THOSE OF you who reckon that Martin King s a bit off the wall obviously haven t seen how UK cable channel, L!VE TV, do their forecasts.
Rusty The Trampolining Dwarf Weatherman is just one of the innovative programming ideas on the tabloid telly station that other tabloid telly stations call the Guv nor .
Although launched in 1995, the Mirror Group subsidiary only got into its stride the following year when Sun legend Kelvin MacKenzie took over as M.D.
Widely believed to be the inspiration for Viz s Roger Mellie, the Londoner s first brainstorming session produced such novel ideas as Call My Muff, Twat s Wife, an X-rated version of The Clangers and One Man And His Bog a sort of profile thing where we do interviews wiv em sittin on the toilet.
While none of those made it to air, Topless Darts, Lunchbox Volleyball and The Weather In Norwegian did, and the legend of L!VE TV was born.
Unable to witness this mid-wifery were the 50 staff that were fired either because they were too old and ugly , or did a job that their self-confessed Luddite boss couldn t get his head round.
If he could not work out what a person did, because the official job description was too complicated or technical, he might sack them just to find out what happened, says Chris Horrie in his new book, L!VE TV: Tellybrats And Topless Darts, The Uncut Story Of Tabloid Television. He would charge into the gallery and demand: Who are you? What do you do? Tell me now . . .If you can t tell me in twenty seconds what you do, you re out. If the programmes continued to go out, they remained sacked. After a while some techies began to worry that they hadn t been sacked, at least temporarily, and that there must therefore be something wrong with them.
It s not the first time Horrie has indulged in a spot of Kelvin-watching, 1994 s Stick It Up Your Punter telling such classic Sun tales as the time he allegedly handed a retirement age staffer a razor blade and said, Do us all a favour, you useless cunt cut your throat!
Having reluctantly abandoned plans to employ stammering newsreaders We found we were laughing at them rather than with them , confides his right-hand man Nick Ferrari MacKenzie decided to spice bulletins up with themed weeks .
During the Euro 96 football tournament the newsreaders had to paint their faces with the England flag like 9-year-olds. After Princess Diana s famous visit to a hospital operating-theatre, a woman presenter appeared in a white surgeon s gown, cap and face mask and sporting long false eyelashes matted with mascara. An off-screen assistant wiped sweat from her brow as she read the news. She punctuated each item by fluttering her eyelashes and saying, Tweezers . . .scalpel . . .swab . . .
When that was deemed to be insufficiently out there, L!VE s twenty-stone, six-foot man mountain of a reporter, David Nicholson, was issued with a nylon rabbit suit. Introducing him to the rest of the staff, MacKenzie explained that News Bunny would give the thumbs up when a story was happy Frank Bruno winning the World Championship and the thumbs down when it was sad The Queen Mum dying. There were variations on the theme such as wiping away imaginary tears when a teenager was killed in a road accident, and yawning every time Bosnia was mentioned.
Nicholson got off relatively lightly a female newsreader quit after being ordered to show more tit , and two gay members of staff realised their days were numbered when they were branded, Fucking perverts . . . fucking queers!
What Mirror Group shareholders find altogether more difficult to countenance is the fact that L!VE is haemorrhaging money to the tune of #10 million a year. Given that their average audience is 30,000, each viewer is costing them #333.33 per annum. Aware that he was captaining a sinking ship, MacKenzie defected last year to Talk Radio UK and demonstrated that he s not all bad by getting rid of Danny Baker. He also played a blinder last week at the Brits, inquiring of a younger colleague, Who the fuck is Slimboy Fat?
While he continues his reign of terror elsewhere, the future of those he left behind on the 24th Floor of Canary Wharf is looking increasingly bleak. Their PR personages may point to increased reach in Newcastle but the word on the media grapevine is that L!VE shouldn t worry too much about who they re going to get to do their millennium special. n
Chris Horrie & Adam Nathan s L!VE TV: Tellybrats And Topless Darts, The Uncut Story Of Tabloid Television is published by Simon & Schuster priced #19.