I was careless enough to coincide with Britain's Got Talent last night. The girls up here have all been chattering about it and the early dregs of it were on in the gym so I sought it out when I got home as ironing fodder.
I spent the first 40 minutes in a state of disgust. Giant-breasted women flinging themselves up against each other in elaborate costumes maskerading as gypsies. (Cue lecherous Cowell: "I'd like to see those puppies again in the final". Surely hardly appropriate for effectively kids' TV??) A precocious child singing a terrible song written "by a friend of my dad's" so he gets the pity vote. An army of bewigged children skipping around in eye-searingly pink dresses pretending to be Shirley Temple. A weird gothic couple whose act consisted of him magicing candles from thin air and slapping her rump to spice things up a bit. You can tell I enjoyed it. I was pacing around ranting to myself in outrage (what has British culture come to? These shows should be banned. Waste of advertisers' revenue. Rant rant rant) when Hoop La La appeared, a slightly quirkier so almost charming 3 sturdy students wriggling around in hula hoops to a hi-energy dance track.
But then suddenly from nowhere, the perfect underdog story. An inner-city Billy Elliott who had risen from the gutter to teach himself to dance. And he did an absolutely magic break-dancing rendition of the VW Singing in the Rain ad. And immediately I was hooked. Check him out of for yourself here - though skip through the numerous shots of Amanda sobbing sobbing at his miraculous stoicism. Drench's next ad waiting to happen.