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American Idol judge Simon Cowell placed last on a Top 10 list of TV’s scariest personalities.
I AM LITERALLY GREEN WITH ENVY: The U.K. Sun tabloid reported on the results of a readers’ poll to find out who they thought was the scariest person on British TV. Keeping in mind that U.K. TV might share a language with us, but populates itself with an entirely different set of personalities who might inspire riots or death threats in Knightsbridge, but couldn’t get past the bouncer in a Toronto nightclub.
Only three names of the scary Top 10 — sponsored by the Radio Times, the U.K.’s version of the TV Guide — are recognizable to couch potatoes on this side of the Atlantic. Simon Cowell, of course, is the “mean judge” on American Idol, the regular recipient of boos and hisses whenever he has the audacity to suggest he’s just witnessed a performance that might deserve a toxic hazard warning. Brits, for some reason, are considered uniquely equipped to dispense contumely on American television, but Cowell only managed to place last on the Top 10 — apparently he’s a relative softie by British standards, the human equivalent of a softball pitch in the creampuff league.
Up at No. 2 is Anne Robinson, the onetime host of the U.S. version of The Weakest Link, which lasted just more than a year on NBC before becoming one of the many entertainment business casualties of 9/11. She was the original host of the original U.K. version, and worked her way into that nation’s hearts by calling their fellow citizens idiots on prime-time television. I’d do that job for half what she was paid.
The winner of the poll was celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, host of Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, which aired here on the Food Network. Ramsay’s foul mouth, rigorous standards and short temper obviously impressed the British as much as his American audience, mostly by being only a little bit more mean, impatient and ruthless than the average top chef in any Michelin-starred restaurant in the world.
PICK OF THE NIGHT: History Television is debuting Ancestors In The Attic tonight at 9:30 p.m., a genealogy program hosted by Jeff “I Am Canadian” Douglas. The setup is simple — Canadians write in with questions about their ancestors, often prompted by stories of illustrious or infamous relatives.
The first episode is a bit rough around the edges — the camera prangs and zooms around and the jump cuts abound as the producers try to make the subject dynamic, and Douglas could probably do with a chill pill, or at least a few hours watching CPAC, to tone down the frantic antics. It’s a pretty entertaining show, once you get past that, and might do well for History if you grasp one simple fact.
Type your name into Google, and if you’re not a movie star or a politician, you’ll find dozens, even hundreds, of websites devoted to family trees, populated by namesakes galore. It’s a huge, mostly untapped market, if History can get them from in front of their computers.
