Watching Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe on BBC Four last night, I was reassured that my DVD collection isn’t as unfashionable as I thought: Brooker praised Columbo, possibly the least hip box sets I own. He also rightly recommended Monk, a marvellously amusing (if not too intellectually taxing on the Whodunnit scale) US series about an obsessive-compulsive detective.

But the highlight of this week’s Screen Wipe for me was his description of Elizabeth Estensen off of Emmerdale Farm (call it by its name) as

“Elizabeth Estensen from The Liver Birds and T-Bag.”

There is no logic to it; it just pleased me.

Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet was, as Alex says, a bit hit and miss, but the Doctor is worth the monsters hits were worth the misses and the combined average was well above par.* My favourite bit (as picked out too by Paul Evans in Alex’s comments box) was Stewart Lee’s line

What is more disgusting, a girl singing with her guts hanging out and her intestines slung over her shoulder… or the institution of the monarchy?

Roll on next Thursday.

*”Above par” is in golf, of course, a bad thing, but here I’m using it to mean a good thing.

This week’s excitement was a trip to rainy Glasgow for a quiz show audition – my ninth, I reckon – for a programme called 1 vs 100. It will be the new Saturday night lottery show so if I get on (no guarantees – they’re seeing about 2,000 people but it wasn’t clear how many they need) it’ll be my first foray into primetime BBC1 telly. (ITV1 is the only terrestrial channel I’ve not been on, but I can’t say it’s something I aspire to, TV snob that I am.) You can read a bit about the show in this press release. Like Deal or No Deal, it’s being made by Endemol and the format has been successful abroad.

The three-hour audition was the longest I’ve ever been to. There were sixty of us and we were given written tests (which were fine) and then short interviews on camera to show our personalities (trickier). I talked about blogging and generally sounded like a geek, but fingers crossed I came across OK. I should find out in September if I’ve got on.

Next Wednesday I have the second of my two auditions, for which I’ll be making my first trip to Leith. You go without for years and then two come along at once. This one will be for Countdown.

Pondering what to put on the box this evening? Tired of soaps? Fear not – there’s plenty of good stuff on tonight, mostly on BBC’s Two and Four.

19:10-20:00
BBC Four: The Avengers (episode “A Surfeit of H2O”)
I expect Alex will fill you in on the detail (et voilà), but look out for Talfryn Thomas (Mr Cheeseman from Dad’s Army) and Geoffrey “Slam in the lamb” Palmer.

20:00-21:00
BBC Two: Dragon’s Den
New series with a couple of new dragons.

21:00-22:00
I’ll probably put a DVD on for this hour, but there’s plenty to keep you entertained: Extras on BBC Two, The League of Gentlemen followed by the first half of Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns on BBC Four, The Two Ronnies on ITV3 or, if you like that sort of thing, Bad Girls on the ratings disaster that is ITV1.

22:00-22:30
BBC Two: Time Trumpet
Armando Iannucci‘s new comedy series, a kind of “I Love the 2000s” from the future. (Watch a preview.)

22:30-23:00
BBC Four: Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe
Ascerbic columnist and comedy writer Charlie Brooker says funny stuff about TV.

There you go. Who needs the Radio Times…?

I was expecting the (admittedly not too taxing) effort involving climbing a hill to have left my typically sedentary legs aching today so I’m pleased to report that my joints are ship shape and painless.

Peter and Alan have put up some much better photos, countering my omission by including actual people in them. (There are a few more too on Peter’s Flickr.)