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David Van Day has obviously never read How to Win Friends and Influence People. The former Dollar singer is, it has to be said, hard to love in I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here. I hated him when he arrived as a latecomer and started bitching about where he was going to sleep.

But that doesn't excuse the way that other contestants were so horrid to him. In the end it was the venom in which they treated him that turned David Van Day from a zero to hero. And it will serve them right if he wins on Sunday.

He was, it has to be said, not the best contestant in Strictly Come Dancing but John Sergeant got my vote. He was a hero who defied the odds to avoid the dreaded dance-off and return the following week...and the following week...and the following week. But by his decision to quit he became a zero in an instant.

DID anyone else feel jipped at last week's Antiques Roadshow.
It was the one with shed-loads of publicity about the first £1m valuation by the show's experts.
And as the programme was recorded at the Sage Gateshead I tuned in expecting to see all the emotion of a ordinary man or woman who found a genuine antique in their possession.
What I got was....

Strops, tantrums, tempers. It's the usual day-to-day routine if you've got teenagers.
So why did they make a drama full of stroppy kids? ITV's Britannia High is full of snotty adolescents behaving like snotty adolescents. No thank you, you might say, got that at home.

The series, devised by that Arlene Philips woman from those dancing and talent (!) shows that are popular at the moment, is a celebration of charva-dom featuring kids at a drama school with massive egos getting their own way

Who's Who at Britannia High?

There was something really irritating about Pinky and Perky.
Some cartoon characters as I was growing up were endearing (The Magic Roundabout), some were frightening (Rupert the Bear, believe it or not, but that's a subject for another blog) and some scored 10 out of 10 for annoyance.
Pinky and Perky fell into the last category.

Blue Peter celebrates its 50th birthday next week in a fanfare of publicity from the BBC.

There's lots happening - a live hour-long extended version of the show, current and selected former presenters having tea with the Queen, and the return of Peter Purves with a quiz on Blue Peter's history.

Wanna bet some of the show's more colourful presenters won't get a mention....

Let's Get Naked, you and I. That, at least, was the promise behind the BBC2 documentary Dawn...Gets Naked.

And that wasn't an invitation I was going to turn down even if the show was a repeat of a programme originally shown on BBC3.

It's always revealing to get a glimpse behind the scenes of TV dramas like Robson Green's Wire in the Blood.

But I do wish our TV people would call a drama a drama.

According to pre-publicity from both Robson and executive producer Sandra Jobling the violent show is not a drama at all.

It is, apprentlty, a brand.

Robson Green has a big one.
We know it's a big one because he is constantly boasting about it in his new series.
Examples include: "Look at the size of that."
Then there's "Will you look at that, man." and "Oh wow, look at that."
And again: "Oh man, did you see that,"
I did see the size of it and I'm not impressed.

Thank you, Tim Healy, for perpetuating the image of Geordies as thickos.

That was sarcasm, by the way, I didn't really mean thank you.

Tim appeared in the 1960s Northumberland cop show George Gently as a pig farmer who was intellectually-challenged.