I like Trevor MacDonald. He has the ability to read the news in a way that doesn't make you want to punch him (a feat yet to be achieved by either Huw Edwards or Natasha Kaplinsky), and a suave manner.
What he isn't, is a Jonathan Ross-style gagmeister. Faced with a joke coming towards him on the autocue, he advances towards it like it's holding a snake. Newsreaders and jokes just don't go, and it makes the National Television Awards drag on. Have 2000 years of Comic Relief taught us nothing?
The NTAs look almost as boring to be at as they are to watch, particularly if you don't follow the soap operas just because they held an AGM about three years ago and decided en masse to all turn crap.
Plus, telly stars aren't really stars, are they? They're designed to look approachable. A bunch of people who look like they live on the street next to you turn up in staggeringly cheap-looking frocks, and then don't get to eat or drink or anything - they just sit in the Royal Albert Hall watching Davina McCall in a sack complaining about her failed chat show again (let it go, now).
Typically surreal presenters like Miss World ("Ah teenk eet voz Ozcar Walde oo sayed ... ") and Julie Andrews, (obviously reminded of slightly more exciting nights at the Albert Hall than this) presided over awards been given out to twentysomething non-entities.
The most exciting moment came when the winner of best newcomer, whose own mother would be hard pressed to pick him out of a line up, said, "There's thousands of people I'd like to thank ... " and then went on to include "the people up there" (addressing the viewers who'd won competitions to attend and were parked up in the cheap seats) "who make it possible for us people down here to do what we do". This will be equally true, Charlie Clements (I looked it up), in your next job collecting ticket stubs ...
