Yes he's a national treasure but I tuned into Good Morning on ITV on Christmas Day and it was cringingly bad in a cringingly Christmas sort of entertaining way.
They were all exchanging presents to prove what fun people they were. Gyles Brandreth, who I do like, introduced us to an old parlour game which consisted of jiggling just about every available part of the body to get rid of plastic baubles in a container attached to a belt. Holly Willoughby threw herself into this to such an extent that Gyles beamed and told everyone that this game could send granddad's pulse racing.
Then there was a quiz where the teams were asked about things that had happened on their own programme. Quizzes seem to be either ridiculously easy or blisteringly hard.
University Challenge has been replaced as the hardest game show/quiz on TV by Only Connect which is truly mindbogglingly tough and only for real anoraks
But I must return to Cliff. What he was doing on Good morning goodness knows. There he was in the kitchen telling us how to make Cliff's special gravy. There was nothing greatly special about Cliff's gravy apart from the fact it was made by Cliff who told us that he can't cook and has problems cooking an egg. But he is proud of his gravy. So they gave him a special Good Morning Gravy Boat to put his special Cliff's gravy in. Cliff seemed to be very grateful for this.
Oh yes I forgot to mention that spookily Cliff has a new album out. It's full of Christmas favourites. Cliff let us into a little secret. He wanted to chose some Christmas classics and found that there were over 300 to chose from. Quite a task for Sir Cliff. So he went for nine classics and three new.
And I'm not quite sure how this record justifies being released. The so called classics are pretty tried and trusted. So what new slant can Sir Cliff bring to them - answer none - and do we need yet another Christmas classics record - answer no - and why is Sir Cliff promoting it on Christmas Day when nobody will be buying it because Christmas will be over in a couple of days?
Of course as you would expect Sir Cliff frothed on about the new album trying to generate some kind of enthusiasm where none exists. He even went as far as to say that he was lucky in having two very different producers for the record. The first had a much quieter folkier take on things and was perfect for "When A Child Is Born" and then a much rockier producer who was able to deal with the rock numbers such as "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree." All of which is obviously nonsense. You don't need a rock producer for material like this. It's just Cliff's way of trying to big up a very dated and irrelevant album.
Mind you he is still going strong at the age of 82 and so we all need to applaud that and remember that once upon a time he was cutting edge and produced some great pop music. But s they say "that was long ago and far away."
* * *
Granddaughter Poppy wanted in on this blog and so I asked her to say what she thought of Christmas this year and this is what she wrote.
Yesterday I had a great Christmas and It has been one of those days that you don't want to end.
But we saved some presents for today and I Loved it 😂😂 sad times because it stopped but it was all good.
Yesterday was of course Christmas Day and today is a reference to Boxing Day. I don't think that's bad for a seven year old.