Channel 4's teatime diva, Paul O'Grady, juggles guests and performing dogs with aplomb. Photograph: David Westing/Getty.
The king of the chat show is a difficult title to bestow. For a start, as soon as you begin to examine the subject, you have to break it down into different categories: best US chat show host, best UK, best late night, best daytime, best weekly, best nightly. Jesus, before you know it, we'll have to have the chat show awards show. It'll run for three hours on ITV and we'll all be bored rigid by the first ad break.
They are, though, some of the best paid performers on television for something that doesn't really seem that hard. David Letterman has just signed a new deal keeping him on air until 2010 for a reported £19m a year. Jonathan Ross, you might recall, recently signed a three-year, £18m deal with the BBC. Parky jumped ship from the BBC to ITV in a more modest but still £2m, two-year deal. And that's for one show a week.
Of course, the reason they're worth all that dosh is that, though it doesn't seem so hard, it really really is. Ask Davina McCall. Letterman, apparently only 59, hosts an hour-long show every week night, runs a huge staff of writers, producers and bookers and six years ago endured quintuple heart surgery. I didn't believe he was 59, I had to look it up. He looks about 108. Unsurprisingly.
Ross, complete with writing staff, has a much easier task with his once-weekly show based on the Letterman model. He is the only UK talk show host to manage to reach a young audience but also have enough credibility to interview politicians. (Though asking David Cameron if he'd ever wanked over Margaret Thatcher may possibly have damaged that).
I nominate Paul O'Grady, though, for this particular crown. Not least because his heart problems rival those of Letterman while his pay packet won't be anything like the size. O'Grady matches the volume of Letterman (when he's on air; he isn't on all year round) with a daily show. He, too, has to improvise with comedy dogs and stunts when there simply aren't enough celebrities to go round. Worse, sometimes he has to pretend to be interested in some idiot from Hollyoaks. He is consistently funny, charming and charismatic. Also, if you're at home during the day anyone who seems half coherent is disproportionately important to you.
