Aha! The return of Mr TV
Noel Edmonds, former king of primetime telly, is back — will we once again fall under his spell?
ITV
- Caroline Frost
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One of British TV’s instantly recognisable faces and voices, after a period of exile, brings us his half-jokey, half-serious attempt to create a rural idyll for himself, under the amused eye of a partner with the patience of Job and a television crew in tow.
No, not Jeremy Clarkson, but someone whose claim on the affections of the British viewing public is even more deeply embedded. This isn’t Diddly Squat but River Haven, a sort of Crinkley Bottom Down Under, where Noel Edmonds is making a noble stab at running a pub on New Zealand’s stunning South Island.
Edmonds – erstwhile golden prince of the Radio 1 breakfast show turned king of primetime TV – no doubt thinks what worked for his fellow ex-Top Gear presenter must surely work for him, and it’s testament to his record that, after seven years of living on the other side of the world, he’s persuaded ITV to find some cash behind the sofa to chart his efforts. The result is Noel Edmonds’s Kiwi Adventure, a show that’s even more reliant on, and revealing of, its charismatic but unpredictable host.
There’s the caper as Edmonds and his merry band race to reopen the pub after winter, as staff try to fulfil the boss’s ambitious schemes to draw punters in. We get Edmonds’s ill-suppressed rant as he forensically lists those people who have ever done him down, before reminding us – often speaking in the third person – that he’s left all that behind to live in paradise with his “earth angel” wife.
There are his dips into the cosmos, courtesy of ice showers and twice-weekly appointments with his crystal bed, plus something he calls “tranquil power”, that looks to my eyes like a gym. He is remarkably fit on it or, as he says himself, “He’s 76? Doesn’t look it!” It’s also a reminder that he’s been at the top of our showbusiness tree for 50 years, which many would consider a pretty good run. He’s immensely wealthy, too, having turned into one of those business-minded beardies of the 1980s – see also Richard Branson and Clive Sinclair – but clearly the urge to bend an audience to his will remains undimmed.
The urge to bend an audience to his will remains undimmed
His palpable desire to be liked is just as strong, revealed in the tiniest of comments. Before he left Britain, he tells us, he always paid his taxes. He recalls using his helicopters to transport performers to Live Aid “without any cost to Live Aid”. Forty years later, we must remember to thank him if we see him.
Here, more than the production money, lies the difference from Clarkson. That petrolhead turned farmers’ champion has always had the wit to surround himself with equal sparring partners, from Messrs May and Hammond of old to his current superstar assistant Kaleb Cooper and smiling doomsayer of a land agent, Charlie Ireland.
Jeremy Clarkson. Ellis O'Brien
Edmonds is too sensitive to risk being the punchline, opting instead to make jokes at others’ expense, often accompanied by a mirthless giggle. It’s no coincidence his greatest era saw him play superior straight man to a pink blancmange (you’ll be amazed to hear that Mr Blobby makes a cameo appearance here).
In fiction, such people have become the great tragi-comic characters of our age. While Edmonds is often effortlessly Alan Partridge, watching him concoct another big idea for his pub reminded me of no one more than Corrie’s Reg Holdsworth scheming to entice more customers into Bettabuy.
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In real life, Edmonds is a man you want to cheer one minute and watch through your fingers the next. You’d need a granite heart not to wish him well and, after more comebacks than Elvis, only a brave man would bet against his triumphing again. In the meantime, as he says (again), he’s the happiest he’s ever been.
Authors
Caroline Frost
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