Ellen E Jones: Richard Madeley doesn’t care that he’s the real-life Alan Partridge — and that makes my mornings

Ellen E Jones
Ellen E. Jones11 April 2019
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If I was Piers Morgan right now, I’d be brushing the sand off my Speedos and heading for the nearest beach bar to call my agent. Since Monday, Richard Madeley has been standing in for the holidaying Good Morning Britain host and he’s been doing an exquisite job of it. In this context “doing an exquisite job of it” involves swearing live on air on his first day, making his co-hosts squirm with embarrassment at least three times per show, bizarrely scolding schoolchildren and casually debuting a midweek tan so orange that it could direct traffic. GMB’s producers probably can’t believe their luck. They’re not the only ones.

To quote Madeley himself, in high dudgeon while interviewing London Mayor Sadiq Khan about air pollution: “There’s no point dicking about here.” So let’s get to the point: Madeley is a national treasure. He might not belong in the main category, alongside Sir David Attenborough and Dawn French, but he definitely has a place reserved in that sub-category where we’ve stuck the likes of Danny Dyer and Victoria Beckham while they wait out their probationary period.

You might say Madeley is simply standing on the shoulders of another legend. Steve Coogan’s most famous comedy character has become embedded in our culture to the point where every British man now goes through life always wary, on some level, of committing an #Accidental Partridge. Every British man, that is, except Richard Madeley, who knows no such self-consciousness — and is all the better for it.

The fact that Madeley’s latest stint on live TV took up where This Time With Alan Partridge left off makes the comparison inevitable, but it runs deeper than a few awkward segues. Like Partridge, Madeley is a kind of anti-role model for British masculinity, per-forming an important public service one instructive faux pas at a time. “Don’t do as I do,” he seems to say, with every flick of his luxuriant fringe. “You couldn’t pull it off.”

Crucially, despite the cringe factor, watching Madeley in action makes us feel good. While Morgan’s modus operandi combines provocative statements with a supercilious manner, there’s no aggression underlying Madeley’s antics. He’s not baiting the guests or trolling the audience and he doesn’t so much grill his political interviewees as lightly sauté them in a jus of their own embarrassment. That’s not to say he doesn’t know what he’s doing. You don’t spend three decades on television without developing some awareness of your effect on the audience. At the very least, his good lady wife Judy Finnigan will have sat him down and had a word by now.

He realises that serving up cringe-on-toast for breakfast shakes off sleep as effectively as a double espresso

It’s more likely that at some point between impersonating Ali G and telling Keira Knightley that she’d “make a good crack whore” Madeley realised that serving up cringe-on-toast for breakfast shakes off the sleep as effectively as a double espresso.

Sooner or later, GMB will offer him a permanent gig, and I’ll be able to give up caffeine for good.

Power to pigeons, they’ve earned their perch

Don't want to come over too much like “Tuppence a Bag” from Mary Poppins but why don’t we make an effort to be nicer to pigeons? This week the RSPCA launched an appeal for information about an unidentified person seen throwing nearly hatched pigeon eggs off the balcony of an Airbnb property in Holloway.

We love our pets more than ever (are there any dog-unfriendly pubs left in London? I’d like to book) but we hate any free-spirited urban animal which refuses to heel to humans. Pigeons, in particular, are reviled as “flying rats”, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It might not seem like it when five fight over a half-eaten doner kebab but pigeons are clean-living (they don’t carry the bird flu virus H5N1) and family orientated (they’re typically monogamous, with two squabs per couple).

We might not learn to love pigeons but we should at least respect them. These rock dove descendants first turned up in Trafalgar Square shortly before it was completed in 1844. Since then, bird-feeding has been outlawed and hawks have been introduced but the pigeons persevere — according to the RSPB, their numbers have even increased.

In other words, these birds have earned their perch, which is more than can be said for the average, fly-by-night Airbnb-er.

Julianna proves her worth

*She taught us how to dress “profesh” in The Good Wife and Julianna Margulies isn’t yet done imparting wisdom on bossing it in the office.

Julianna Margulies
Channel Four

Lesson #2: “No one is going to pay you what you’re worth unless you refuse to take a penny less.”

According to the actress, a plan for her to appear on spin-off The Good Fight (are you watching? It’s SO good) fell through at the last minute when the CBS network insulted her by offering the standard fee they’d pay any old regular guest star.

Margulies’s response?

“I’m not a guest star. I started the whole thing.”

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