This morning I woke up to discover Nick Hewer, the best thing about The Apprentice, is going to be the new host of Countdown.
I love Nick Hewer, but I can’t get my head round this. I really want him to be brilliant at it, but at the back of my head this is screaming short-term stunt casting. Will he be a bit too dour? We’ll see.
Who will host it when he’s on Apprentice duties? This is a poor decision. The man is a rat.
He reminds me of Slugworth off of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Not cosy enough for Countdown.
So he’s the ‘high profile’ name who meant Jeff couldn’t stay?
Not an obvious choice, doesn’t seem warm enough, but then I’ve never seen a whole episode of the Apprentice so will reserve my judgment until next year. Will be hard to replace The Stelling though.
Also, don’t know if this has been posted elsewhere, apparently Jimmy Carr is hosting a Countdown special with Lock and Richardson playing as part of C4’s 30th birthday celebrations:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/3937511/Jimmy-Carr-Counts-Down-to-C4-celeb-job-swap.html
I like the sound of Phil Spencer hosting MPD also.
The reason Jeff’s leaving is because he’s had too much Sky Sports work ever since Andy Gray and Richard Keys were fired. The series of Countdown before the current one was recorded with several weeks’ worth of gaps between on-screen weeks due to having to reschedule recordings around Stelling’s extra Sky Sports work.
But it was reported he changed his mine. Hewer is great on The Apprentice whether it transfers to Countdown I’ve no idea. I think it’ll go one of two ways he’ll be great and people will love him, or it will be a failure of Ortis Deley proportions.
Nick does seem like a nice guy in real life does a lot for charity.
Thinking about it, he might have made a good choice as Blockbustes
…. host but obviously Countdown is the bigger gig.
And he looks a bit like Bob Holness as well.
Interestingly, the main thing people seem to do when hearing this news is to raise an eyebrow, which is basically the thing he’s most famous for doing on The Apprentice. So perfect choice, really.
Enjoy Winter Wipeout series, starting Saturday 17th December on BBC1. Great job by the production company.
It appears then that after waiting ages for a third course in Argentina they’ve now got the fourth Winter course with the Ski-Lift etc. – though still no new Wipeout Zone.
Still ridiculous the BBC haven’t shown the series recorded back in January – having teased it with the celeb specials they’ll then skip to another new course and then back again presumably. Series 5 could easily have been shown over the summer or even in a pre-Strictly slot this autumn.
I did question the BBC as they had an ideal chance to air the fifth series over the summer (like they aired two series in 2009) but for some reason they repeated the third series.
I think they should start showing Winter Wipeout from next Saturday but their pre-Strictly schedule is already filled with a repeat of The One Ronnie and another the best of Tonight’s the Night.
I suspect like with Stelling actually most fans won’t have a clue who he is. Would have rather Stelling stayed – does Nick even have any presenting experience?
He’s done a bit of public speaking and an online video diary of some kind of car journey from Britian to China for charity.
He’d have undertaken some kind of screen test by now would he not?
I think that’s a bit harsh – The Apprentice gets 8-9m on a good year and is one of the biggest shows on television, Sports Saturday would get what?
As for whether he has any presenting experience, well this is a question mark for me as well.
Sports Saturday would get what?
On a typical Saturday, the show averages 400,000 to 500,000 viewers through its six hours – I suspect that masks some peaks and troughs. The ratings number is roughly on a level with Dave’s top shows, about two-thirds of Only Connect and a quarter of Celebrity Juice. If I’m not mistaken, that’s only about half the viewers of Countdown on a typical day.
It was getting more than that when Sky Sports News was on Freeview but as most people know. Sky runs a business, so they decided to pull if off Freeview.
Whether those figures include those watching at local pubs, football clubs and benches of Dixons, I’m not sure. Also Soccer Saturday is more The Jeff Steling show and one could make the argument that Hewer is only a part of The Apprentice’s success.r
*Branches of Dixons, although people might be watching on the benches outside.
(well they won’t be as it’s no longer a high street brand)
Well this is an interesting revival….
http://www.worldscreen.com/articles/display/32278
and Spain is doing a version of The Cube…but the twist is it will be a daily series- they’ve ordered 60 episodes!
http://tbivision.com/article.php?category=3&article=2468
Yep, this came up quite recently. The Variety article suggests Jocelyn Hattab created Fort Boyard, which is a hilarious piece of research.
Entirely off topic, but any idea when Miljoenenjacht comes back on?
Perfect timing for that question…it’s back this weekend for a 5 episode run..
http://www.postcodeloterij.nl/TV/Miljoenenjacht.htm