If the first series of The Voice on BBC1 was an actual voice it would have probably begun in a rich persuasive baritone before spluttering out into the consumptive wheeze of a Victorian whelp pleading for more alms. By the end of the run the show had lost half of...

The London Marathon is this week. If your name is on the entry list and there is currently a feeling in your guts the size and density of a breezeblock then it may be that you have not prepared properly. Perhaps you signed up a year ago, full of bravado....

Amid the stench of stale Cava and hopeful resolution, television seemed to decide that last week was Fat Week, as a trans-channel surfeit of fat-fixated programming was broadcast. We love to watch weight in this country. Watch weight on the box, that is. I'm not certain where this fascination originates,...

Bears get about don't they? In the news, I mean. Last week panda, this week polar. It has been discovered that some intimate footage of a polar bear mum and her brood included in the BBC Frozen Planet series was filmed in a zoo in the Netherlands and not the...

In television terms MasterChef is venerable. It was born in 1990, when it was shown on Sunday evenings. Contestants would mash, grind and dice their ingredients. The host was Loyd Grossman. He would mash, grind and dice his vowels. Loyd left to make tomato sauce. But MasterChef flourished.

Today, there...

As a social experiment reality television used to be the equivalent of lobbing a few gerbils into a shoebox to observe them squeaking at each other, squabbling over sunflower seeds and, God willing, having gerbil sex under a tiny gerbil table.

But reality television has evolved. Structured reality is...