Jonathan Ross

Brand and Ross to appear at British Comedy Awards

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross have been invited on-stage during the British Comedy Awards which will broadcast live on TV on Saturday night. It will be the first time the pair will appear together since their infamous Radio 2 attack on Andrew Sach.

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It’s no secret that Jonathan Ross was taking his chatshow to ITV but it has now been reported that he is in talks to spearhead some 3 or 4 new shows for the channel.

ITV has long been the domain of Ant and Dec and the pair are said to still be a permanent and prominent fixture in the channel’s schedule despite their new appointment of the 50 year old star.

A friend of Ross’s said of his move to ITV, “He is talking to ITV about three or four potential shows. It’s undecided if he will do a light entertainment show, chat show, or a mixture of both. But one thing is clear from the talks, however – ITV see Wossy and Ant and Dec as the jewels in their Saturday night schedule.  It’s just got to be decided whether they will fire their big guns in the same line-up, or at different times.”

They carried on to say, “Obviously Ant and Dec have ruled the airwaves at ITV for years but Jonathan is just as big a star too and there’s hopefully room for them both.”

Ross will next be seen hosting magic showm Penn and Teller: Fool Us this Friday on ITV while he will also host The British Comedy Awards on Channel 4 later this month.

Jonathan Ross has signed up to host a magic competition on ITV1 where magicians will attempt to fool Penn and Teller.

The contestants who succeed in fooling the pair will win a trip to Las Vegas to open for them at their Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino show.

Penn Jillette says, “Nothing would delight us more than to give those Vegas tickets to anyone who can baffle us with their brilliance.”

Executive producer Peter Davey added that, “It’s a real pleasure to work with the undisputed governors of magic and their friend Jonathan.”

Meanwhile it has also been announced that Ross has signed a deal with Big Brother production company Endemol in a bid to develop more shows.  First up is a show which follows a similar format to Big Brother, The Golden Cage.  Contestants will live luxury lifestyles in a swanky villa while competing with each other to win trips outside the house.

The contestants would be evicted from the house either by their fellow housemates or by the show’s producers with the winner taking home a massive cash prize (which increases throughout the series) and the house.

Confirming the deal, thought to be around £10million, Ross said, “I am beyond excited to be working with the biggest and best production company in the world.”

Has Jonathan Ross landed a right royal guest for his new chat show on ITV?

Rumour has it that Prince Harry has been lined up for the premiere show of Ross’ new chat show. 

Ross has apparently been warned against using his usual inappropriate language which includes swearing and using innuendo on the show as well as being banned from asking about the Prince’s relationship with Chelsy Davy.

A source says, “Clearly Jonathan is very excited about this.  He knows what’s at stake here. The first show is going to be very special.”

The show is rumoured to be a special feature with the Prince as the only guest and the deal is expected to be signed in a few weeks.

Prince Harry has DJ Goldie’s new show to talk about where the ffinal group will sing in front of guests at Buckingham Palace.

Jonathan Ross went from being a cheeky chap to a blithering overpaid idiot almost overnight. All because of one not-very-amusing phone message.

Since then, he’s handed his notice in and everyone else came sniffing around.

Everyone favoured Channel 4 to land Wossy, however, the channel will not be taking his chatshow.

Ross’s team had negotiated a deal for him to present 20 chatshows a year for Channel 4 over the next two years.

However the deal is said to have been nixed pending the arrival of incoming chief executive David Abraham, who is understood to feel that signing Ross would be a backward step for the broadcaster.

Some at Channel 4 are still hopeful that Abraham can be persuaded of the value of returning Ross to the station.

A spokesman for Channel 4 said: “We continue to talk to Jonathan about working together.” A spokesman for Ross declined to comment.

ITV is showing little interest with one insider saying that the ITV director of television, channels and online, Peter Fincham, was “unsure” about whether Ross would fit with the broadcaster.

Another senior broadcaster elaborated: “ITV has Paul O’Grady lined up for a prime-time Friday night chatshow this year. He’s far more likely to make that post-Coronation Street audience work than Jonathan Ross.”

BSkyB are also not particularly fond of the idea, saying that: “We’re not interested in reinventing the chatshow wheel.”

Ross announced his departure from the BBC in January, saying: “It’s probably not a bad time for me to move on – and it’s probably not a bad time for the BBC, either. I’ve got six months left, I’m hoping to make the best shows of my career with them.”

As we all know, Jonathan Ross is leaving the BBC in July.

We all know about that phonecall he inadvisedly made and we all know about the times he’s made dodgy comments about people whilst interviewing them. We know it all because the press have been obsessed with it, rather than focusing on the fact that most people either didn’t give a frig or, they were annoyed by him years ago.

He was also on a big wage wasn’t he? Jeez, we could all write his biography for him couldn’t we?

Anyway, now, Wossy looks like he could be going back to Channel 4.

Julian Bellamy, head of Channel 4, has confirmed that the broadcaster was in talks with Ross, who began his career there. “I’m a huge fan. I think he’s a brilliant talent. He’s a friend of the channel, he started at the channel. Certainly we are in touch, and let’s see where it goes,” Bellamy told the Independent.

“It would be wrong for me to go into too much detail, but I would certainly say that we’ve been in touch. We know Jonathan well, he did a great thing for us at Christmas, The Big Fat Quiz. So let’s see what happens.”

Ross started his TV career at Channel 4 with chatshow The Last Resort and could return to do something similar with him now. Of course, he’s going to need a decent wage but that money could come from the same pot spent on Big Brother all these years.

Would you be glad to see Jonathan Ross back on screen? Is this news immensely irritating? Shout your views in the comments!

Jonathan Ross has quit the BBC.

Like many other publications, I’ve written that first bit as a line of its own to give the whole thing a feeling of gravitas because, y’know, TV is very, very important news. Right?

On one hand, from a pop-culture perspective, the highest-paid star of the corporation leaving town is interesting enough. He’s spent 13 years with Auntie, presenting everything from charity telethons, to a chatshow, to a radio show, to Film, to a look behind the scenes of the Robin Hood series that they made.

Apparently, Wossy was on £6m a year and, after the Sachsgate row, which saw everyone wanting his and Russell Brand’s heads plunged like melons on spikes, everyone decided that he wasn’t worth the money. Apart from those who thought he was annoying in the first place.

However, away from the pop-culture perspective and back into the real world, this is almost non-news. Essentially what we’re faced with here is this: Man Leaves Job And People Watch Alternative Suggestions As A Result.

With Ross being on millions-a-year, he won’t go broke too soon and it’s almost a certainty that someone else will offer him a new gig. Sky One are probably stroking the collective cock at Sky HQ with anticipation.

The outpouring of shock around the internet and whatnot is borderline pathetic. Occasionally, Jonathan Ross seems like a decent enough bloke, but for the most part, he’s an irritant. In an act of shameless stealing from me, someone I know said that his tenure at the BBC had started to resemble a ‘televisual masons’, with Ricky Gervais cropping up every three seconds on Wossy’s lap for shits and giggles.

Anyway, Ross said in a statement that he would quit his BBC1 talkshow, his Radio 2 Saturday morning programme and his late night film programme when his contracted ended in July.

He said: “Over the last two weeks I have decided not to renegotiate when my current contract comes to an end. I would like to make it perfectly clear that no negotiations ever took place and that my decision is not financially motivated.

“I signed my current contract with the BBC having turned down more lucrative offers from other channels because it was where I wanted to be and – as I have said before – would happily have stayed there for any fee they cared to offer, but there were other considerations.”

“I love making my Friday night talkshow, my Saturday morning radio show and the Film Programme, and will miss them all. I look forward to continuing work on these shows until the summer, and I will continue hosting the Bafta Film Awards, Comic Relief and other BBC specials.”

So who is going to replace Ross in the shows he does? Well, Graham Norton is strongly tipped in the industry to take over the BBC One chatshow. Elsewhere, BBC Radio 5′s Mark Kermode is almost a cast-iron certainty to take Film 2010. The radio show on the other hand is a trickier prospect. As this is a TV website, I’ll dodge speculating and throw a “Who cares about the stupid radio anyway?” to avoid putting my neck out.

Anyway. End of an era? No, just another P45.