the tall one out of that show

heya


let me start this one off with an unusual and out of character disclaimer (of sorts), look you see. usually the spirit with which (most) things here are written about is clearly and patently of a nature of no ill-will, but to be reassuring i have absolutely no quarrel at all with that tall one out of that show, who i believe is more commonly referenced as Richard Osman out of Pointless.

i really don't have any issues with the chap as such, or per se, but there is an undeniable proliferation of his presence on our television screens. this is of course true if by "our" you understand it as being the UK, for that is where i am, and where i can speak of.

with this being an ongoing (or if you like perpetual) issue (i did not say problem), there is of course a specific reason, or prompt, as to why this appears here now. normally one expects to see him in any number of regular shows, but is quite a surprise when he turns up unexpectedly in one which is usually not associated as one of his stomping grounds. like, for instance, a 1989 edition (or two) of Top Of The Pops.

yes, of course, at the forefront, or front and centre, is Sonia doing one of her performances of the smash hit single You'll Never Stop Me From Loving You. but one of the background dances is obviously and clearly Richard Osman, in that he is tall and has the same weird hair style, and more or less the same hair colour. so i am reasonably confident that it is him. as he would have been about 19 when this was on, it looks like it could be.

there would be folly in me referencing Sonia and not discussing her here. a very good pop star, from what i can recall, who suffered from needless, over complicated referral comparisons. i do not have an encyclopedic recollection, but there was a great rush to describe her in means such as the English Tiffany, the Scouse Tiffany, the British Madonna, the thinking man's Kylie and ways like that. maybe, with of course the benefit of retrospect, it would have been better just to let her flourish and thrive as just who she was, which was enough.

but, my stated intention was to be that is was all more to do with the tall one out of that show, and so let me try and get back to it. for a start, how about some footage of him, busting some fancy moves? if, of course (or indeed) it is actually him, and i am reasonably confident that this is so.

should you have watched that, maybe more than once, and noted that he is well capable of doing that dancing business, i would agree. absolutely no way would i say he could be capable of such smooth and slick moves, based on how awkward he comes across when called on to do absolutely anything which is not just sit in a chair, looking and sounding quite clever.

following on from that last comment, as opposed to following on from the one which is yet to exist, there is every sense that they are attempting to do a "reverse Stephen Fry" with this Richard Osman bloke. i am not convinced it shall work. whereas Stephen Fry was a brilliant and gifted comic actor and performer, he apparently came to understand he could get just as much (if not more) money from that by simply sitting in a chair, reading things off of a computer screen or bit of paper, eloquently and sounding clever, and somehow got awarded that "national treasure" status too, which in fairness is quite a common accolade these days.

the reverse path is, as mentioned, being followed here. or at least they are trying. with this Richard Osman being an absolute boss as sitting down, looking at a computer screen, reading stuff off of it in a well spoken voice and sounding clever, someone has assumed that this must mean he can go on and be a tall, eloquent English comedy great, just like Stephen Fry is, or was. not so much, i think, not so much.

generally, it would be fair to say that any effort to have him do something (anything) which does not involve him sitting at a desk, reading off a screen and sounding clever has mixed results. with the mix ranging from poor to weak in delivery. this is as true of when he hosts his own show (House Of Games or something, which admittedly suffers from a poor idea to begin with), or things where he is expected to "do stuff", like Task Master.

what's the main problem with him? mostly there seems to be no natural affinity for embracing comic timing in anything he delivers, and so far no evidence that he is prepared to learn how to do such. also, he does not come off so much as "offish" in any entertaining sense, but rather as just not interested. awkward and embarrassed would be perhaps the best way to describe his performances.

the biggest issue, or concern, is just how hard they are pushing him onto our screens. at present, his MF ratio is 84% when using the imperial measurement, or 86% when using the metric calculation. for clarification, this relates only to the conventional broadcasts scheduled, monday to friday.

it could be the case that you are not, for some reason, familiar with the MF ration, or what the difference is, exactly, between the imperial and metric calculations. well, for clarification, it of course is the case that MF stands for Mahoney Factor. should we accept that it is not unreasonable to expose audiences to one Police Academy film every day, then it is fair to assess how often someone else features on television every day as a measurement of the average length of a Police Academy film.

a general preference is to use the imperial measurement of the MF ration, which is 88.5 minutes. this is based on the average running time of the first four Police Academy films, which were (or are so far) the only ones to feature the character of Mahoney. but, of course, the problem is the French. rather infamously, and because this is as far as their imagination and sense of comedy stretches, the dubbed French versions of Académie de Police has all the characters called Mahoney. they find that funny, apparently. anyway, as such, to get to the metric MF ratio, one has to average all 7 films out, which gives you 87.2 minutes.

so, when you take regulation, scheduled Richard Osman appearances - the smug Pointless and the dire Richard Osman House Of Games, you get (i think) 75 minutes. this keeps his MF ratio just yet satisfactorily below 100%. when you add in other daily (monday to friday) appearances, however, you get dangerously above a 100% MF ratio. such instances include, but are not limited to things like Pointless repeats, a failed go at making him be on Task Master, and a suspiciously high number of appearances in the endless stream of Jon Richardson In Something We Have Thought To Put John Richardson In show.

but, this post was never meant to be about his appearances exceeding any natural saturation point. no, instead, the focus was supposed to hone in on the absolutely boss dancing moves he done when he was just starting out and regularly appeared as a backing dancer for Sonia. if, indeed, that is Richard Osman appearing on Top Of The Pops with her, which i am reasonably sure it is. might not be, but, with the greatest respect to whoever it actually is, it makes for a nicer world view if we just assume that yes, it is him.

in conclusion, i am led to believe that this (possible) one time dancer, current forced on us entertainment performer is going to publish a novel later in the year, 2020. assuming, of course, that we all do not die of plague in the battles of the invisible war. apparently he has been paid north of one million coins for such. let there be no doubt that, as and when it turns up on the shelf in paperback at Tesco for a modest price, i shall end up buying it and maybe even reading it.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!