Chris Moyles. How do you feel about him being accused of homophobia?

It's ridiculous. Chris is one of the least homophobic people I've met. That "gay" thing [when Moyles used the word "gay" to mean "rubbish"] was an off-the-cuff remark and I didn't find it in the least bit offensive. I know, having spoken to him, he was quite mortified that people would think he was homophobic.

But you were involved in an anti-bullying campaign where you said that to use "gay" as an insult was ...

Yes, but I think on Chris's show it was meant as a joke thing. I've spoken to him and I don't think he would -

BBC press officer: I don't think we want to go into this. It wasn't offensive to you ...

Aha. So you need a press officer on hand to tell you what was and wasn't offensive to you, eh, Scott?

Not to me. I can understand that people would have been offended by it, but I wasn't. That may be because I know him, though.

Was the BBC wrong to back Moyles?

BBC press officer: I'm not sure he can really comment ...

I don't really want to say. I don't really have an opinion.

... at least, the press officer tells me that. How can you not have an opinion, Scott? How come a minute ago you were defending him and then, when asked if the BBC was right to do so, you suddenly don't have an opinion?

The answer, of course, is because while Moyles is merely clumsy and ill-judged what was acceptable, Mills should know better, but doesn't. As his next answer shows:

I think it's been blown out of proportion. Some people even think I'm homophobic. I'll say things and think it's fine, but it sometimes offends people. I'll write back, saying, "Actually, I am gay" and they'll go, "Oh, right, sorry to bother you." Maybe because I'm so comfortable with it, some things I say could be construed as being homophobic but obviously I don't mean that.

Aha. I'm gay, so I can't be homophobic. But if people who complain don't realise you're gay then how can could "I'm allowed to say it, I'm on the team" be an excuse? Mills has chosen to be out in a soft way "not a gay ambassador" - which is fine, his choice and all that - but if you're going to use being gay as an excuse for being homophobic, you'd better bloody make sure people know where you're speaking from.

Because what about the people who feel outraged and don't complain? And what about the people who hear you say those things, don't know you're gay, and agree with you?

Indeed, whether you're gay or not, you shouldn't be spewing homophobia on the radio.

Because what about the people who hear you, know you're gay and feel vindicated in their attitudes - because if a gay bloke's saying it about gay blokes, it can't be wrong, can it?

Is Mills unaware of the concept of the self-hating Jew? Is he happy being an Unmarried Uncle Tom? Doesn't he think that being gay, and broadcasting things that people take to be homophobic, makes it worse, not better.

[Gareth McClean has blogged about this over on the Guardian site, too.]

MORE BRITS: Simon Tyers, who we shall forever call the No Rock Spy, has turned up with more Brits-related observations:
I'll just have to bullet point these instead of uncomfortably welding together these disprite strands:

* Something Always Happening At The Brits was a curious angle for ITV to take in its advertising anyway, partly because the TV trailers were making out it was all about the music, but mostly because their line went "remember John Prescott getting soaked by Chumbawamba, or Jarvis Cocker onstage with Michael Jackson, or Bryan from Westlife challenging So Solid Crew last year?" Well, not really, as one happened before the show, one at the after-show, and the other was completely missed by most of the audience, the TV crew, radio, journalists and essentially pretty much everyone except a bloke from L!ve TV with a camcorder. And no-one mentions Brandon 'The Salon' Block at all, so the one moment they have got they can't find a reason for using.

* The worst thing about the set-up was that, unlike, well, every other proper industry awards ceremony, Davina was told to wander around the audience and make off-hand comments to people, getting hard glares for her troubles, which made it look like she was trying too hard. They perhaps meant it as "look at all the stars here!", but it doesn't give the impression of her as bringing calm to the event.

* And the award presenters! Vernon Kay you could just about get away with, if not the pre-nominees banter (Vernon, in an attempt to gee up the audience: "Garlic bread?" Davina : "Peter Kay!" Vernon : "No, I'm not Peter Kay." Audience : "....") Next award - Tess Daly! I know she's in the ITV idents, but that doesn't mean Robbie Earle got an invite.

* Why did they change the name of Best Newcomer? If Will and Norah had won that it would have been better understood than a thin veneer of 'breaking through with their great original sound'.

* Did you hear any of the Radio 1 coverage? Since Collins and Maconie buggered off it's been Scott Mills and Nemone locked in a Portakabin very much not having the time of their lives, and ruining the claims of being first to the breaking ceremony news anyway by commenting on performances, dresses etc. well before they're supposed to - the OB unit producer can't even get his head around the concept of as-it-happens reportage. This time the gimmick was they had 'spies' - they never established what this meant - in the artist area texting back, because that's what young people do, on gossip of the quality of "Gwyneth's here", "the Sugababes aren't in their seats" (Nemone : "actually, aren't they about to perform?") and "Avril Lavigne looks bored", all treated with the level of studied cynicism that that woman who does the entertainment news on Jo Whiley's show does because that's what Heat do, isn't it?

* Interesting to see that, scrabbling around for a story, any story, after Kylie's been disposed of they've alighted on Chris Martin's 'anti-war' speech, as if a) being anti-war is the very limits of left-wing politics and b) he'd launched into a five-minute discourse on UN culpability and the oil issues, as opposed to an offhand comment that would have passed without notice if Frank Skinner had said it on that night's Unplanned. Still, at least he didn't have his bloody Make Trade Fair T-shirt on.