Friday, April 06, 2012

Nice to sink you, to sink you nice

Of all the Titanic tie-ins at the moment, the most inspired surely has to be Titanic with Len Goodman – or Dancing on Iceberg as Jon Holmes memorably described it on Radio 4. The Strictly Come Dancing judge was once a welder for the company that built the unsinkable vessel, albeit fifty years later, so seemed the ideal choice to present a three-part series on the disaster in the absence of Leonardo di Caprio or Captain Birdseye.

The decision raises the intriguing prospect of other reality show/history programme crossovers. Later this summer perhaps we can expect to see Bruno Tonioli bring his trademark effervescence to a series on the anniversary of the Battle of Midway or maybe Gok Wan explaining the after-effects of Hiroshima in a programme called Does My Bomb Look Big in This?

Surely Sir Brucie would be an ideal host for a night of programming next year about the 50th anniversary of Pol Pot becoming leader of the Khmer Rouge – Strictly Cambodia – and feelers are already being put
out to see if Louis Walsh and Dermot O'Leary fancy co-hosting a series on when the American civil rights movement went violent: The Malcolm X Factor.

The series that everyone wants to see, though, would be about those irritating parasites who caused widespread distress in the 14th and 21st century. Yes, brace yourself for Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan
presenting Britain's Got The Bubonic Plague.