Comedians excel at observation, so you’d think they would have clocked by now that the “celebrity goes on holiday” horse has been ridden to death, its corpse picked to dry bone. You can’t turn on the telly without seeing one of them admiring a souk or doing beach yoga in a leotard. Has any celebrity paid for their own holiday in the past five years? If so, I’d get a new agent.
As it happens, I like Katherine Ryan and Joe Wilkinson. They are funny. But do I care that they went to Norfolk? I do not. I don’t blame them for taking the gig. Comedians have to eat. I blame TV commissioners’ lack of imagination. But at least Joe and Katherine’s Bargain Holidays was cheap as chips, so I didn’t have to shout bitterly at the TV: “To everyone who has, more shall be given.” I was not envious of them “champing” in a church with an outside lavvy and eating from a Too Good to Go bag.
Joe Wilkinson and Katherine Ryan
The shtick was that Ryan thinks nothing of nipping to Paris for lunch, but Wilkinson, ho ho, is a bit of a bargain-obsessed tightwad, the sort of chap who peels an orange in his pocket. I didn’t quite believe that. It was all pleasant and chilled, and Norfolk looked lovely, but they weren’t exactly busting a gut to get big laughs.
The best bit was when they had to write their own poetry, which is saying something. Poor Ryan got knocked off her paddleboard into the water while heavily pregnant. Hold on, didn’t she have the baby in 2022? Yes, she did. At the end it said: “Prices correct as of summer 2022.” So this show is nearly two years old? Odd. Maybe there are so many celebrity travelogues now they have to keep them, like planes at Heathrow, in a holding pattern.
★★☆☆☆
How many records have Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Brian Johnson (AC/DC) and Tom Jones sold between them? We are talking in the hundreds of millions. Yet what was most striking about Johnson and Knopfler’s Music Legends was how unstarry these three superstars are. Despite all the fame and, in Jones’s case, the knickers, they seemed to have remained normal and down to earth.
When Jones, the first guest on their series, spoke of his friendship with Elvis Presley, it didn’t sound boastful, just matter of fact. Jones has probably told the story many times of how It’s Not Unusual was originally intended for Sandie Shaw and he was just asked to sing the demo. Instantly he knew it was “his” song and threatened to return to Wales if they didn’t let him have it. But it didn’t sound like a polished anecdote.
“We’re just a couple of Geordie lads,” Johnson said of himself and Knopfler. He looked like he might pass out with joy when Jones began singing to Knopfler’s guitar chords. Jones said that when he began selling records, he went home to see his dad leaving for the night shift at the coal mine. Dad, you don’t need to do that any more, he protested, I’m making money now. “Ah, yes, but how long will it last?” said his father. Jones, still performing, will be 84 in June.
★★★☆☆