Eamon Holmes - Laughing in the Face of Danger

THE RECENT INCIDENTS involving Steve Irwin, killed while harassing marine life for a TV documentary, and Richard Hammond, seriously injured while driving a jet-powered car at nearly 300 mph, have highlighted the dangers faced by some of our best-loved TV presenters. Theirs’ is one of the most hazardous jobs in the world, and yet they unflinchingly put themselves at risk presenting such hit shows as Changing Rooms and Bargain Hunt.
But in a bid to prevent further tragedies, health and safety experts have announced a series of measures aimed at protecting our small-screen icons. At the same time, media watchdogs have urged TV, radio and newspapers to adopt a strict set of criteria to ensure accidents involving TV presenters get the appropriate amount of coverage and don’t, as in the case of Top Gear presenter Hammond, start boring the pants off us before he’s even out of intensive care.
Safety experts today released a list of “at-risk” presenters.
“By virtue of the type of programmes they presented, Irwin and Hammond were always likely to be involved in some kind of accident sooner or later,” said a spokesman. “But there are many other presenters out there who, even though they are sat safely behind a desk or in front of a sycophantic audience in a comfortable studio reading autocue while awestruck runners tend to their every whim, don’t realise the dangers they are putting themselves in.”
Experts have identified one particularly deadly hazard which, they say, threatens nearly every presenter of reality or makeover shows, plus Kay Burley on Sky News.
“Presenters like Carol Vorderman, Johnny Vaughan and Sharon Osbourne are already exhibiting worrying signs of succumbing to this hazard, but others are at risk too,” said the spokesman. “In a worst case scenario it could not only prematurely bring to an end the illustrious career of someone who is adored by millions of lonely spinsters and day-release patients, it could also cost thousands of pounds in public money as subterranean rescue teams, paramedics and emergency helicopters would have to be deployed. Unless our warnings are heeded, it’s only a matter of time before Carol, Johnny, Sharon or one of their presenter colleagues disappears up their own arse.”
The spokesman added that the search for Richard Madeley had been called off years ago, about the same time Richard and Judy began stealing all their ideas from Oprah.
Here is the full list of presenters and the dangers that safety experts believe they are facing.
ITV sports presenter Gaby Logan – “For a woman who looks like a man in drag, she appears to have one of the cushiest jobs in TV, but the tell-tale signs are already there. Stiff posture, wide, petrified eyes – she is so wooden we believe she could become the first human victim of Dutch Elm Disease. (Not to be confused with Ann Robinson or Ruby Wax – that’s Mad Cow Disease) But we can save her. All presenters wear an earpiece, through which they are fed updates and instructions about which camera or guest to turn to next. We believe that with one of our team of highly-qualified experts on the other end of that communications link, we can help Gaby achieve some semblance of appearing human. In a gentle, soothing voice, our expert would feed Gaby the following instructions, which her current producers are obviously neglecting to do: Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out. Blink. Cross your legs. Breath in again……By successfully adopting this course of action, she’ll be around to introduce lots of Intertoto Cup qualifying matches on ITV 4 for many years to come.”
Sky breakfast show presenter Eamon Holmes and BBC “all-rounder” Adrian Chiles – “In one way these two presenters are a beacon of hope to us all in a world obsessed with good looks and healthy bodies. They have successfully carved out their own niches to become televisual catnip to incontinent old ladies. And that’s the problem. They run the real risk of spontaneously combusting with self-satisfaction. They require a kind of figurative liposuction, where great swathes of smugness can be siphoned from them. Either that or a bloody good slap.”
Kids TV presenter Cat Deeley – “It’s a little known fact – and not something she ever mentions in magazine interviews – that Cat had a major operation for a charisma by-pass when she was a gawky, bug-eyed catwalk model. The gawkiness remains, but the operation to remove her charisma was 100 per cent successful. We now need to reverse that operation, even though a similar attempt at transplanting a charisma into Carol Smillie was not a success, though that may have been down to the calibre of the donor(believed to have been Natasha Kaplinsky). If we can’t reverse Cat’s charisma by-pass, then we run the serious risk of her spoiling Jade Goody’s six-figure exclusive deal with OK! magazine to cover her colonic irrigation by smuggling in a disposable camera and selling the pictures to Hello! That’s the kind of charisma-free world these poor people move in. But with a charisma, Cat could go on to present Saturday morning kids’ shows and fawning interviews with pop stars for many years to come.”
Music show presenter and Radio One DJ Edith Bowman – “No-one really noticed just how rubbish Edith was until her co-host on Lunchtime with Colin and Edith – I think his name was Colin something-or-other – left. Now there is a big hole that used to be filled with Colin’s wit, intelligence and spontaneity. Now it’s just filled with Kasabian records. Edith needs to be talked down from the lofty perch her job at Radio One gives her. With expert counselling, she could be persuaded that a return to the check out at the Co-op doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing and that she can still shag people more talented than herself in the hope that she becomes famous by association. It worked for Posh Spice……”
TV chat show “kings” Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand – “Imagine if you met a loud-mouthed, garishly-dressed character down your local pub who just wanted to talk about himself, tell lame jokes and pull arch faces all night long and wasn’t remotely interested in anything you had to say – you’d give him a wide berth, wouldn’t you? Unless you were a producer from the BBC or Channel Four. Then you’d sign him up for his own chat show. As a result, these two characters are exhibiting delusions of grandeur, in which everything about their own lives – in Ross’s case his wealth and his family, in Brand’s his former addictions – is deemed worthy of being talked about ad nauseam and celebrated as something akin to the discovery of penicillin. We believe a tranquiliser dart followed by release into the wild of the Beverly Hills Hotel is the only humane solution to this problem.”

BBC presenters David Dickinson and Dale Winton - "They sacrifice hours of their free time - often at their own expense - to top up their tans to look good for the viewers. We have just two words for them. Skin. Cancer. Viewers love them for who they are, not for their strange, glowing hues. They have to be persuaded that pallid is the new orange before it's too late."
Finally, the health and safety experts have identified one major risk all the above presenters face on a daily basis: “Whereas in the golden age of TV the likes of Ronnie Corbett or Alan Whicker faced no greater hazard than having to sign a few autographs when they popped out to the shops, these days the very real danger facing TV presenters is that a discerning viewer will come up to them and give them a right good twatting.”

THE JILL DANDO INDEX

Meanwhile, following concern that news editors blew the Richard Hammond incident out of all proportion – on some TV news bulletins the story even pushed Darfur, Baghdad and the memorial service for Steve Irwin down the running order – media watchdogs have produced a set of criteria for judging the news merit of future deaths or maimings involving such household names as Dr. Fox and Tess Daley. Called the Jill Dando Index(JDI), it’s a formula which will instantly help TV news producers decide whether the death of a TV presenter should appear before or after their consumer report into exploding bathmats.

Under the JDI, different types of death or injury will be assigned a corresponding value. For example, “murder by an unknown suspect” would score an 8, but “murder by a viewer, stalker or jealous colleague” would score a 10. “Death by accident” would score a 5, but “death by accident whilst filming” would score a 7. This would go up to a 9 if there was video footage available. “Injury caused whilst filming” would score 6, “injury caused while repositioning TV aerial on roof at home” would score 7, and so on.
The appropriate score would then be multiplied or divided depending on what type of programme the victim presented. For example, the presenter of a peak-time terrestrial show would have his or her score multiplied by 5, but the presenter of a shopping channel or Scottish TV show would have his or her score divided by 10. Finally, the number of times the victim has appeared in Heat magazine during the last year would be added to his or her score.

A JDI of over 50 would mean the incident is as newsworthy as, say, the latest suicide bombing in Iraq and merits inclusion near the top of the running order for a typical TV news bulletin. A JDI of 30-50 would merit a slightly lower position, probably after the flag-burning Islamists. A JDI of 15-30 would place the story after the report linking celery to bowel cancer, while a JDI of less than 10 would mean a paragraph on an inside page of The Keswick Reminder.
Using this formula, Steve Irwin(7 x 5 + 4 = 39) would have scored a higher JDI than Richard Hammond(6 x 4 + 11 = 35). But that is without taking into account possible video footage of Irwin being zapped by an angry stingray or Hammond flipping upside several times before landing heavily on his head.

WORLD OF CRAP EXTRA! Read about the night British TV Comedy was brutally murdered here!
(C)Jack Havana 2006. Reproduction in part or whole strictly prohibited without Jack's permission.
This week, Jack Havana recommends:
MUSIC: Other People’s Problems, by The Upper Room. Listen here.
FILM: Volver(15). Three generations of women prattle on in Spanish about the iniquities of men. Trust me, it’s wonderful, and not just because it includes a Wonderbra-enhanced Penelope Cruz. Watch trailer here.
BOOK: Murder in Samarkand, by Craig Murray. Confessions of our man in Uzbekistan – “Her brother was going to be executed, and I was trying to make out her legs through her dress” – and a shocking indictment of Tony Blair’s kowtowing to dubious, Third World despots.
CIGAR: Cohiba Siglo VI. Big and expensive, but at least an hour of unadulterated oral pleasure.