Johnny And Denise - Passport To Paradise (BBC1);

I'm Free! Inside The Comedy Closet (C4)

THE new entertainment show, lumberingly entitled Johnny And Denise - Passport To Paradise, is a blatant attempt to find the BBC's answer to Ant And Dec's Saturday Takeaway.

Imitation, so they say, is the sincerest form of flattery so the Geordie duo should be pleased that their hit show is being ripped off, although the older and wiser among us will point out that Saturday Takeaway is only a rip-off of the BBC's old Saturday night Noel Edmonds formula.

Something is badly needed to put a bit of pep into the BBC's sad, tired Saturday schedules. Passport To Paradise isn't it. This isn't so much "live and dangerous" (as it was billed) but dead and buried.

The thinking is that Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen had such glorious chemistry on C4's The Big Breakfast that they can repeat it here. They might if given sufficient opportunity. But the format of competitions, games and audience participation allows little room for the kind of interaction that made the partnership work in their morning show.

Vaughan needs Van Outen more than she needs him. He's been searching - and failing to find - the right format for his talent since his multi-million pound transfer to the BBC. She, on the other hand, has gone on to prove herself as a stage musical star.

Their new show was flatter than a failed souffle. Viewers had to send in funny photographs. Others were urged to call friends at an outdoor concert and persuade them to hop around. A woman in the audience was confronted by men from her past posing as dancers as Van Outen sang a song (a stunt that fell flat as she only recognised her father).

Not so much a Passport To Paradise as a one-way ticket to the labour exchange. Graham Norton is another C4 refugee currently seeking a format for his new BBC1 Saturday night show, not that this was mentioned on I'm Free! Inside the Comedy Close which only concerned itself with a history of homosexual entertainers.

Such camp queens, said Janet Street Porter, were like bangers and mash. This conjured up images involving men and food that were definitely post-watershed. What she meant was that such performers were "all part of our culture". It's just that in the good old days - or should that be the not- so-good old days - they couldn't admit their sexual orientation because it was illegal and was thought would have frightened off their fans.

So the likes of Frankie Howerd, Kenneth Williams and Larry Grayson led double lives. They were camp on stage but kept their sex life secret. Danny La Rue dressed up in women's clothes for a living but always ended his act as a man in a suit. Only now does he feel able to refer openly to his long-term male lover.

Times change. Zany Kenny Everett came out and found it didn't make any difference to his getting work. Michael Barrymore's career has floundered since coming out but not through public rejection but his problems off-camera. Nowadays the likes of Paul (Lily Savage) O'Grady, Julian Clary and Norton can be openly gay.

This was all fascinating stuff, if over-long at over two hours, and very timely as gay is the hottest thing on TV since straight. Pink is the new black.

Published: ??/??/2004