Oz and James Drink To Britain BBC2, 8pm Trinny and Susannah Meet Their Match ITV1, 8pm SADLY, I will never fulfil my life's ambition: to be James May. Jings, what old boy would not wish to be JM, given that his current TV job consists of wafting around in a groovily ancient head-turning Rolls-Royce Corniche and later drinking beer.
Oz and James Drink To Britain
BBC2, 8pm
Trinny and Susannah Meet Their Match
ITV1, 8pm
SADLY, I will never fulfil my life's ambition: to be James May. Jings, what old boy would not wish to be JM, given that his current TV job consists of wafting around in a groovily ancient head-turning Rolls-Royce Corniche and later drinking beer.
Even more larksome, James tinkered with an electric-powered, copper-bottomed home-brewing machine that resembled a giant Meccano set and emitted steam. All this German-made efficiency inside every bloke's dream home - a shed on wheels (or caravan).
Sadly, my May-time is in its December. I lack the follicles to be as lady-haired as James, my shiny pate matching that of Oz Clarke, co-host of Oz and James Drink to Britain.
Nor am I sure I could squabble as genially as James does with Oz, lacking the former's patience. For Oz plays the role of plonker aesthete with annoying aplomb. Aye, when it comes to James Mays, there's only one.
A self-deprecating master of the well-timed quip, James punctured Oz's tendency towards pretension and waffle. Where Oz sipped a pint of micro-brewery ale and detected a nose of grapey tea-leaves, James exuded comic bluntness: his beer smelled beery.
James's genuine interest in people and things prompted perceptive questions that offered fresh knowledge. In brewing circles, for instance, water is never referred to as water, it's liquor. James taught us the meanings of sparge, wort and trub (don't ask me, I've forgotten). He also established that if you own an X-reg Rolls-Royce Corniche, don't call it a Roller; it's wittier to call it a Royce.
Funny things happen in insouciant Royces. James proved this by retracting his vehicle's electric-powered radio aerial as he bowled along, thereby dislodging the home-made pennant fluttering from it. Adieu, Oz's red silk boxer shorts! Later, James successfully demonstrated that the Geordie utterance "Why aye" can have a range of different usages. Oz failed to make the same case for the word "herbert", which has but one meaning.
Part two of the duo's nationwide ale-scapade ended with Oz, a herbert if ever there was, and James sitting side-by-side in folding chairs on a beach adjoining a pub. They stared into a Northumbrian sunset, bantering amiably as they ate local lobster and drank local beer. I could do that! But never as well as James May. Sigh.
Trinny and Susannah Meet Their Maker? Alas, no. They live on in Trinny and Susannah Meet Their Match, in which the fash-mag fuhrerettes do what they've done for decades: insult innocent civilian clothes-wearers for the latter's long-term sartorial benefit.
T&SMTM does, however, mildly freshen its age-old format. Keep the clinical put-down and ensuing make-over plus reveal. Add a make-under and reverse-reveal for Crepey-Neck and Fatso, as I prefer to call the show's hosts, dressing them in their victims' crap clobber.
T&S thus went floral and shapeless, lampooning the conservative taste of a villageful of English country ladies. By the prog's end, of course, the rural women were happily transformed (although this was more to do with the sympathetic modern haircuts provided by unseen hairdressers than Skinny and Trannie's with-it gear).
Naturally, as can be the case with women's clothing, the show featured too much deceptive padding. Telly twosomes: trust male ones more.
