Hamish Blake is Unpopular Fraud, Steals Gold Logie From Deserving Blandoids

Did Hamish Blake deserve to win his Gold Logie? Well, it depends: considering the Gold Logie usually signifies a career about to come to a screeching halt… again, it depends. But you’d expect that kind of snark from us; one place you probably wouldn’t expect it from is the celebrity-worshiping pages of yes, you guessed it, the Herald-Sun via the current grumpy sod in their TV writer’s chair, Colin Vickery:

Hamish Blake is hard to dislike. But it is hard to accept him as most popular personality on the basis of Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year, which even fans concede doesn’t match his talent.

…

The Logies gain huge exposure from the voting campaigns, but you can’t help but think the awards are becoming more about marketing and less about genuine popularity.

Event organisers must put a stop to the campaigns. The gloss comes off the gold if there’s suspicion it has gone not to the most popular personality, but the most cleverly promoted

Gee Colin, why don’t you tell us what you really think? “Genuine popularity”? “Most cleverly promoted”? What, wouldn’t the lawyers let you lead with STOP, THIEF?

This particular spray from Vickery – strangely unavailable online, though published in the April 16th edition – was bolstered after Blake gave Vickery an interview featuring the somewhat self-deprecating comment “I feel like… an imposter. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing my name on that list of winners “. So of course April 17th’s Herald-Sun ran the headline “Hamish Ponders Cred Gap” while Vickery started his story with “GOLD Logie winner Hamish Blake reckons he is an imposter”. Sadly, the lawyers clearly cut out Vickery’s next line, which was presumably AS DO I AND ALL RIGHT-THINKING AUSTRALIANS.

(yes, we did notice the “…” in Blake’s quote, which usually indicates something was cut out. Wonder what it was? Especially as the actual tone of what Vickery did leave in seems to suggest Blake is merely surprised that he won, not feeling like a fraud because he won)

This vitriol is slightly puzzling. What, does Vickery really think that Carrie Bickmore, toiling away on a show that changed timeslot twice in the last year and is currently struggling in the ratings, was vastly more popular than a guy who, as Michael Bodey (writing for the Herald-Sun‘s sister paper The Australian) points out in a piece supportive of Blake, was hosting top-rating TV specials little more than a year ago?

Of course, it could just be that Blake is a comedian who makes jokes, seems likable and has fun in the spotlight, rather than the usual Logie-winning pointless actor or completely superfluous “host”. Lord knows the Herald-Sun couldn’t play favourites when reporting on a news story, even though Vickery made sure to stick the following in his Blake interview:

Blake’s win certainly surprised many observers who had picked Carrie Bickmore or Karl Stefanovic to take out the Gold Logie.

The Logie-winning Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year started strongly but faded in the ratings. Blake’s trump card was popularity on radio and across social media as well as TV

That’s right, he’s not a REAL television star, and don’t you forget it! Sure, Stefanovic hosts a breakfast show that rates even worse than Gap Year did, and Bickmore spent the last year doing nothing memorable on a struggling show, but, uh… HAMISH CHEATED! By being popular. With people who voted for him. For an award based on popularity.

Let’s not forget, this sustained attack on the credibility of the Logies comes in the wake of the award putting its’ voting process entirely online, thus enabling regular folk to vote at the same rate and volume as the awards traditional fans: network publicists. And everyone who counts knows the Logies aren’t about being popular with voters, they’re about being popular with the people who count.

Like Colin Vickery.