I dreamt about Fame Academy the other night. There are reasons for this that I won’t get into but it’s fair to say I woke up terrorised, breathing like a hyper-ventilating Phil Mitchell. Mercifully, Patrick Kielty isn’t on the telly so much these days – but it’s not nice that he came crawling into my head during the night. Anyway, the dream reminded me of something Kielty always said on the show and I’m going to rant about it now: “Give it up for… (Daniel Bedingfield/ James Blunt /Jamie Cullum, etc)”
If I was offered the chance to obliterate ONE meaningless, clichéd phrase from the language, it would be “give it up for…”. Apart from the fact that it’s a crass American import and MAKES NO BLEEDING SENSE, it’s a pathetic light-entertainment device. It basically provides every useless contestant/guest/no-hope with motivation they wouldn’t, in front of any sensible audience, have received spontaneously. What it’s basically saying is “PLEASE provide this next poor-quality performer with undeserved but enthusiastic applause, and, for the love of GOD, make it sound as raucous as possible, because if you don’t, we have even more of a total car-crash non-event on our hands”. All the way through the dream, I felt exactly like Richard Park must have. I still do.
I Have Grave News 