Ode to Amstell

Floppy haired bumhead Noel Edmunds was on the news recently bragging about how he’d stopped paying his TV license in protest at being told people who didn’t pay their TV license were being watched and would be tracked down and forced to pay a fine.

Turns out, he was lying, he had paid his TV license, he was just trying to be the big man. Nice one Noel, you really are the big man. The big idiot man.

The reason I know this is because I was watching one of those ‘2008’s biggest plonkers’ type shows.

The commentator pointed out that he quite liked paying his TV license as it pays for such shows as the Blue Planet and Doctor Who. Well, I’ve never seen Doctor Who, although I do think there’s something rather scrumptious about that David Tenent fella and I know people who do watch it rave, but I am yet to have the pleasure. Blue Planet is an amazing feat and I am not for one second going to stand here and say it is not money well spent because it bloody is, but what makes me happy to pay my license fee is One Man and one man alone.

Simon Amstell.

He’s so hilarious, I watch Nevermind the Buzzcocks at least twice a week. And now it’s gone from my TV for the foreseeable future and that makes me sad. I’m not the type to write to the BBC and praise them on their choices, so he doesn’t even know what a big fan I am, but I am and I miss him already.

Unlike his predecessor Mark Lamarr, who I always thought was a bit of a twat, Simon manages to be both cutting and endearing. Lamarr was never endearing. Simon’s brand of comedy has lifted Buzzcocks out of the doldrums. Ok, so celebrities get a pummeling, but that’s the challenge – take a pummeling from Amstell well and you’ll forever be remembered by fans of Buzzcocks as an alright bloke, even if you are from a shit band or a crap TV show. But woe betide any fool who takes unkindly to his jokes and jibes, a certain cretin named Preston springs to mind, who’ll forever be the knobber who walked out. It’ll be on his tombstone. ‘Here lies Preston, couldn’t take a joke, walked out of Buzzcocks’

And what about the inept fool of a man, if I can even call him a man, Donny Torette, who spent the entire show acting like an arrogant arse, (he was going for ‘anarchist’, he achieved ‘village idiot’ unaware that every twatish move just fuelled Simon’s fire.

I sort of met Simon once, since you ask, I don’t mind telling you. He was a comedian at my sister’s nightclub and naturally, as her sister, she gave me the front row (thus avoiding a hissy fit from me as I knew he was performing and I had a massive crush on him and was looking forward to laughing lots at his hilarious jokes in the hopes he’d notice me and fall in love with me.)

His first line?

So, I’m a gay jew.

My hopes dashed, he proceeded to spend the entire evening flirting with my male housemate. I’m still a bit heartbroken. But I don’t hold it against you Simon, you’re still the funniest man on TV whether or not my wily charms were lost on you.

I hope the new series starts soon. I don’t really like TV on the whole, it makes me sleep, but if the BBC would just play Nevermind the Buzzcocks on continuous loop from now until when I die, then I would not only pay my license fee every year without fail, I would pay it long before the warning letter arrives, maybe even straight away. Maybe, crikey, here’s a thought, maybe I’d even pay it by direct debit so they can be assured of my payments without even bothering me. Then they can just concentrate on filming more Buzzcocks for me.