Hey Hey It’s An Enormous Tsunami Of Complete Bullshit
One of the first things they’re meant to teach you at journalism school (yeah, like there’s any of them still open – ed) is: CONSIDER YOUR SOURCE. If someone is telling you something, you should stop and ask yourself “why are they telling me this? Is it possible they might have an ulterior motive? Could they be a self-promoting egotistical looney spouting demented fantasies the media only report in a desperate attempt to stir up shit? Worse, could you be speaking to Daryl Somers?”
Seriously, how else to explain this “story” in the Daily Telegraph:
RUSSELL Gilbert is on the road to recovery and is poised to make his TV comeback on a rebooted Hey Hey It’s Saturday later this year.
Wow! Whadda Scoop!
“He’s on the mend,” Gilbert’s friend said.
“But it’s too soon to say if he will ever be the same.”
Oh. But the Hey Hey stuff is true, right?
Somers, who has just finished filming his new series You’re Back in the Room for Channel 9, said he’s been in continuing talks with the network about how best to bring Hey Hey back to the small screen in 2016.
“I understand Russell is feeling much better,” Somers said.
“I’d love him to be part of Hey Hey when we do it. Molly (Meldrum) too, but that could prove more difficult.”
Wait, that’s it? “Continuing talks”? That could just be Somers whining “pleeeeeease let me do Hey Hey again” under the programming chief’s door. And considering what a massive fucking flop Hey Hey turned out to be last time it came back, we’re thinking he’d be lucky to get that far even if he wasn’t telling everyone his comeback would revolve around a crack team of medically knackered nostalgia cases.
But why let the facts – which are as follows: Daryl is the ONLY person talking about bringing Hey Hey back and he’s probably doing that talking to an empty room – get in the way of a good story? Even the usually reputable TV Tonight is flogging this particular dead horse, adding in this tidbit:
Meanwhile Jo Beth Taylor has been attracting new fans on TEN’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
Which is good news for Jo Beth, though considering she suddenly quit Hey Hey (and television in general) without warning in 1997 (when she, according to wikipedia, “failed to show for work”) and only played a minor part in the 2010 version, it’s hard to see how her current success strengthens the case for a Hey Hey revival.
The last revival in 2010 did not sustain solid ratings, but the show is not considered to be cheap.
Somers’ new hynopsis game show is due to air in April.
And finally we get to some actual useful information. The host of an upcoming hypnotism-based game show is trying to revive a failed television show that “did not sustain solid ratings” and is “not considered to be cheap”. Though they left out “put a blackface act to air in 2010” and “is built around a cast of men well past retirement age”.
We’ve often said the only real way to put a version of Hey Hey on the air that people would watch would be to put together a tell-all telemovie. And by “tell-all” we mean lift the lid on the whole stinking, drawn-out, bloated mess.
For one thing, maybe we could finally find out why the show went through so many female co-hosts in the 90s…
I find it extraordinary (and graspingly, tragically sad) that every time Sommer’s has a job (something extraordinary in itself for a man with so little exhibited talent) he invariably uses it to try and angle for a return to ‘Hey Hey’. He’s self-destructively obsessed.
It’s like ‘Hey Hey’ is his white whale.
Except, of course, that this doughy, dead-eyed Ahab wasn’t savaged by the whale like the one in the book. If the scuttlebutt is to be believed, Daryl seems more attracted to the idea of returning to the days when he and the whale were marauding across the waves as a duo, brutalising cast, crew, network underlings, and the lowest possible requirements for entertainment, with impunity.
From TV Tonight: http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2016/03/jo-beth-taylor-spills-on-hey-hey-days.html
Jo Beth Taylor looked back on Hey Hey it’s Saturday while Val Lehman, who was eliminated in the episode, reflected on her Prisoner days.
Jo Beth Taylor described Molly Meldrum as generous.
“He is so personable, so easy to talk to and he is very loyal. I love him,” she told Paul Harragon.
Asked about working with Daryl Somers she said he was very good to her, but then qualified her comments.
“Daryl is very supportive if he likes you,” she explained.
“The flip side of that is he is very egocentric as in he doesn’t want anyone to be … he wants to take the lead.”
“Honestly he treated me really well but…. it was him first always. I could never be better and if I was, I always got short shifted out. I really like him, he’s just got the ego and everyone let him have it. That’s the thing too- if no one brings you back down to reality, then you just live in that world.”
She also didn’t share his enthusiasm to revive Hey Hey.
“You know you’ve got to get over it, do something else because it is not going to ever work again.”
Oh wait, now she’s backtracking: Jo Beth Taylor: “Daryl, I’m sorry”
Man, Daryl must be one hella scary dude.