h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Does anyone else miss Angus Deayton / want him back? I think a petition would be a great idea... sign below!

Yup - put my name down. I'm not sure the DG will fully appreciate the word "Captain_SpankMunki" on any document handed to him, but what the hey

Liam.

Thanks
Come on, who's next? You know you want to...

Me me me.
I want him back. It just isn't the same without him.

You're so right!
And then there were three... keep spreading the news!

Have I got news...?

Yeah, he's the only one for the job.

Re-runs of Radioactive on R4 are no substitute.

But they haven't managed to get Gadaffi to present a show, yet! At least wait until they've played around with a few different presenters to prove that Angus is the best autocue-reader they have...

Phil

Phil, it's not so much the way Angus reads the autocue, it's the way he writes the material on the autocue that makes it so good! At least I've always assumed it was his own material.

**Adds name to list**

I always assumed he wrote his own stuff, until Anne Robinson presented and her script was in a very similar style, I think. Even so, we need him back. Who's presenting this week?

~~A~~

Nobody is, 'cos it's Children in Need on Friday night instead. As for next week, I've no idea... do you think they even know yet?
Keep signing!

I'd like him back. It's like lsoing any familiar thing - it's jusrt not right.

I imagie he is responsible for some of the stuff, btw, but in his book "Things can Only Get Better" John O'Farrell (a recent guest for goodness' sake) talks of being employed to write links for the show in 1997

Me three.

> Phil, it's not so much the way Angus reads the autocue,
> it's the way he writes the material on the autocue that
> makes it so good! At least I've always assumed it was
> his own material.
I don't think he does/did - at least, not all on his own: most comic quiz show hosts need help with their gags, as it's very hard to keep coming up with them week after week. There should be a credit for the extra gag-writers, but I've never looked.

AR certainly didn't write her own: she killed all the best jokes she had - the woman has no sense of comic timing whatsoever.

Phil

Register My Vote!

I wrote an article on the subject!

That article in full:


Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And that’s exactly what the BBC have done. Under pressure from the tabloids the BBC elected to fire Angus Deaton who has presented the show Have I Got News For You for over a decade. The question I’ve got for you is, was it really necessary, or representative of the BBC’s aging views and inability to assess the change in public attitude.

As one wry observer pointed out “If HIGNFY was on sky, they’d have moved it to a prime time slot and increased advertising”. So fast was the decision that even the BBC’s covert advertising organ the Radio Times was not able to hold pace. Two weeks after Angus’ disappearance it still had a picture of him at the top of Friday’s evening page with the caption “Angus presents another episode of the satirical topical newsquiz”.

Interviewed on Points of View the Producer of HIGNFY defended the decision to drop Angus justifying it on the following grounds. Since the show often satirises humiliated public figures, it would be hypocritical for Angus to appear as presenter, and would make dealing with certain news items awkward. Yet this has never stopped the Producer inviting on guests who are, themselves, the objects of criticism – Turner Prize winner Tracey Emin, and Christine Hamilton to name but two. I notice the Producer made no attempt to stop the panel berating Angus when the news first broke. When Mrs. Hamilton (wife of the disgraced former MP Neil Hamilton) accused Angus of hypocrisy he handled the situation masterfully responding, “Yes, but then I haven’t harped on about family values for the last 10 years.”

Paul Merton, who has been a team captain on the show ever since it began, was asked to temporarily host the show in the week following Deaton’s dismissal. This was a tragic mistake. The show lost two characters. Merton was clearly not comfortable with the auto-cue, and felt unable to inject the witty comments with which the show is normally endowed.
To top this Anne Robinson presented last week’s episode. The BBC have fallen into the trap (or perhaps bullied into the trap would be more appropriate) of believing that, because Anne can read out the correct answer from a card on The Weakest Link she must have a couple of brain-cells to rub together. Ian Hislop played up her previous affiliation with Robert Maxwell to such an extent that it made Angus’ misdemeanours look quite irrelevant.

I’m not trying to justify what Deaton did. But surely if the allegations are true then that is a matter for Angus’ conscience and the num-skull readers of the daily-tabloids, and not something the BBC should concern itself with.
Finally, in the words of the old presenter, I leave you with news that, following the BBC’s launch of its new Asian Network, there are complaints that the BBC has failed to supply the obligatory token ethnic denomination – there is no white Caucasian presenter on the network!

**applauds**

And even more **applauds**

he has my vote

manda

That was very good, Archangel. Well observered. Now I wonder if your posting will be m*derated?

Beautifully put, Willy.

> Paul Merton, who has been a team captain on the show ever since it
> began, was asked to temporarily host the show in the week following
> Deaton’s dismissal. This was a tragic mistake.
For a while I wondered if he was trying to take the mickey out of the way he accuses Angus of reading badly from the autocue, but when it lasted all program I guess he is just better off the cuff than scripted.

> The BBC have fallen into the trap (or perhaps bullied into the trap
> would be more appropriate) of believing that, because Anne can read
> out the correct answer from a card on The Weakest Link she must have
> a couple of brain-cells to rub together.
or someone at the BBC thought "here's a chance to show AR up for the talentless half-wit she really is"

But I do think the writing was on the wall more because of the way PM&IH spent more time wiggin AD than answering questions: at that point, it was getting to be a bit of a distraction.

Phil
PS One last plug for my "Goodbye Angus Deayton" parody, to the tune of Ruby Tuesday, here: http://www.amiright.com/parody/60s/rollingstones5.shtml
...though I'm not the only one using it as subject matter:
http://www.amiright.com/parody/90s/bryanadamsandmelc0.shtml

Considering how many people loved Angus (as proved very nicely above), how can they have sacked him? It's injust.
Keep signing people!