CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: A night at a theme park with three daft comics is no laughing matter










Alton Towers: One Night 

Rating:

Literally, I Just Told You 

Rating:

The vertical plunge on the Oblivion roller coaster, where riders hit 70mph as they drop 180ft into a hole in the ground, could turn anyone’s stomach.

However, what made me sick on One Night In Alton Towers C4 was the trio middle-aged comedians who pretended to be exuberant teenagers.

Roisin Conaty has a 42-year-old age. Alex Brooker is 37, and Josh Widdicombe 38. As they set off to the Staffordshire theme park, the voiceover promised us: ‘Three mates, one massive playground, no grown-ups.’ But they are way beyond the age when they can get away with acting like schoolchildren on an end-of-term trip.

It was quite strange to see them stuffing lurid sweets in their faces and laughing about the sugar rushes.

What left me nauseated on One Night In Alton Towers (C4) was the trio of middle-aged comedians pretending to be giddy teenagers

One Night In Alton Towers C4 was a night of comedy featuring middle-aged men pretending to be teenagers. This made me feel sick.

Josh filled his paper cup with gummy-worms and sherbet dabs. ‘Look how much stuff I’ve got!’ he crowed. He has two children, and also holds a degree as linguistics.

Roisin was wearing pink pajamas. She’s older than Lisa Nandy, Labour’s Shadow Secretary for Levelling Up. Alex made a quick snack by climbing through the hatch in the hot dog van. He’s a year older than veteran footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.

Each comic squealed like a child, every thirty seconds. The site was abandoned at midnight. They trundled around in an electric buggy and made childish jokes about how frightening it was. They were probably the most creepy of all, considering they are each old enough to have teens.

This isn’t a hopeless format, but it might be fun to let actual young people loose among the rides after dark. Send in a lively bunch who really deserve it — student nurses, or trainee carers, or GCSE pupils whose lessons have been upended by lockdowns.

Jimmy Carr’s quiz game format, I Literally Just Told You (C4), needs some fine-tuning, but it’s far from hopeless. It plays on the gameshow tradition of small-talk between the host and the contestants — and forces players to pay attention to every detail.

The introductions were a part of the game. Jimmy announces each player using rapid patter just like TV hosts did with Hughie Green’s Double Your Money.

‘Miranda runs the Live And Let Live pub in Northampton and recently started a community podcast,’ he announced. ‘Because what the world needs is: more podcasts.’

Before the chuckle from the socially distanced audience died away, he was onto the next one: ‘Amira is a postie from Watford. I’m amazed she turned up tonight and didn’t just leave a card saying we’d missed her.’

Jimmy Carr¿s quiz game format, I Literally Just Told You (C4), needs some fine-tuning, but it¿s far from hopeless. It plays on the gameshow tradition of small-talk between the host and the contestants ¿ and forces players to pay attention to every detail

Jimmy Carr’s quiz game format, I Literally Just Told You (C4), needs some fine-tuning, but it’s far from hopeless. It plays on the gameshow tradition of small-talk between the host and the contestants — and forces players to pay attention to every detail

But five minutes later, he was testing their rivals on how closely they’d been listening. What was Miranda’s pub called? Where did Amira do her deliveries?

Even though Jimmy kept reminding us to remember everything, it’s hard to fix the trivia in your mind when the facts are flying so fast.

Also, there were tricks questions. Players had to identify whether celebrities were real, fictional or dead by looking at photos of them. The screen showed Manuel, Fawlty Towers. Al, from Cornwall, thought that he had died. . . But he was speaking of Andrew Sachs, an actor. Manuel is fictional.

It’s a tasteless round, but Jimmy Carr is hardly known for his good taste. It didn’t work for everyone. Eamonn Holmes was there, but I don’t know why. He spoke only once.

Amira, 24, walked away with the £21,500 prize, which was baffling, given the feebleness of her general knowledge. Answering questions about the Royal Family, she admitted: ‘I’m not sure who Prince Charles is.’ Crikey.

Advertisement