Stephen McGinty: Celebrities on sofas could still find formula for 60 minutes’ fame

SO The Hour has clocked off. STV, like a weary barman faced with two squabbling customers has called time on its chat show, and wheeled the sofa, laden with Michelle McManus and Tam Cowan, out by the bins.

Was it rubbish? I really can’t comment. While there will be many ready to haul on their tackety boots and tap-dance on its head, I shall have to shuffle past in my slippers on the grounds that I never saw a whole episode and, in general, try to avoid the sin of contempt prior to investigation.

The reason is simple. The Hour’s previous slot, 5pm, was positioned in prime typing time at The Scotsman, and though I did catch a few minutes of Tuesday’s (unwittingly final) episode, my principal reaction was one of surprise that the guest, Andrew Lancel, from Coronation Street, was slugging down lager as he praised the directorial skills of David Hayman. Perhaps they were seeking that chic sheen of cocktail hour at the Gallowgate, or were aware that intoxication has spelt chat show gold in the past, as illustrated by the late Oliver Reed’s appearance on Parkinson when he threatened to reveal an intimate tattoo to a startled host and nation.

If so, it didn’t work, as the ratings were as flat as a forgotten shandy. In its old slot The Hour averaged about 150,000 viewers per episode, and was expected to rise considerably with a prime time slot. However, it faced stiff competition when up against River City. The first week it attracted 100,000 viewers with Julian Lennon, the second week it peaked at 150,000 courtesy of Gregor Fisher, igniting hope that it could hang on until Christmas, before promptly stumbling off a cliff at 88,000 in week three, with the singer Alisha Dixon, and 97,000 for its final showing. I’m told that if the hosts conjured up chemistry it was through gritted teeth, with Ms McManus less than charmed at her co-host’s previous gibes about her weight and his own bulkier weekly wage. Still, I’m sorry to see The Hour go, for yet again Scotland is without its own television chat show.

So why is so simple a format, one that has been around since the 1950s, so exceedingly difficult to pull off? Well, for a start, The Hour is certainly not alone in being shuffled off early. Five years ago, the BBC unveiled Davina McCall as the saviour of the sofa, who promised to bring “weekend sparkle to a weekday night”, but despite her success as a presenter, the chat show stiffed and was quickly canned.

At some point, any presenter with a reasonably high profile and the promise of public affection has inserted their name between “The” and “Show” but rarely with the success enjoyed by Jonathan Ross or Graham Norton, or the one man who needed neither “The” or “Show” but just his surname, Parkinson. Anyone remember The Gaby Roslin Show? Johnny Vaughan Tonight, anyone? Or how about The Nicky Campbell Show, which, 15 years ago was debuted by BBC Scotland as its hope for chat show success. He even had a live band each week, but once again it didn’t stretch beyond a single series, despite the best attempts by researchers to persuade guests to holiday in Scotland with the show tacked on as a mere mild formality.

For the issue of guests is a principal problem for all chat shows, but particularly for a Scots chat show. You either make do with well kent faces, accept whoever is touring or plugging a new product or invest in the expensive business of paying to fly in high-profile guests just to appear on the show. Scotland’s most successful chat show in recent years was BBC Scotland’s McCoist and MacAulay, which was novel in that instead of being studio bound it frequently went out on the road and so brought new sights as well as guests to the viewers. The show was so successful that it was eventually being broadcast on the UK network.

Evidence that Scotland possesses the talent, even if it, at times, can’t quite crack the formula for its own market, is to be found in the form of Graham Stuart, the former Scotsport commentator who has done more to shape the chat show, or “talk show”, as he prefers to call it, than almost any other.

Today he is behind The Graham Norton Show, and pioneered the first five-nights-a-week chat show on Channel 5 with Jack Docherty. Then there is the success of Craig Ferguson, who is now one of the highest paid and most successful chat show hosts in the world, presenting The Late Late Show, in America.

The question is, therefore: what type of chat show does Scotland need, or, more crucially, does it actually want to watch? Sadly, the two may not be easily reconciled. At the moment, the vogue in chat shows is that they must be almost purely entertainment programmes where the guest is little more than an attractive wall off which the host can bounce jokes.

Audiences are easily conditioned and so that is what they may now want to watch, but what I think Scotland needs is something smarter and more in depth: a Parkinson for the 21st century. It is hard to imagine that once, on a Saturday night, he would interview, not just Billy Connolly, but WH Auden, JK Galbraith, Jacob Bronowski and Henry Kissinger. I think there is an appetite for the longer, more in-depth interviews Jeremy Isaacs used to perform for BBC 2 in Face to Face, although he took the idea to extremes and never even appeared on camera; just his voice was heard asking the questions. He may not be to everyone’s tastes, but Piers Morgan performed a similar service with his hour-long Life Stories interviews for ITV.

But there is also the argument, which has been advanced before, that the chat show is dead, that it was at its height when a celebrity talking on a sofa was as close as fans could ever get to the men and women of their dreams. However, now that we can follow them on Twitter, on blogs and in endless fly-on-the-wall documentaries, we have no need for a short five-minute recap of anecdotes worn with overuse. Personally, however, I don’t quite buy it. The chat show is endlessly pliable and, in Scotland, its hour could still be at hand