Autocue Millionaire

I’ve never liked Jonathan Ross. I find his interviewing style awful. He’s either too sycophantic or downright rude, but always its more about him than the interviewee. I except that all chat show hosts are going to have large egos, and I suppose I thought of him as being the sort of person you either love or hate.

Then yesterday, I decided to watch Film 2008 on playback. I know it has Ross as the presenter, but I’m interested in films so thought it couldn’t be too bad. I was wrong.

Here is a man being paid millions each year by a public funded organisation that is making cuts to the jobs of proper journalists. I’ve always thought this was a disgrace and cringed at the defence’s use of the word ‘talent’. But yesterday, he surpassed my expectations in how bad he was.

Whilst his interviewing technical is awful, his presenting skills weren’t even professional. It was the worst case of blatant autocue reading I’ve ever seen. He was staring straight at the autocue, reading without blinking. Every statement was a personal response or opinion on the subject matter, but he sounded so bored and as if the words had no meaning to him. I’m struggling to think of an analogue because I’m sure someone reading out a shopping list would put more feeling into it.

Perhaps I caught him on a bad day, but for so many millions, he shouldn’t be having bad days.