Sarah Cawood appeared on BBLB today wearing what at first glance appeared to be an insanely short skirt, and of course, it was soon the hot topic on many of the Big Brother forums.  “Almost pornographic”, “knicker flashing – the last refuge of the desperate female” and “she looks like a prostitute,” were just a few of the outrageous comments on Digital Spy.  Charming.

According to Sarah's Twitter page, what she was actually wearing was a £45 playsuit from Topshop.  Shorts and a top in other words.  Which got us thinking... would a man wearing a pair of shorts get the same reaction?  Surely not?  There was no doubt that Sarah's choice of outfit was designed to get her noticed, and let's face it, she has great legs (Sarah was a trained ballet dancer), but in the context of the demographic at which Big Brother's Little Brother is aimed, it was pretty tame and certainly didn't warrant the backlash from viewers.

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Sarah Cawood's “short skirt” raised eyebrows amongst some Big Brother viewers.  Perhaps they should've gone to Specsavers.

Chloe Potter has been presenting Sky News late shifts recently, which is a little unusual because she's usually behind the camera in her role of producer.

Perhaps Sky are making budget cuts when it comes to their overnight staff, but whatever the reason, Chloe is an outstanding presenter and her engaging, relaxed delivery coupled with her beautiful accent puts many of Sky News' senior presenting staff to shame.  Chloe has done some location reporting but we'd like to see her spend a lot more time in front of the camera where her personality and journalistic skills can come to the fore.

Chloe is an accomplished and experienced producer with huge potential on the production side of things, and likewise as a presenter. All that, coupled with her classical, “English rose” good looks means she's our hot tip for the future and will undoubtedly become a household name.

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Chloe Potter has great things ahead of her at Sky News and is certainly a star of the future.

Ross Kemp: Return to Afghanistan made its début this week on Sky 1 and Sky 1 HD.  Last year Kemp travelled to Helmand Province with the Royal Anglian Regiment and now, almost a year on, this five-part series sees him return to the area and the fighting around the town of Musa Qala, which has been in and out of the Taliban's control over recent years.

As was the case with the original series, Ross Kemp is a brave, insightful and sensitive reporter who conveys the fear, bravery and hardships of the British soldiers of 16 Air Assault Brigade who are based in the region and comprise 1Delta Company, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment.  He has clearly earned their respect and as such is treated very much as one of the team, which only serves to heighten the emotional impact the programme has on its viewer, whether that be excitement, disbelief or just plain horror.

Sky describe the series as “unmissable”, and they're right.  In the first of the series Kemp was joined by almost a million viewers, a five-fold increase on the average number during 2008 for the same slot, and I'd expect equally strong figures for the remaining parts, airing at 10pm each Sunday.

In a recent documentary, a member of a Liverpool gang who was too cowardly even to even show his face, told Kemp that “it sh*ts on Afghanistan 'round here,” before running away at the first sign of a police car.  I'm sure our men out in Helmand could teach that boy a thing or two.

Jade Ewen will represent the UK in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest after she was chosen by viewers of the BBC's Your Country Needs You ahead of The Twins, Francine and Nicola Gleadall.  Shoehorned into the finals at the last minute having side-stepped the audition phase and personally championed by creepy Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jade seemed to be the favoured choice the moment she first appeared on the programme, and of course, as is inevitable, this has resulted in claims that the whole competition was fixed.  But honestly, do we really care?

Written by Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Diane Warren (lyrics), It's My Time, the song Jade will perform in Moscow, had been built up for months to be the UK's magic bullet, a wondrous composition that would shock the entire Eastern Block with its brilliance and once again make us masters of all we musically survey. Null points and finishing last would be a thing of the past.

Well forget about that.  After just the first rendition we knew It's My Time was truly dreadful.  A clichéd power ballad, it goes nowhere musically and is dogged yet further by lyrics that are repetitive and bland.

“Tonight, tonight, it's my time, it's my time, my moment... My time, it's my time, there's nothing I'm afraid of, I'll show you what I'm made of, show you all it's my time now.”  It is instantly forgettable, tragically dated and the screeching climax is just asking for trouble from an amateur performer.  That last point really doesn't matter though, roll out the Beatles, Pavarroti, Elvis, nobody could turn such an awful song into a winner.  According to Lloyd Webber as quoted in the Daily Mail: “I'd had an idea for it and I played Diane what I thought was the chorus. She said, 'No, I don't think you've got a chorus, I think it's a verse.' I thought, 'Oh dear, this is a bad start.' But once I got over that we had pretty much done it. So the whole thing took about two hours.”  And it shows, horribly.  Ironic that it has taken literally months to find a performer, but their song was hastily written on the back of a napkin.  A cynical viewer would think that the whole thing was just another vehicle for the BBC to earn yet more revenue from a show geared around telephone voting.

But let's look on the bright side, here's Jade Ewen being announced the winner, reprising the song, and cracking up completely whilst doing so.  Let's hope she does something similar during the Eurovision Song Contest itself, then at least it would have some added comedy value.

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Attractive!  Buckets of tears, runny nose and hysterics, it can only be yet another TV talent contest winner.  This time, it's Jade Ewen, who will attempt to win the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest with a dreadful composition by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Diane Warren.  Good luck with that one!

Francis Wilson, weather presenter for Sky News is officially... the worst weather presenter in the history of broadcasting.  We've all discussed it at length and come to the conclusion that he is either completely clueless, plays some sort of perverse game which involves inventing new ways to use words and phrases that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, or both.  There are four facets to his forecasts (can you tell we've spent far too much time on this?):

His first trick is to spend as little time as possible predicting what the weather will be like in the future (hard) and spend as much of the forecast as possible telling us what the weather has been like over the past twenty-four hours (easy).

His second trick - and we can't be sure if he's doing this just to win a bet - is to open a thesaurus at a random page, pick a word and try to use it in his forecast.  One day that word was “bash”, so we were expecting “a bash of rain.”  Chunk?  Oh, that's a good one.  “Today, in the north of Scotland, there'll be scattered clouds and chunks of sunshine.”

Third, Francis likes to demonstrate to the viewers that he can count.  “Temperatures overnight will be seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.”

Not one to become stuck in a rut - he's only been a weatherman since 1978 - Francis has recently added a fourth string to his bow, namely finding new ways to mangle the English language.

“Much less cold winds beginning to wake up.”  “The winds starting to get up to bring less cold weather our way.”  “As the weekend goes on, well so the less cold weather gets right in everywhere.”

What?!  The word is “warmer,” for goodness sake.  There's no such thing as “less cold.”  If temperatures increase the weather will be “warmer.”

Our video is a particularly eclectic example of the Wilson art as he starts this forecast with a Disney Club “Hi!”, then follows it with an impression of Ron Manager from the Fast Show.  “It's a far cry from small boys in the park.  Jumpers for goalposts.  Isn't it?  Mmm?  Marvellous.”

It's high time Sky handed Francis Wilson his pension and put us all out of our misery.  Their team is full of outstanding weather presenters, headed by the peerless Isobel Lang, so why we need to suffer Francis for one moment longer is anybody's guess.

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Francis Wilson, the world's worst weather presenter.  Ever.  He's probably wearing that dreadful test-card tie for a bet too...

If Danielle Nagler and her cohorts at BBC HD are intending to annoy viewers, then they're going about it the right way.  The channel's scheduling is a catastrophe and no amount of half-baked excuses can explain away what are often, completely nonsensical programming decisions.

Carols from Kings is for many, the start of their traditional Christmas celebrations and as a result, holds a prominent place in the BBC's schedules every Christmas Eve.

The only live broadcast from King's College Chapel on Christmas Eve, is at 3pm on BBC Radio 4, a Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.  The service shown on BBC Two (at 6:30pm this year) is actually recorded, often some weeks in advance.

Having gone to the trouble of recording the service in HD, why then, wasn't it shown on BBC HD at the same time as the BBC Two broadcast?  Well, the channel was tied up with a simulcast of BBC One's Toy Story 2, and for a change, that's was a sensible choice.  However, clear thinking is only available in small measure at the BBC and they have a ridiculous rule of not showing anything in HD before the SD broadcast, so instead of shuffling the schedule around and avoiding yet more repeats - of Wind in the Willows, Jools Holland (not again?!), Shrek the Halls and The Electric Proms - anyone wanting to see the carols had to wait until 11:45pm or for the repeat at 3:10pm on Christmas Day... just when the channel should be showing Shark Tale, the BBC's big afternoon movie for Christmas Day.

At Christmas the schedules are full and it's difficult to combine the output of two SD channels – BBC One and BBC Two – into one HD channel, but come on, the endless repeats have to stop and some flexibility be introduced.  Carols from King's wasn't live, so who would have complained had it been shown in HD at 4:15pm and in SD at 6:30pm, other than the old farts at the BBC Trust?

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