British Comedy Guide

Peter Andre

  • Celebrity and singer

Press clippings Page 2

I'm not even sure it can be described as a comedy: it wasn't even vaguely funny. Jason Manford made a few valiant attempts to shore up the laughter quotient but, on the whole, no luck. The basic premise was that two teams of two (in this instance, regulars Manford and, inexplicably, Peter Andre versus guests Lorraine Kelly and Julian Clary) compete to see who was better able to spot the "odd one in" of four strangers. For instance: who here really is a cockney? Which animal can actually skateboard? Who's not just pretending to hula-hoop? A bit like spotting the odd one out, except the other way around. Clever! Not really: Never Mind the Buzzcocks has been doing this for years, only for them it's a throw-away round, not the basis of the entire programme.

Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent, 9th August 2010

As a newlywed, I thought at first that there could be no worse choice of viewing than Roger and Val Have Just Got In (BBC Two, Friday), a docile new sitcom featuring Dawn French and the Hollywood actor Alfred Molina as the fiftysomething married couple in the title. So this is what lies in store after the honeymoon tan has faded? Endless grey years of getting in from work, putting the kettle on and squabbling over who did what with the Hoover guarantee?

All was not, however, entirely how it seemed. Instead of emphasising the mundane nature of middle-class, suburban married life in order to mock it, Office-style, this was in fact a quiet homage to the things that make a relationship work.

The premise for the series is simple: each episode covers the half-hour after Roger and Val get home from their slightly cuddly jobs. Val is a "food technology" schoolteacher and Roger is a botanist at a garden centre. They compare notes on their day and, in the first episode, hunted for a guarantee whose disappearance forced them to confront the horror of horrors - a filing system known as "the big drawer".

Yes, as drama goes there is about as much happening here as there is in Waiting for Godot, or a day of Test cricket, or in Peter Andre's brain, but that is the point. This is a celebration of the soporific.

"If I was to rear up in the wild," said Roger, pondering his professional relationship with a lawyer at work, "she would neither attack me nor eat me. We would rub alongside one another like a lizard and a bat." Val listened to this nonsense indulgently, and Roger in turn humoured her when she launched into a monologue on a woman at school who had "a coat for every type of weather".

The small acts of give and take offered a believable glimpse of a time-worn but working marriage. Not all was low-watt contentment though: a misguided phone call prompted a row, we learnt that Roger's father was seriously ill and there were hints of sadness when the couple referred to their childlessness. Not exactly enough to make anyone cry - or laugh out loud for that matter - but the layered pettiness and tragedy of a typical afternoon yielded a warm, subtle humour.

Molina managed an impressive transition from movie star battling superheroes in Spider-Man 2 to Mr Average battling a stack of unfiled paperwork. French, meanwhile, was on good, likeable form, though her performance was more likely to evince Vicar of Dibley-style chuckles than French and Saunders raucous shrieks.

By the end, Roger and Val had won me over and I'd stopped having nightmarish hallucinations about spending my silver wedding anniversary staring at a wall. The lack of glitz was charming, in its way. Who'd want to be Sex and the City's Samantha, bonking your way round Manhattan in a succession of silly outfits, when you could be Val, sitting at home with a cup of tea watching your husband mist-spray a potted basil plant?

Ceri Radford, The Telegraph, 9th August 2010

You know when gameshow hosts make that tired old joke that goes along the lines of, "We called up the biggest names in showbiz ... but they were all busy"? Well, that's no longer a joke, more something they are legally obliged to declare. Jason Manford and Peter Andre are among those picking the "Odd One In" from up to four possible candidates, such as guessing who is the real hula dancer or cockney from a lineup. Gameshows are supposed to kill time, this one makes time run backwards.

The Guardian, 7th August 2010

Odd One In is a new game show with a disarmingly simple premise: spot the authentic person in a line-up of frauds. A format arrived at by the disarmingly simple process of pinching the most popular segment from Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

Edition one saw host Bradley Walsh invite two celebrity teams to identify the real nun, glider pilot, rollerskater, man married to pineapple and, in a cunning reverse, fake beard.

The celebrities, who included Peter Andre and Laurence Llewellyn Bowen, were allowed to interrogate the contestants before making their decision but that didn't seem to help much.

And I have to say, the show works. Walsh is in his element, the banter is amusing and the categories suitably eclectic and imaginative. Plus, viewers can play it at home without exercising more than 25% of their brains, which is what you want on a Saturday evening.

Harry Venning, The Stage, 26th July 2010

Television at this time of year is a bit like my lawn at this time of year - patchy, barren, brown, cracked; you get the idea. Weekends are especially desperate. If you don't like sport, you're screwed - lost in a parched desert of nothingness (as opposed to one of those deserts that are full of stuff). Hell, you may even have to drag your fat arse off the sofa and do something different - go and water the garden, perhaps. Sprinkler - it's a nice word isn't it? It has some lovely consonant clusters.

What's this, then? Odd One In (ITV1, Saturday): yet another new gameshow. I see, so of these four nuns, only one is a real nun, and the teams - Peter Andre and Jason Manford v Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Katherine Kelly off Corrie - have to guess which one. Same with the guys with the beard; three are real beards, one is a fake. Which one, though?

So it's basically the odd one out round from Never Mind the Buzzcocks stretched into a whole programme. Hmmm. Oh, and made a lot more rubbish, because Bradley Walsh is no Simon Amstell; and Pete, Laurence etc are nothing like the funny people they have on NMTB. I predict a short life.

Sam Wollaston, The Guardian, 19th July 2010

Well, we said it was light entertainment silly season. First in a double bill of new gameshows is this, hosted by Bradley Walsh. The "Home Team" of professional nice guy Peter Andre and likeable One Show recruit Jason Manford, plus an "Away Team" of two guest celebrities (first up are Coronation Street's Katherine Kelly and daytime dandy Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen), try to pick the person with a skill or secret out of a line-up by asking probing questions.

Michael Hogan, The Telegraph, 17th July 2010

Peter Andre loves Wossy for porn gift

Peter Andre has raved about the time Jonathan Ross sent him porn in hospital when he came down with meningitis - and says he's "loved him" ever since.

Nadia Sam-Daliri, The Sun, 15th June 2010

JLC: I'll ban Jordan

Chat host Justin Lee Collins has banned Jordan from his show - saying she is hopeless without her former husband Peter Andre.

The Sun, 6th April 2010

A new topical news format sees celeb panelists locked away in a media-free zone for three days. So far so good. Anything that gets Frank Skinner off the streets, even briefly, gets my vote.

But then, worse luck, they're let out to answer questions from quiz-master David Mitchell. Can they spot real news stories from fakes and should we care?

Other guests this week include the very funny ­Reginald D Hunter and Victoria Coren. Fingers crossed that Katie Price and Peter Andre can both be enticed to enter this media-free bubble and that a junior researcher "accidentally" loses the key.

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 19th February 2010

Andrew Sachs probably won't be tuning in for this one. Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand are reunited on television for the first time since Sachsgate. However, this being Channel 4, don't expect a grovelling apology at the beginning but plenty of jokes about telephone calls, Spanish waiters and Satanic Sluts. Jimmy Carr is in the chair for what has become an annual festive highlight, poking fun at the biggest stories of the year. Ross and Brand have been cheekily paired together and up against them will be Claudia Winkleman and Rob Brydon and David Mitchell and the TV critic Charlie Brooker, making his first appearance. Peter Andre is among the celebrity questioners, but rumours that Tiger Woods will be appearing are wide of the mark.

Mike Mulvihill, The Times, 23rd December 2009

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