Nancy Sorrell
- Actor and model
Press clippings Page 2
Eranu! If the very sound sends giddy shivers down your surrealist spine (an exoskeleton dripping with melting clocks) then the all-old, all-new Shooting Stars would have hit your spot.
If, on the other hand, Eranu! provokes only a baffled shrug, then tuning in to this curiously pointless revival wouldn't have enlightened you as to why it's been exhumed from TV's comedy grave.
It no surprise Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer couldn't let Shooting Stars lie. It was the last hit from the one-time gods of the off-the-wall sketch show and I'll forgive a lot for all the happy times that were inspired by The Man With The Stick.
Add in the fact that Vic had become little more than a support act in the Nancy Sorrell-desperate-for-fame game and Bob was reduced to guest slots on Big Brother's Little Brother, and the chance to reboot Shooting Stars must have seemed like manna from heaven.
But they might as well have screened a repeat because Shooting Stars 2009 was the same as it ever was but not in a good way. It was like watching ageing rock stars who'd once filled stadiums still hacking out the old tunes in a grotty backstreet club. Vic and Bob had turned into their own tribute act but the dodgy stuff they once got away with by the skin of their charm now feels rather creepy.
Back in the day, Vic could carry off the thigh-rubbing perving over female guests but now having him waft his bum crack under the understandably wrinkled nose of Christine Bleakley from The One Show made him look like a candidate for the Sex Offenders Register.
There were laughs but they were drawn from comfy familiarity, not edgy wit. Vic's club singer, riffing out an impromptu chorus of Beyonce's Single Ladies, is still good value.
And Matt Lucas - an unknown in the original but now an unofficial guest star - has a baby-suited ball as scores-on-the-doors George Dawes (offspring of Marjorie?).
But the bad things about Shooting Stars, not least the unforgivable perpetuation of Ulrika-ka-ka Jonsson, made this non-revamp feel as stale as yesterday's droppings from the Dove From Above. They really, really, should have let it lie.
Keith Watson, Metro, 27th August 2009