Robin Askwith Vs Tracey Temple
‘Confessions of a Diary Secretary’: ITV 1, TX 2100 hours
Last night I decided to watch the aforementioned programme on the 28th February 2007, based on the affair of Tracey Temple and John Prescott.
If broadcasters were looking for a way of doing a diary based programme (one-off drama or series), this was one example of how not to do one.
From the opening titles and captions, I thought ‘WTF’, this doesn’t look serious or refined enough. Wasting 90 precious minutes of this, the script was poorly written, lacking in real substance, and the programme had the cheek of classing itself as a comedy on the ‘End of Part One/Two/Three’ titles. Laughed? Only once! Before then, I was watching my ‘Only Fools and Horses’ DVD (’Danger UXD’ episode) which had infinitely more laughs per minute. A shorter running time would have probably helped.
I was disappointed to find it either lacked the dry humour of ‘The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 3/4′ or the bawdy humour of ‘Confessions of a Driving Instructor’ (featuring Robin Askwith and Cherie Blair’s dad, Tony Booth) . I watched expecting a ‘Carry On’ style ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’ style comedy. Instead I got the filler bits between the Confessions of a Driving Instructor scenes at the golf course and the rugby match.
The result was a tawdry production lacking in humour and real substance. Hasn’t the Right Honorable member for Hull East been shamed enough without this? It tried to be Bridget Jones’ Diary and turned out to be Mr Bean’s on a bad day. Oh, and they also had the cheek to put a ‘behind the scenes’ type programme on on ITV3 - as well as advertising to similar proportions as the Jamster Crazy Frog adverts did.
If I want to see bawdy/non PC comedy done properly, I would make a trip to my local DVD purveyor for a Carry On film or On The Buses.
Verdict: 25% (’Confessions of a Driving Instructor’ featuring Robin Askwith was much better, as was the Bridget Jones’ Diary film).
