Robert Hampton

Oh, for fuck’s sake… really?!

Complaint

We’ve received complaints from viewers who believed a line in the second part of Doctor Who: The End of Time was insulting to people with ginger hair.

The BBC’s response

We would like to reassure viewers that Doctor Who doesn’t have an anti ginger agenda whatsoever. This was a reprise of the line in the Christmas Invasion episode in 2005, when David Tennant discovers that he’s not ginger, and here he is, missing out again – disappointed he’s still not ginger.

In addition, the Doctor’s previous companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) and his new one Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) are both redheads.

To everyone who complained: go out and get a bloody life and stop trying to see offensiveness in everything.

Was this year an exciting way to say goodbye to the decade? Here’s a reminder of what happened on planet Hampo this year (part 2, hopefully, follows tomorrow):-

January started out with one of my favourite shows being revived. Despite being up against EastEnders and being hosted by Ben Shepherd, the Krypton Factor did well enough to be recommissioned for a second series. We found out Who would replace David Tennant, and a year later we still haven’t actually seen him in the role. ITV’s latest attempt to ape the success of Doctor Who was Demons which failed spectacularly; the only creative thing about it being the number of different excuses the writers found for Christian Cooke to remove clothing.

In the wider world, various eras were drawing to a close, as Woolworths closed its doors, Tony Hart kicked the bucket and Dubya left office. Meanwhile, yours truly had an enjoyable night in London Theatreland.

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The weather’s getting colder, the nights are getting longer and Ryan Giggs has won the X Factor (or something). It can only mean one thing: Christmas approaches, and as usual the broadcasters clear their schedules for some festive hijinks.

Here is my pick of the Christmas TV schedules. I actually thought I’d done this last year, but in fact it was all the way back in 2006 when I hand-picked some top Christmas telly, so it’s high time I did it again. There’s a lot of dross this year, and a big thumbs down to BBC Two who fill an hour of precious peaktime on Christmas Day with a repeat of the previous week’s Top Gear! Still, there’s some proverbial wheat to be found among the chaff. Here’s my choice.

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The new Doctor is Matt Smith and the Internet collective semi-consciousness seems to be predicting a disaster, just like Catherine Tate… er, wasn’t.

He may only be 26 (yikes — I’m 53 days older than him!) but that’s still only three years younger than Peter Davison was when he did it. So there.

T.K. Maxximus. 🙂