Popworld was good, wasn't it?

[Custard]

Watching this compilation of the "best" moments of 2005, I found myself laughing a lot

https://youtu.be/1fRq3g4O7W0

I don't think I really appreciated the show at the time, but it's so much better than anything around these days it's untrue.

Like Smash Hits in its prime, it fully embraces the absurdity and silliness of mainstream pop music in a very funny way, and Miquita Oliver and Simon Amstell had great chemistry. Looks like they're having a real hoot, and it's infectious

Balls to the Alexa Chung and Alex Zane years, mind

[Chollis]

wow, that Craig David interview

[Proactive]

Christ I hate that period in time.

[sutin]

I've never heard of this. Amstell did other TV besides Buzzcocks??

[Butchers Blind]

Used to watch it but only because I had a thing for Miquita Oliver.

[The Mollusk]

What a fucking dismal year for British rock music that was! Christ alive that performance by The Bravery is woeful.

I really like Popworld for it's goofy cynicism and non-serious approach to music journalism. It forces the musicians to be unpretentious and if they refuse to fit into that set of parameters they immediately look foolish and/or pompous (the Kooks interview being the absolute pinnacle of this). You get a good sense of the actual personalities of these people, it's good honest fun.

[dissolute ocelot]

Annoyed that I can't find a video of the time they had surly teen R&B singer JoJo on, and based on the fact that she's from near Nantucket, Mass, attempted to test her ability to harpoon a whale.

[imitationleather]

When they got Alex Zane* and Alexa Chung in as replacements and they attempted to ape the style it really showed just how talented Simon and Miquita are that they could approach the programme in such an irreverent way without just coming across as twats.

*Who Channel 4 were absolutely desperate to find a successful vehicle for for a few years. Whenever there was a new show he'd be involved somewhere, despite a long, long list of failures behind him. Nailed on if the new GamesMaster was starting in 2007 he'd be presenting it.

[Norton Canes]

This was the trailer for the relaunch. Obvious within about ten seconds it was dead.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

When they got Alex Zane* and Alexa Chung in as replacements and they attempted to ape the style it really showed just how talented Simon and Miquita are that they could approach the programme in such an irreverent way without just coming across as twats.

*Who Channel 4 were absolutely desperate to find a successful vehicle for for a few years. Whenever there was a new show he'd be involved somewhere, despite a long, long list of failures behind him. Nailed on if the new GamesMaster was starting in 2007 he'd be presenting it.

Yes, Zane was just a revoltingly smug and unlikable chancer who was nonetheless being pushed relentlessly as a star presenter during that time.

He even did the E4 coverage for the now legendarily ill-advised "Space Cadets" - the trailer for which I for some reason vividly recall featured Zane in an astronaut costume, lifting up the visor of his helmet to reveal his smirking countenance before uttering the words "THHHHHPAAAACE? NOT EXACTLY!!" Cunt.

[Icehaven]

This was the trailer for the relaunch. Obvious within about ten seconds it was dead.

I only watched the original one once or twice as I was already a bit old for it but even I remember watching that advert and thinking they'd replaced the whole point of the show, the charisma and chemistry of the presenters, with a couple of models, so it was clearly doomed.
State of some of the comments too. "Possibly the best advert EVER" What?!

[Magnum Valentino]

Alex Zane is probably the celebrity I have hated the most in my conscious memory. He is certainly the person I have thought "why doesn't everyone else hate him and how he his still getting presenting jobs?" the most about.

It didn't even feel like personal taste. It was an absolute fact that he was awful. He was rude without charm. Smug without talent. He was buoyant but afloat in piss.

Others that I disliked I got over. Edith Bowman I just forgot about and Lauren Laverne I actually ended up liking. But Zane I could never fathom thinking of with indifference or anything approaching positive in any way. He is simply entirely intolerable.

[Pauline Walnuts]

What's skinny and sounds like a bell?




Alexa Chung







The only joke that ever came to me in a dream. Thank God.

[Kankurette]

I always found it a bit cringey, but Miquita was fit.

[non capisco]

The only thing I can still clearly remember about Popworld is Simon Amstell interviewing Fame Academy contestant Lamar with a megaphone from the opposite end of a supermarket car park in a segment called 'Lamar From Afar'.

[The Mollusk]

The only thing I can still clearly remember about Popworld is Simon Amstell interviewing Fame Academy contestant Lamar with a megaphone from the opposite end of a supermarket car park in a segment called 'Lamar From Afar'.

Ah that's great. I used to live for that SM:TV level of absurdity in my prime time pop culture digests. Where is it now eh?! I think pop has become enough of a parody of itself that we don't need quirky interviewers to bring it bubbling to the surface. At least we've got All Gas No Brakes/Channel 5.