We'll "Take That", thank you

8:32am Friday 16th May 2008

I HATE saying I told you so, especially as no-one likes a "smarty-pants", but I'm going to anyway: "I told You So". I have long campaigned against television phone-ins for so-called talent contests, arguing that they had little if any impact on the outcome. And I suspected a sizeable wedge of the money generated by premium rate phone numbers somehow found its way into pockets for which it was not intended, but had no idea of the extent of the scams, which are now very much public knowledge.

Exactly how much harm has been done in the wake of the revelations is hard to gauge. I suppose that because so little of what goes on anywhere these days is "kosher", particularly in television, the vast majority of "Brits" will shrug their shoulders and murmur "C'est la vie," or whatever version of that time-worn phrase is currently being used. ITV chairman Michael Grade, whose company was fined a massive £5.7m by the media regulator Ofcom for repeatedly cheating viewers who entered premium rate phone competitions, has launched a vigorous damage limitation initiative, particularly in respect of Ant and Dec and their execrable "Saturday Night Takeaway", which raised millions of pounds from viewers' calls when the winners had been decided.

Notwithstanding the fact that Ant and Dec were shown as executive producers of the show, Mr Grade was adamant they knew nothing of the deliberate fleecing of the public, insisting that their title was a "kind of vanity credit". Nor were they aware that when they were named winners of the British Comedy Award, the title should have gone to the BBC's Catherine Tate Show.The fact that it didn't was, reportedly, down to someone called Robbie Williams, formerly of the pop group Take That, who only agreed to fly in from his hideaway in Los Angeles to present the award if it went to his mates, Ants and Dec.

I have to admit at this point that I don't rate Ant and Dec. They are products of the era in which they operate; that of manufactured celebrities whose standing in the world of entertainment is in direct contrast to their talent. No one can blame them for taking advantage of a system which elevates artists of modest abilities to heights they could only have dreamt of in the days of Morecambe and Wise, Dick Emery, Benny Hill, Stanley Baxter, and the other wonderful entertainers of yesteryear. Those gentlemen didn't need phone-ins. As I have remarked before in this space, compared to them, Ant and Dec are pygmies.

What I find most puzzling about the whole scenario is that despite the adverse publicity generated by the ITV scams, and the shocking revelation that money raised during BBC television phone-ins had not been paid to the intended charities, there will still be people reaching for the phone when urged so to do by some slick programme presenter. Yes. I know it is their money and they can do with it what they like. But how daft, gullible, or both, does one have to be to before the penny drops? Only they can answer that one .