The BBC is in trouble. It’s in the midst of a crisis so serious that the corporation’s very existence is in question. The government is baying for Auntie’s blood: George Osborne has already saddled the Beeb with a £600m bill for free TV licences for the elderly and, in the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, a man has said the licence fee is “worse than the poll tax” and ultimately “unsustainable”. That’s like entrusting the future of Burger King to a shifty ginger clown named Ronald. So, the obvious question is: how can the BBC possibly survive? The answer is, of course, with Chris Eubank.
Earlier this week, Mr Eubank – the legendary boxer and sartorial peacock – took to Twitter to finally get to the bottom of a problem that has been bothering him for the past 18 long years: he wanted to know just what exactly was the link between him and youth hostels.
@CarlPackman Can you please explain the link between me and youth hostels?
— Christopher Eubank (@ChrisEubank) August 9, 2015
Now, because we’re not Chris Eubank, we know that the connection between him and youth hostels is the comedy series I’m Alan Partridge. In the first-ever episode, Alan desperately pitches evermore ludicrous TV ideas to an uninterested BBC executive, eventually resorting to plucking random words out of the ether, sticking them together and hoping for gold. Hence: Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank. But Chris Eubank somehow doesn’t know or understand this. Imagine that. Just imagine what the last 18 years have been like for Chris Eubank.
Happy everyone is having a roaringly good time with this, however I'm slightly upset as I'm failing to see the funny side but really want to
— Christopher Eubank (@ChrisEubank) August 10, 2015
It’s 1998 and, as you enter your favourite shop to purchase a new silver knob for the top of your cane, the man at the counter smirks and says: “Been to any nice youth hostels lately?” You’re embarrassed and walk out, utterly perplexed. It’s 2007 and you’re at a service station near Plymouth about to buy a nice cheese sandwich when some teenagers yell: “Oi, Eubank, why do you spend so much time in youth hostels?!” You pull your taupe fedora down and walk sadly back to your car. You sit in the driver’s seat, shake your head and think: “Why youth hostels? For the love of christ, why?” It’s 2015 and someone on Twitter asks you if you’re ever going to make a programme about the UK’s youth hostels. “Right, that’s it!” you think, and tweet him back. At long last maybe your torture can end.
That’s what Chris Eubank’s life has been like for last 18 years.
But what does this have to do with saving the BBC? Well, after Chris tweeted the question he has been wanting to ask since the last century, it became clear, from the enormous response, what the public wants. It wants Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank. Perhaps it has always wanted Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank. The extraordinary reaction on Twitter and enormous coverage given to it shows that the idea of actually commissioning Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank is so ludicrous that it’s almost sensible. The following would be colossal.
The show would also fit nicely with those Reithian principles the government likes so much. Eubank is a learned man and is sure to have interesting and informative things to say about the places he visits – he can certainly educate any man on the correct way to wear a cummerbund. Anyone who doesn’t think that seeing a silk-suited Christopher Livingstone Eubank extol the virtues of the half Windsor knot to a gap-year student on a soiled mattress in Stockton-on-Tees would be entertaining, won’t find anything entertaining. They can go and watch something really stupid instead such as – to take another Patridgian example – cooking in prison. You’ll find it on Channel 4 called Gordon Behind Bars.
