The death of TV cricket

This is the first summer since 1971 in which I have not watched a single ball being bowled live in an England Test series. It's left me feeling a bit bereft at times. In my bachelor days, sitting down with a couple of beers for a whole leisurely afternoon of ball-by-ball Test cricket was one of the great pleasures in life.

Sadly, this has not been possible since the foolish and completely counterproductive decision by the English Cricket Board to abandon terrestrial TV cricket coverage in favour of Murdoch's millions - all the more foolhardy since the decision was taken at the very moment when cricket had seemingly regained its rightful place in the national consciousness following the 2005 Ashes win.

Much as I miss watching the game, it's a price I'm prepared to pay for refusing to line the pockets of the man who has debased British culture and journalism more than any other single individual in the last 30 years.

Those now eulogising John Biffen should take note of this. For all his other many virtues, Biffen as Trade Secretary was the man who allowed Murdoch to buy The Times in 1981 and thereby emerge as the most powerful media figure in the UK.

British Beatyourselfupaboutit Corporation

Okay, so it's a serious story, and having grown up in local newspapers where awarding competition prizes to your friends can be a sackable offence, I find it frankly beyond belief that such things have been going on at the BBC.

But however justified, there is something in me that hates to see the corporation beating itself up like this. It's still the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world, and British culture would be immeasurably poorer without it. Let's hear it for the Beeb!

Marr-sterful

I have always had slightly mixed feelings about Andrew Marr. On a personal level, I have no hesitation in saying he is one of the most generous-sprited and courteous men I have met in political journalism. Unlike many of his senior Lobby colleagues, he never adopted a loftier-than-thou approach to those of us on the lower rungs of the profession and would always pass the time of day with anyone who happened to coincide with him in the Press Bar.

On a professional level, though, I always believed he was slightly too close to New Labour for comfort in the job of BBC political editor. Never was this more exemplified than when, on the day of Dr David Kelly's death, he informed us that Alastair Campbell was basically a decent bloke who would be as devastated as anyone by the tragedy, when a more detached and sceptical reporter might have posed some of the key questions that Campbell would now have to answer about how Dr Kelly's name had been leaked.

So I believe Marr made the right call in leaving that particular job to move on to more general presenting, and this was amply borne-out by his History of Modern Britain which concluded on BBC2 last night. It is sometimes said that journalism is merely a rough first draft of history, but this was as authoritative an account of contemporary British life as we are likely to get from any professional historian.

Sure, there were omissions, probably due to the need to condense fifty years into five hours. The Callaghan premiership, which delivered two years of stable and enlightened government from 1976-78 before the chaos of the Winter of Discontent, was virtually ignored. And the impact of New Labour on the countryside, including foot and mouth, the fox-hunting ban and the destruction of the green belt, merited not a mention. But on the whole, this was a tour-de-force which showed that Marr has finally found his niche.

The programme which, in my view, defined the series, was last week's one on Margaret Thatcher, concluding that, for good or ill, "we are all Thatcher's children now." I still can't really forgive Thatcher for the destruction of the deep-mining industry, for desecrating the once-thriving pit villages that formed the backdrop to my early career in journalism around Mansfield, Notts. But from an objective standpoint, I do recognise that, alongside Tim Berners-Lee, she is chiefly responsible for the way we live now.

And this, in turn, demonstrates that Tony Blair, the main subject of last night's final programmme, was not in the first rank of Prime Ministers in the sense that Thatcher was - a fact that Marr, for all his previous closeness to New Labour, seemed to acknowledge when he showed an ironical clip of himself telling the nation that Blair had become "a bigger man" as a result of the Iraq invasion and the toppling of Saddam. In fact he became a much diminshed one - but in his tacit acceptance that even the best reporters sometimes get it wrong, Marr became a "bigger man" himself.

Sir Alan's brainstorm

I really can't improve on Lucy Mangan's description of the outcome last night's Apprentice final. "If Kristina doesn't get the job," I scream, "This city's gonna burn!" Sir Alan suffers some kind of massive synaptic misfire and hires Simon. Pass. Me. My. Matches."

I can only assume this was a counter-intuitive response by Sir Alan to last year's debacle, when he went for the "safe" candidate in Michelle Dewberry over the more "risky" alternative of Ruth Badger, only to see Dewberry walk out on him after a few months after getting pregnant by a fellow-contestant, while Badger went on to host her own corporate troubleshooting show on Sky.

A farcical denouement

My wife Gill and I are both complete addicts of The Apprentice but I can't help but feel a bit cheated by last night's "semi final" in which arch-backstabber Katie Hopkins decided to fall on her own sword despite being told she was through to next week's final.

To be honest I've been longing for her to get fired ever since she dissed Northerners and Pinot Grigio-drinkers in the course of her character-assassination of Adam in Week 7. But she was undoubtedly the star of this series, and a final bitch fight showdown between her and gritty single mum Kristina was what most fans were keenly anticipating.

Kristina is still there, of course, but instead she's up against posh Cambridge graduate and failed City Boy Simon, who has somehow managed to survive this far despite making a total arse of himself during the TV sales channel task and on numerous other occasions throughout the series.

I hope Kristina wins, but I fear she will not, as Sir Alan Sugar clearly has a liking for Simon having passed up obvious oportunities to fire him before now. More in-depth Apprentice analysis from Paul Burgin and Kerron Cross.

Update: More on Katie Nice Person HERE. Read it if you can bear.

That was the life that was

I don't normally do telly reviews, but given that last night's ten-year reunion of This Life was the closest we come to "event television" these days, I thought I would make an exception.

Iain Dale, clearly as big a fan of the original as I was, thinks it was "outstanding," a reference to the last line of the last series, uttered by Warren when Milly clomped Rachel after discovering she had told Egg about her secret affair with O'Donnell. (Still with me?)

Anyway, while it was good to catch up with the former flatmates again after all this time, the main problem with it to my mind was its lack of believability - in total contrast to the original series in which the believability of the characters was its very essence.

Basically, we all knew people like Myles, Egg, Milly, Anna and Warren. I was actually at uni with Amy Jenkins, who wrote it, and while she did not base her characters on individual members of the UCL Law Faculty, it had its fair share of driven careerists (Milly), sexual predators (Anna), rich boys playing at law (Myles), and state school kids who didn't quite fit in (Warren).

By contrast, I don't know anyone who bought himself a huge house in the country at the age of 28 after making a fortune in Hong Kong, and neither do I know anyone who became an overnight literary sensation after finally completing a novel he had been working on for a decade.

The homespun stars of This Life seemed to have joined the ranks of the super-rich and the moderately famous, which, for me, immediately put them at a distance. It wasn't helped by the fact that Egg, the character I once most identified with, had clearly grown up into an egotistical twat.

Milly's conversion from superlawyer to supermum was more believable. As Anna shrewdly pointed out, she poured the same commitment, the same earnestness into bringing up her child that she once poured her cases when she worked all hours at O'Donnell's practice.

By contrast, Anna seemed to have turned into a cliche of the woman who suddenly realises she "can't have it all" after reaching the top of her profession in her mid-30s. Did it really take her ten years to realise that this is what happens?

The other thing I found really irritating was the lack of continuity between the end of the second series (which was not written by Jenkins) and last night's episode, notably in the relationship between Egg and Milly which had all but foundered after her fling with O'Donnell.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the final 1997 episode, he told her: "I told you that if you sleep with someone else while you're going out with me, it's over." You really believed Egg meant this when he said it, but now we discover that apparently he didn't mean it all.

I think Egg would have continued running his restaurant, maybe making a moderate success of it, while Milly would eventually have married O'Donnell. These were a couple going their separate ways for most of the second series - how are we expected to believe they would still be together ten years on?

It would have been great if they could have got Natasha Little (Rachel) involved. The frisson between her and Milly was part of what drove the second series and I half expected her to get wind of the reunion and turn up uninvited.

The plot denouement itself was neat. Anna had come along in search of a sperm donor to help her realise her dream of motherhood, which of course we all assumed would be Myles. In fact, she asked Warren, although you didn't get to see them actually do the deed.

But then Anna went and shagged Myles after all, leaving me wondering whether we really were being asked to believe that Myles would let Warren co-parent his own child.

If so, I'm afraid that was no more credible than the idea of Myles - a consummate office politician in the original but never really the sharpest tool in the box - as a Tory millionaire with a string of hotels.

All in all, I would prefer to remember the end of This Life as Milly and Rachel brawling on a dancefloor at Myles's first wedding. Now that really was "outstanding."

"We love our Royals, don't we?"

That was my wife's instant reaction last night on the announcement of Zara Phillips as Sports Personality of the Year, and I don't think she's too far off in her assessment. As someone who became a World Champion during 2006, Zara was one of the more deserving candidates, but her popularity as one of the highest-profile young royals may well have swung it over fellow world champs Beth Tweddle, Nicole Cooke and Joe Calzaghe.

For me, it was the right result, even if by rights the horse should have been up there with her on the podium too. But what of the rest of the show, which seems to be held by much of our national media in an equal mixture of fascination and contempt?

Well, first off, wtf was going on with that shortlist? Andy Murray appeared to be on it for having beaten Roger Federer in a minor tournament, despite the fact that he has yet to win anything. Nicole Cooke was on it, which is fair enough, but not fellow cycling world champ Chris Hoy, which merely smacked of gender-balance tokenism.

Not sure why Steven Gerrard wasn't on the list following his Cup Final exploits. Maybe the BBC judge the Cup Final to be a bit parochial these days, but it's a strange judgement given that it's practically the only major domestic football match to which they still own the rights.

The most irritating aspect of the show remains the lack of real sporting highlights, even in respect of the events the BBC actually does own the rights to such as Wimbledon. Practically the only pieces of real "action" plus commentary were the Cup Final goals and Lewis-Francis bringing home the baton for Britain's European Mens 4 x 100m relay gold.

As for the good bits, well, apart from the moving Paul Hunter tribute, and seeing Beth Tweddle in a nice dress with her hair down, the highspot for me had to be Gary Lineker's comment on England's World Cup fiasco. "They arrived looking bright, confident and up for it - but that's enough about the WAGs."

Update: Other, more critical bloggage on our Zara from:

The Daily
Kerron Cross

The trashing of Michael Grade

Okay, so no-one thinks the BBC is going to be doing cartwheels over the news that its chairman, Michael Grade, has defected to ITV, but the corporation's treatment of the story this morning has been a disgrace. Sheila Fogarty's two-way with Jeff Randall on Five Live - "I suppose the question to Michael Grade today is why he has accepted this million-pound job offer from ITV" - was fairly typical of the tone of the coverage.

Well, excuse me, but why is it considered such a crime in big media circles for someone to defect to a rival for a much higher salary? Especially, in this case, when you take into account Grade's historical and family connections with ITV.

The truth of the matter is that Michael Grade has earned himself a permanent place in the history of the BBC on account of two actions he took when he was the corporation's Director of Television in the mid-1980s.

The first of these was to start a weekly soap-opera, something that had never been done on the BBC before. It was called EastEnders and, whether you love it or loathe it, without it the BBC would probably now be reduced to the status of America's tiny National Broadcasting Service.

The second of Grade's great achievements was arguably even more far-reaching. In July 1985, he took the unprecedented decision to clear 17 hours of programming time for a pop-concert, realising before anyone else at the BBC that Live Aid was something that was going to be bigger than all of them.

His reward for that was to be overlooked for the Director-Generalship in 1987 and then sacked by John Birt. He owes nothing to the BBC, and has every right to fill his boots in what will certainly be his last TV job without carping from his former employers.

Mind you, the BBC is not alone in this. A year or so back, Heston Blumenthal decided he'd had enough of being the Guardian's Saturday food writer - fairly understandable when you consider that his restaurant has been awarded three Michelin stars and other media opportunities were opening up for him.

Last week, the Graun responded with this unbelievably bitchy review of Blumenthal's book "In Search of Perfection," followed a day later by this equally vitriolic piece on the TV programme of the same name. Get over it, Mr Rusbridger.

Update: The Guardian displayed its open-mindedness by featuring this post in its Best of the Web listing on Comment is Free earlier today, although it's been taken down now. Meanwhile journalism blogger Static Squid voices his agreement.

Sid the Sexist, eat your heart out

According to reports, Apprentice winner Michelle Dewberry has now been sent home on "gardening leave" by her boss Sir Alan Sugar after becoming pregnant by fellow contestant Syed.

I suspect that most people's reaction to this sorry tale will be one of schadenfreude. This is Britain after all, and we love nothing better than to see ambitious young kids like Michelle put in their place.

But does anyone apart from me think that, in an age when women regularly juggle motherhood and careers, Sir Alan is being a tad neanderthal about it all?

Your votes for Bleak House, please!

The BBC website (the most visited in the western world) doesn't need me to increase its traffic levels but it is currently well worth a visit on account of its best drama of 2005 poll.

Like nearly all such polls, this would be an entirely worthless exercise were it not for the fact that it gives us all an opportunity to show our appreciation of the brilliant recent adaptation of Charles Dickens' Bleak House

With totally amazing performances from Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn and Johnny Vegas as spontaneous combustion victim Krook, this was in my view the best thing that's been on TV since Our Friends in the North.

The poll has now closed but the results will shortly be available here.

Keep cricket free-to-air!

So England have won back the Ashes at last. I think on balance we deserved it, although you have to admire the way the Aussies fought to the bitter end even though they were clearly the lesser side. In the end, it really came down to that 2-run victory in the Second Test. If we'd gone 2-0 down then, it would have been game over.

But for many cricket lovers, this is a bitter sweet moment, with cricket about to disappear from our TV screens for four years at the very moment it has regained its place in the national psyche.

The blame for this lies squarely with the New Labour Government which has allowed the systematic rape of our sporting "crown jewels" by the Aussie presss baron Rupert Murdoch, the most pernicious influence on British public life over the last 30 years.

Having ruined the Sunday Times, which at one time was the best newspaper in the world, he's now ruining British sport - and New Labour, terrified that he will turn on them in the way he turned on Neil Kinnock and John Major, is letting him do it.

A campaign has now been launched called Keep Cricket Free which aims to put political pressure on Blair and Co to review the deal between the English Cricket Board and Sky TV.

You can find their site and sign their petition here