Old-Fashioned

Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t stand shows where ritual humiliation seems to play a major part of the attraction. I confess that I do make an exception in the case of The Apprentice, but that’s another story. Recently I began to watch a series on BBC2: Classical Star, but I never made it through to the end of the first episode because it seemed to me to have been injected with cheap game show attitudes, including ritual humiliation of the contestants. And I confess that the lynchpin of the show, one Matthew Barley, strikes no chords with me whatsoever. His "charisma" leaves me stone cold and slightly appalled. 

 

I see that the conductor, Hilary Davan Wetton, has an article in today’s Guardian on the subject of Classical Star. I agree with every word that he writes.