Jonathan Ross makes a low key return to television this week. Alan Corr looks at what he’s been up to since his controversial departure from the BBC last year
“Back to work. Or `work' if you prefer.’ That was how Jonathan Ross announced his return to tv recently via his favoured communication method of Twitter.
So just what is Wossy’s new incarnation? Is it another chat show in which he asks the great, the good, and the spoiled a series of cheeky questions which underline that a Jonathan Ross show is really all about Jonathan Ross? Maybe it’s a documentary series in which he indulges his passion for all that is geeky (take your pick from comic books, gadgets, video games, b movies or cult tv)? Or is it perhaps a new panel show in which he captains a team of lesser celebs through a maze of questions about footie and Japanese monster movies?
Ross has certainly done all of the above in his thirty-year career on tv and radio but this Saturday night we’ll see him in a new guise entirely. His new show is called Fool Us and it does not feature Wossy ringing up a much-loved old English actor and asking him obscene questions about his granddaughter. On the new show, Ross teams up with his old mates, the comedy magicians Penn and Teller for a family-friendly evening of fun and magic.
The programme features P&T wowing the audience with their own stunts, as well as challenging fellow illusionists and magicians to fool them by performing a baffling trick - those who are successful will win a five-star trip to Las Vegas and possibly the chance to perform in the duo's stage show.
Ross first presented a pilot of Fool Us last January and the show has been green-lighted by ITV for a six part run. “When I got the call asking to be part of Fool Us I was thrilled,” Wossy says. “I have been a fan of Penn and Teller since I first saw them live in New York over 20 years ago. I believe they are one of the truly great acts in show business and still can't quite believe my luck to be working with them."
These are humble words indeed for man who once boasted that his £6 million a year salary meant that he was worth more than 1,000 BBC journalists. It may be primetime Saturday night time slot and there is no guarantee that Ross will pull a wabbit from a hat but Fool Me represents a relatively low-key return for Ross following his controversial departure from the Beeb last year. Especially when you consider that the real stars of the show are the little and large magicians and not the former highest-paid man on British tv.
MC Ross with Penn and Teller
However, Fool Me is really only a taster for the real return of Wossy next September when he hosts his new chat show for ITV. He’s remained uncharacteristically tight lipped about that but he has tweeted his followers asking for suggestions for the new show’s title. No doubt it will see a slightly more reserved Ross chatting to the kind of A listers he scored week in week out over ten years on his Friday night show for the BBC.
The new ITV chat show will air just over a year since he left the Beeb following the Sachsgate controversy of 2008 when he and fellow mischief maker Russell Brand made a rather naughty prank call to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. Initially it caused little controversy. The only really offensive thing about it was that it wasn't remotely funny but the (eternally) morally outraged Daily Mail had other ideas. The rest is, literally, hysteria. After the fallout, Brand promised never to work for the BBC again and went off to become a movie star. Ross, however, was suspended for 12 weeks without pay.
On his return, he found it increasingly hard to deal with the new policy of pre-recording his Saturday morning radio show and also having to bow to new rules of self censorship that his own actions had introduced. When his contract came up for renewal in January of last year, Ross himself said he had to go because he was worried that he would “fundamentally damage” the BBC if he stayed. Rather than stay and be neutralised he decided to cut and run.
But far from licking his wounds at home and playing with his collection of gadgets, reading Jack Kirby comics, and alphabetising his extensive Anime collection, Ross has been keeping himself busy on quirky projects far removed from the mainstream glamour of his former Friday night chat show.
He has three new comic books imminent, he’s been to Cannes to interview the likes of Woody Allen, Owen Wilson and Michael Sheen for Cinémoi, a TV channel dedicated to French film, and he’s even got plans to involve his old mate Russell Brand and his new bride, Katy Perry, in future projects. Scary.
Sadly Ross’ other big series for ITV, a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway with his beloved pug Mr Pickles, went off the rails when the mutt died during filming recently. Ross is said to be “inconsolable” and the series has been scrapped.
Ross, who has been married to writer Jane Goldman since 1988 and has three children, Betty (19), Harvey (16) and Honey (13), is not to everybody’s taste but he remains a brilliant broadcaster with an ability to skate from the highbrow straight into the gutter. He’s never treated any of his cosseted guests with the kind of kid gloves that make certain chat shows so deadly dull.
It may not have been clever asking Tom Cruise about breaking wind in bed in front of Katie Holmes but it was certainly entertaining. And while he may have earned another warning from the BBC Trust over a certain comment during a Friday night interview with Gwyneth Paltrow it certainly jolted the holier-than-thou actress out of her self-satisfied aura.
The far less threatening Graham Norton is already easing into Ross’ old territory on BBC and ITV have finally landed a big star other than the one they call Cowell. Top of his Ross’ lisp (sorry, list) as he rehabilitates himself will be that new chat show and his turn as host on Fool Me. To prove that he’s back in the groove, he’s even got a new look having grown a rather theatrical-looking moustache for the perfect showman image. He also confesses that he has put on so much weight that kids now mistake him for the opera singer from the Go Compare ads.
Penn and Teller are indeed a class act but Ross doesn’t need two of the world’s best magicians to make his career reappear. Welcome back Wossy!
