Shooting Stars

I wrote this for the Empire Magazine forum top 100 TV shows http://www.empireonline.com/forum/tm.asp?m=2850596

I am biased. I am an unashamed and unapologetic fan of Vic and Bob since their Channel 4 series and have endless time for their escapades. This said, to describe Shooting Stars inevitably requires frequent and honest use of the term anarchic. It’s a tired cliché when it comes to Messers Moir* & Mortimer but more justified for them than for many other acts to whom it’s applied.

It is Shooting Stars who we have to thank for George & Marjorie Dawes, for Ulrika Jonnson’s otherwise inexplicable popularity and for B3ta’s propensity for the SPANG meme. However I forgive them this.

There is a format for the show... just. There are two teams, captained by (team A) Mark Lamarr, Will Self and Jack Dee and (team B) Ulrika Jonnson; four guest panellists (though team B will often have a semi regular, previously Jonny Vegas and Angelos Epithemiou), a scorekeeper (formerly George or Marjorie Dawes, most recently Angelos Epithemiou), all led by Vic & Bob as the question masters. However questions should be taken in the loosest possible sense: a question could be ‘name a popular fruit’ and if ‘apple’ is given as an answer, the correct answer could well be Graham Norton or vice versa: if Norton is given, apple would be correct. For a contestant to score points seems to be on the whim of the score keeper, if that.

Though this all sounds like a big complaint, the best way to appreciate it is to watch it yourself. Look out for repeats, specifically from the original series where Jarvis Cocker is twatted with a watermelon and from the most recent series, with Jack Dee getting smacked in the face with bacon. Sublime.

*Call yourself a fan if you didn’t need to Google ‘Moir’.