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EDDIE: Worst coverage of comedy...why the people who wrote these awards didn't win this one I'll never know.
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It's a sign of just how misguided the 2010 return of Hey Hey was that even Australian television columnists and writers made a few vague suggestions that maybe 20 episodes was taking it a little too far. Considering there isn't a turd that drops from the commercial networks bowels that they don't scoop up with golden toilet paper and proclaim to the be the hit of the season, this slight concern was the equivalent of a massive fart sound dubbed over every media appearance of one D. Somers. And yet, out in the real world where people generally expect words to mean roughly what they say in the dictionary, all we got was page after page of interviews where Daryl was allowed to crap on about clearly bogus plans to modernise a show he seemed perfectly content to leave exactly as it was the day it was axed the first time. Where was the actual questioning of whether this was a good idea? Where was the commentary discussing the rapid and consistent fall in ratings? Where were the opinion pieces pointing out that the move back to Saturday nights wasn't just an admission of failure, but a sure sign that the experiment had failed and Hey Hey's goose - or ostrich - was cooked? After all, the press had no problem running story after story after story about how the fans wanted Hey Hey back, about how it had been a ratings success, about how complaints about the blackface sketch were from people taking it too seriously - and doesn't bad news always rate better than good? Why did the press help Daryl get what he wanted, then look away when he screwed it up in exactly the same way that he did the last time?
Bolt vs Tony Martin. Oh dear. Let the crazed fans into the arena! It was a slightly unfair contest though, in that Martin's crazed fans had funny catchphrases and a general knowledge of how comedy and the internet work, while Bolt's supporters were mostly working with blind racism, rabid paranoia and a massive sense of entitlement. Oh, and that Australian flag cape they made out of a beach towel. That's always a top look.
To get serious for a second, the problem with the tabloid outrage directed towards Catherine Deveny and Wil Anderson - neither of which are on our Christmas card lists - wasn't that people were outraged over what they said (and was anyone really? If you're reading them on Twitter, you know how Twitter works and what to expect), but the way the tabloids used said bogus outrage (as many pointed out, the tabloids gave the tweets far more exposure than Twitter ever did) to mark out areas where - according to them - no comedian should go. Both Deveny and Anderson's dubious material was clearly more about making fun of the celebrity culture that sustains News Ltd's tabloids than having a solid go at their targets. So it's important to realise that this kerfuffle was more about protecting the industry's night of nights - and the very idea that celebrities should be given a "fair go" despite their massive wealth and unprecedented access to our homes and lives - than any real desire to hold the media up to a certain standard. Which would have been screamingly obvious to everyone involved if only Deveny and Anderson had been remotely funny on the night.
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Worst DVD