Intrigued by the publicity surrounding ' mce_href=''>Noel Edmond's rant at the idiots at Wealden Council who refused a marine who lost both his legs in Afghanistan planning permission for a bungalow in his grandparent's garden, I tuned in to watch some of his Sky show - Noel's HQ - last night.
It was a peculiar show - a cross between That's Life, Crinkly Bottom and Esther Rantzen's Hearts of Gold - with Edmonds and his 80s sidekick Keith Chegwin performing to a highly-charged audience. The content focussed on rewarding people who had done good deeds - like a binman from Mansfield who had tackled a burglar - while exposing examples of that favourite tabloid expression, 'political correctness gone mad'.
Although I didn't like the show particularly I'm still glad that it's on the telly. OK, so Edmonds with his theories on cosmic ordering could be accused of being somewhere between Alan Partridge and David Icke and appears to have gone a bit strange but then what do you expect from a man who has spent his entire adult life surrounded by imaginary characters and puppets and manages to get excited about people opening boxes. The key point is that his heart is in the right place and the show does a lot more good than harm (Wealden Council has subsequently relented).
I doubt any other TV network would be brave enough to run the series but then again it's unlikely that they would commission anything as powerful or pro-armed forces as Ross Kemp in Afghanistan, an updated ''Return To' is also on Sky One at the moment. Both are unfashionable among cynical liberal media circles but that doesn't mean that they don't have a place. Surely that is the whole point of media plurality and it's good that Sky appreciates this even if no-one else does.
