Bradley Walsh: Happy 60th Birthday, review: Walsh deserves better than this disappointing birthday present
As tributes go, Bradley Walsh: Happy 60th Birthday was the equivalent of opening a shiny-wrapped present to discover a pair of your own socks lifted from the laundry basket. Of course it was also going to be a cuts job filled with clips from Walsh’s career, but couldn’t they have packaged it together with some new stuff? Like, oh, I don’t know, an interview with the man himself? Or least some interviews with people who admire him and might have some kind words to say about him?
What we got instead was a little vignette from Walsh’s life – his first job as a factory worker, brief stint as a professional footballer, then stand-up comedy, television presenting and acting – interspersed with Walsh reminiscing about these things on Parkinson or This Morning, clips so old that we’re talking This Morning with Richard and Judy.
I bow to no one in my love for Bradley Walsh, and he was entertaining in every performance shown here. He’s an old-school variety artist with a gift for interacting with the public, a skilled comedian (not everyone can get laughs from retro jokes such as: “I went to France. I had an omelette, girl next to me had frogs’ legs and chicken breasts… but a smashing personality”), a surprisingly good actor, and host of Britain’s best quiz, The Chase (please don’t write in, Pointless fans). But even I thought ITV were laying it on a bit thick when they repeatedly described him in gushing terms such as “one of our most adored national treasures”.
They also treated us to “rare, never-before-seen footage” of Walsh fluffing his lines while recording various gameshows. Surely it had never been seen before because it was dull. Briefly, we saw clips of him acting in a Ken Loach film and opposite Sir Derek Jacobi in The Old Curiosity Shop. In a parallel universe, there is another Bradley Walsh tribute film in which Loach and Sir Derek offer their tributes to his talent.
At the end came a plug for Beat the Chasers, ITV’s new spin-off. Would it be too cynical to suggest that was the ulterior motive for the programme?
