Rhodes Across China New Tricks

Tag: china cupboard

The Vorderman affair, in which the Countdown hostess has resigned after being “offered” a 90 per cent pay cut, is currently generating more watercooler conversation than anything actually on television. One question raised has haunted television executives through the ages: which is more important, format or star? The answer is that it depends on the strength of the format and the strength of the star. Radio 4's Desert Island Discs is an unbreakable format that not even a mismatched presenter - Michael Parkinson in the Eighties - can destroy. But, surely, there would be no Kitchen Nightmares without Gordon Ramsay.

Vorderman's days were numbered when ITV Productions, who make Countdown for Channel 4, noticed that it jogged on perfectly nicely after the death of Richard Whiteley and survived the resignation of his carefully chosen successor, Des Lynam. So format was king, which meant Vorderman, allegedly on £1 million a year for her contribution with the Scrabble letters, need not be queen. Carol does mental arithmetic very prettily but, to paraphrase Lambert Le Roux in Pravda, others might do it as well.

But a more delicate issue is also raised by the affair: when to bow out. I read the other day that 98 per cent of the BBC is staffed by people under 50. The other two per cent are executives and presenters. But why make these exceptions? Vorderman is 47, almost as old as the world's most famous game show hostess, Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune in America. If Countdown replaces its current quizmaster Des O'Connor with Rory Bremner and Vorderman with Myleene Klass (as it happens, she's sitting in for Judy Finnigan on Richard & Judy later this week), it might turn out to be more rejuvenating than monkey nuts for the show.

The trick, obviously is to jump before you are pushed. I could never think of Bob Holness in the same wholesome way after Blockbusters was cancelled by Thames and he called it a “crappy decision by a crappy company.” Alastair Burnett, his glory days behind him, resigned from ITN too young at 61 but with grace. But will David Dimbleby, 70 in October, vacate his chief presenter's chair so quietly? All we know is that transitions are rarely easy. Five years ago NBC announced that Conan O'Brien (45) would succeed Jay Leno (58) as host of the Tonight Show in 2009. But Leno is still rating well and looks likely to take himself to another network next year.

In short, Vorderman should have left years ago, which is why Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan have probably done the right thing in taking their stall to little UKTV. Channel 4 was growing bored with them; UKTV had the money. The same company has also poached Gary Rhodes for its food channel. It is 13 years since Rhodes became famous on the BBC for Rhodes Around Britain. The last time his TV career was in ascent was when he hosted MasterChef in 2001. Rhodes is just too nice and meek to compete with the Olivers, Ramsays and Pierre Whites.

Predictably, despite the spice in the cooking, Rhodes Across China could not have been blander or more easily digested. This, I must say, is in contrast to his own cooking. When I was last at a Rhodes joint, I felt, as suckling pig ravioli followed cauliflower cheese mousse and eel fishfingers, that I was being experimented on by a mad genius. In China, however, Rhodes was learning not showing off and what he was learning were the basics: how to make XO sauce and how to steam fish Cantonese style. The only worrying innovation was that his co-presenters were complete randoms, a “desk assistant” from Deutsche Bank called Teresa, and Melissa from Scarborough, studying for an “executive PA diploma”. This pair thought the way to make a visit, say, to a soya sauce factory interesting was to call it “interesting”. But as the judges used to say on New Faces: Rhodes will always work.