Lessons learned? Never have Lewis Hamilton on your television programme as the main guest. Never pretend that the 1990s were better than they were. And never go back. Never, ever go back.
Anyway, thanks for joining me. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @StuHeritage. If you don’t, I’ll try not to lose any sleep. OK, bye.
And that’s it. That’s really it. More clips of when the show used to be good – all of which we’ve seen elsewhere during this episode, strangely – and we’re done.
“Can you remember when TFI Friday started?”
“In the 1990s? No.”
“No, I mean tonight’s episode?”
“Oh. No.”
If the studio audience has gone a bit quiet, it’s because I suspect they’ve all deliberately contracted Deep Vein Thrombosis.
They’re driving a Ferrari around the Top Gear track, just like Chris Evans said they would on Twitter this morning. I think that this whole thing is a deliberate bid to destroy TFI Friday and Top Gear at the same time.
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This has dissolved completely into a television programme about a load of 50-year-old men discussing how much they like Top Gear.
Oh, now there’s another Top Gear bit. Chris Evans introduces a man in a helmet called The Stink. The Stink takes his helmet off. It is nobody that anyone has ever heard of.
They’re taking questions from the audience. ‘What colours are your front doors?’ someone asks Lewis Hamilton. “I don’t have many front doors” he answers. “What music do you listen to when you drive?” he’s asked. “I don’t listen to music when I drive” he answers. This is scintillating television.
Ah, there’s now a bit where Chris Evans has said that the show is out of time. There might be one minute more, there might be seven minutes more. Chris Evans takes a phonecall from the Deal or No Deal banker. He says that TFI Friday can stay on the air ‘as long as it likes’. This has turned into my nightmare.
Right then. Overtime. What’s going on? Oh, more Lewis Hamilton. Joy.
Apparently this is all pushing Alan Carr: Chatty Man back. But don’t worry Alan, 20 years from now you can make a disappointing anniversary special and do the same to a better comedian from the future.
Lewis Hamilton is now interviewing Chris Evans’ mum. And, hang on, this isn’t finished yet. There’s another break. There’s more of this.
Never go back.
Oh, wait, they’re getting Chris Evans’ mum to race around the Top Gear track in a mobility scooter. That’s the big finish. This is a full-blown indoor firework of a programme.
Ah, Clarkson. It’s a video of him sitting in a car teaching Chris Evans how to do proper Top Gear intonation, played quietly and drowned out by bar noise clatter. And I think that’s it.
Chris Evans is now discussing the cost of the global rights of Formula One. ROCK. AND. ROLL. I can’t work out how to do emojis in this liveblog set-up, but spiritually I’m doing three guitars in a row, then fourteen devil-horns, then a bunch of fire. Then a crying face.
I think if this TFI Friday comeback has a story, it’s the way that everyone was talking about it on Twitter at 9pm and now nobody is talking about it.
TFI Friday in the 1990s: everyone smashing up wardrobes with bowling balls. TFI Friday in 2015: Chris Evans politely enquiring about the specifics of Lewis Hamilton’s management arrangements.
Lewis Hamilton is the big finish, then. He walks onstage, tells everyone that he hasn’t seen any of the show and says and does nothing of interest whatsoever. I hope Chris Evans makes him cry. I miss the Chris Evans who makes people cry.
Jeremy Clarkson from the Mr Blobby music video? The big finish?
This show, as far as I can tell, is only on for another ten minutes. And no Jeremy Clarkson yet. Is that going to be the big finish? Jeremy Clarkson?
What an odd show this has turned out to be. It’s less a celebration of what TFI Friday was, and more an abject apology. Chris Evans looks mortified by everything he used to do on the show, and the whole thing is suffused with an overwhelming politeness. All the anarchy has gone. It’s sad, like the final scene of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Meanwhile, on Twitter
@stuheritage Keep knocking TFIF...you bellend
— Luna Lacrimis (@Luna_Lacrimis) June 12, 2015
Oh, wait, there were two holidays after all. Boo, Chris Evans. Boo.
Ah, but there’s just one holiday. To win it, they have to play exactly the same game that made them cry. This is actually brilliant. This is what I wanted from TFI Friday. More like this, please.
But Shaun Ryder didn’t provoke the most complaints on TFI Friday. No, that was a game where Chris Evans made a succession of children cry. Which we’re watching now, studded with Chris Evans’s repeated apology. They bring the children on. They’re still genuinely upset with Chris Evans. Chris settles them down by telling them that they’ve both won a holiday to Barbados.
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And now Shaun Ryder’s here, to apologise for swearing on the television several decades ago.
Two girls who appeared on the show as babies walk in. They are 17 years old now. Chris Evans tells them to buy a drink at the bar, before reassuring the viewers that technically it’s in accordance with local bylaws because it classifies as a private event.
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Oh, an actual letter. A 15-year-old wants to know what Posh Spice looks like when she smiles. They show a clip. And then Chris Evans looks at the camera and says ‘You should all have children’ and means it and this show is different now isn’t it?
Now for Viewer Mail It’s Your Letters. Or, as far as I can tell, just a load of clips of people singing ‘It’s your letters’.
I’m sure this performance has its fans, but seeing so many people from my youth all succumbing to the ravages of age like this, part of me wishes that those three minutes just consisted of silent footage of the Grim Reaper slowly pulling a bony finger across his throat at me.
Chris Evans has just introduced a ‘YouTube moment’. Unfortunately, though, it isn’t a clip of a cat falling of a toilet. Instead, it’s Liam Gallagher singing My Generation with Roger Daltrey. I think one of the Lightning Seeds is on guitar. And I could be wrong, but I think that Boyd Hilton from Heat magazine is on bass.
Meanwhile, on Twitter
@stuheritage stop knocking tfi Friday u bellend!!✊✊✊
— Tony Simpson (@TonysimpsonTony) June 12, 2015
You know what I would have preferred to this? A Eurotrash anniversary special. Because a) Eurotrash laid out the basic aesthetic that shows like TFI Friday exploited, b) I really want Antoine de Caunes sorely needs to be on British television again and c) nudity.
But I digress. The rest of that interview involved Ewan McGregor asking Amanda Siegfried a question, then Amanda Siegfried repeating back the last two words of the question, then Ewan McGregor asking Amanda Siegfried another question. If you’re reading this liveblog as a recap after the show, you didn’t really miss an awful lot.
Actually if TFI Friday was a film, it’d be One Day; the film where that bloke basically plays Chris Evans until he doesn’t have any friends left.
Ah, it was all a ruse. Ewan McGregor - the first-ever TFI Friday guest - has been brought in to conduct the rest of the interview, because... um, if TFI Friday was a film, then... er, an actor should probably do the interview. Or something. Look, I don’t know.
A proper interview! And a woman! Amanda Siegfried is here, making slightly dull smalltalk about her new film in a roomful of media nobs who won’t stop talking.
Before the ad break: clips from the old 1990s show, of Chris Evans smashing hundreds of things over his head. Back from the ad break: a polite-looking woman in the 2010s, silently hula-hooping.
Oh god, I’m exactly the wrong age for this show. I’m not old enough to have formed the strong emotional attachment to the 1990s necessary to enjoy all the throwbacks, but old enough to hate all the young people on it.
Ah, this band is called Years and Years, which neatly sums up the mood of the evening. Not that years and years have passed since TFI Friday left our screens, but because it feels like I’ve been liveblogging this episode for years and years.
Oh, that ended weirdly. Nick Grimshaw came on, and Chris Evans said ‘If there’s a new series of this, Nick Grimshaw will present it’, and then Nick Grimshaw fluffed his line and introduced a band nobody’s ever heard of who very quickly go about sucking all the energy out of the room.
TL;DR I don’t think there’s going to be a new series of this.
Now, some sort of ill-advised speed interview segment. Steven Merchant and most of the coaching panel from The Voice run on, answer two questions and run off again. Nothing happens, and the joke gets old really quickly, but at least Chris Evans gets to subtly put the boot into Sunday Brunch. Somewhere in Surrey, Tim Lovejoy just lost his erection.
And an advert for the Entourage movie, just to show exactly how the masculinity crisis has moved on in the last 20 years.
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They’re bookending the adverts with clips from the show in its prime. On one hand, they’re a sign that Evans was barely clinging on to the edge of sanity back then. On the other hand, it looks a lot more entertaining than tonight’s show so far.
Oh Jesus Christ. There’s a TFI Friday album. That’s dreadful, and perhaps the least-wanted Father’s Day gift in the history of the world. Songs you already own, presented in a dead format with a picture of Chris Evans looking like a too-Instagrammed waxwork of late-period Sammy Davis Jr on the front. Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have ten.
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And finally, here’s Tom Daly. He apparently applied to go on TFI Friday in the 1990s, but they turned him down because his trick wasn’t very good. But now he’s here. And his trick isn’t very good.
Remember the woman who cried milk? Remember? The one with the Republica haircut? From the 1990s? Remember? Part of me, if I’m honest, was hoping that she now suffers from terminal conjunctivitis. But no, there she is, crying milk on Skype.
I think I’ve got the measure of this segment now. We meet a child from the original show, and then they come on all grown up. It’s basically one of those ‘Do You Feel Old Yet?’ listicles that are all over the internet. Next up: the Teletubbies Sun Baby. Then, the clock from the Back to the Future car. Then, all your broken ambitions, wheeled on one after another in a dizzying cascade of hopelessness.
The piece climaxes with footage of the boy as a baby having his hair blown by a fan, superimposed with footage of the baby as a grown-up having his hair blown as an adult. This is the show that revolutionised television, remember.
But enough of that, because here’s Stupid Human Tricks Freak or Unique. First up, a clip of a baby with quite long hair... followed by THE SAME BABY in real life. He’s 16 now, and his hair isn’t very long.
Coffee and TV doesn’t so much end as fade away into nothing. “We could start over again” it goes, summing up the entire spirit of the night.
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Once Blur are done, Comedy Dave from the Chris Moyles show is going to walk onstage and do a 15-minute stand-up set about, like, how crazy iPads are.
The Archbishop of York is doing a sincere blessing. He literally invokes the name of God. And with that, Blur sing Coffee and TV. Blur are mainly wearing blazers, and there are backing singers now. Is this good, or is it a bit like the sort of thing laid on at corporate awaydays for high-achieving investment bankers? So far, I haven’t got the foggiest.
And now the Archbishop of York is there. This isn’t like any TFI Friday I remember.
Four minutes in, and Chris Evans has apologised for his previous bad behaviour, introduced Will, covered people in feathers and shown everyone a picture of his grandchild. He is now reading out tweets.
Right, so, in the 1990s, the TFI Friday set was filled with iconography from classic films and television. Now? Full of pictures of TFI Friday.
Well, so far things are exactly the same, except the audience are wearing obnoxious hats now. Who said progress was dead?
Right. Here we go. Tenner says Chris Evans is wearing leather trousers.
Oh, and by the way, if tonight’s show goes down well, then TFI Friday might turn into a full-blown series again. And that might kick off a full-blown 1990s revival. Northern Uproar might get back together. People might start wearing coats indoors again. And, best of all, we’ll all get to to be really mean and objectifying about women again, and nobody will be able to do anything about it because it’ll all be coated in the thinnest possible veneer of watered-down irony. HOORAY FOR TFI FRIDAY AND HOORAY FOR HOW RUBBISH THE 1990s WERE!
Incidentally, and excuse the Daily Mail link, but here’s a piece Chris Evans wrote about the return of the show, and how the original run destroyed his psyche first time around.
While we wait for TFI Friday to begin, why not watch the Vicar of Dibley repeat that’s currently on BBC One? It’s got an I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter joke in it and everything. This is already the most 1990s evening OF ALL TIME. For god’s sake, nobody tell Tony Blair. It’s not exactly like he needs much encouragement, is it?
Hello friends, and welcome to what looks very much like a TFI Friday liveblog. Yes, look, I know.
Readers, I’d like you to cast your minds back to the mid-1990s; a mystical time of lad mags and lager, when Trainspotting had just been released and Ocean Colour Scene was still allowed to be a thing.
Life was simpler then. Back then, Twitter wasn’t around to forensically analyse everything for traces of offensiveness, and destructive flame-haired megalomaniac Chris Evans had yet to transmogrify into someone who makes his living by being nice to grannies on The One Show. And the haircuts. Dear lord, the haircuts.
Until now, the mid-1990s were lost to history, existing only as the screensaver that Tim Lovejoy saw whenever he closed his eyes. But now, thanks to some arbitrary-sounding anniversary, they’re back. TFI Friday is returning for a one-off special, and it’s rammed to the hilt with hoary old throwbacks. This evening’s festivities promise to feature Blur, Liam Gallagher, Lightning Seeds, some or all of the Stone Roses, and presumably plenty of other people from 20 years ago who’ll all sing Three Lions, ironically shout ‘Wahey!’ and vomit Red Stripe into their stupid Kangol hats. And, obviously, there will be no women whatsoever.
Inevitably, I’ve been asked to liveblog tonight’s show. Why? I think it’s because, despite everything, this is still TFI Friday. Despite the advanced age of everyone involved, it’s still going to teeter precariously on the brink of collapse. It could be great, but then again it could be the single worst television programme of the year. Who knows? The show starts at 9pm – three hours later than it used to, tellingly – and it’d be lovely if you could join me for it.
