today : A clear and presenting danger

I must admit that I don't watch a lot of TV. I watch quite a bit of TV drama, but hardly any of the popular prime time shows that seemingly make up the vast bulk of other peoples' TV diet. But in the past week I had a kind of headache and didn't feel like reading. So I plonked myself on the sofa watched a lot of it.

Maybe I am spoilt by being so picky in terms of quality but a lot of it is really bad.There's a show on at the moment that pairs 'celebrities' that I've barely heard of with singers and they have to compete, singing duets. It's based on the Strictly Come Dancing format. I watched it tonight. After that was finished I switched over and watched Dancing on Ice, which is also based on the Strictly Come Dancing format, but has ice dancing instead of real dancing.

I have to say that they were both, in their way, quite entertaining and pretty well produced. Yet I felt let down and a little annoyed. After a little thought I realised that it was the presenters who were the weak link in the shows. They varied from charisma free to just annoyingly bad.

I think the expansion of TV in recent years has led to a dilution of presenting talent. I don't think there was ever a golden age of presenting but we will never again turn on the TV and find oddballs like Attenborough, Robert Robinson or Jack Hargreaves. It is such a strange job. I guess up until about 20 years ago the presenters on British TV were either showbiz stalwarts or trained in radio. And I think the qualification for appearing on radio was that you sounded okay. Radio is so much less forgiving than TV. Strangely it exposes personality and intelligence flaws, lack of verbal skills and, crucially, insincerity. The same could be said of the music hall, cabaret clubs and regional theatres that produced the likes of Monkhouse and Forsythe.

I might just be getting old, but there are plenty of shows I can't bear because the presenters are so insipid. Take the two on the singing show. They are a married couple; Tess Daley and Vernon Kay. Here's the thing - they are both former models. They seem personable enough and scrub up well, but something is missing. With the wit, insight and interviewing skills of your average model, they add little or no value to the format.

The Ice Dance show has similar problem. The presenters are ITV stalwart Philip Schofield and another former model Holly Willoughby (that's her in the picture). Holly, especially, is the perfect example of presenter as meringue. Sweet but made mainly of air.

The absolute paradigm of this trend towards insipidness is, of course, Davina McCall. After building a career in ultra light entertainment and showbiz magazine appearances, her recently launched chat-show has tanked. Partly, I think, this is because of the guests. They are the same parade of B and C listers who crop up again and again. People like Ronan Keating, Neil Morrisey, and in a an act of reflexive genius, Vernon and Tess. But mainly, Davina comes across as someone who was desperate to be famous and is rather smug that she achieved her dream. It's as if she doesn't realise that her world is a false one ( and other people don't understand that perhaps she got famous presenting Big Brother due to the appeal of the Big Brother format, rather than Davina's supreme talent). If you look at Davina's biography, it is the classic of someone who has more drive than substance. She has no journalistic background, little grounding in showbusiness and hasn't actually done anything apart from trying to do stuff like be a singer and a Moulin Rouge dancer but settled on presenting. Chat-show hosts require a smattering of gravitas as part of their make-up. Davina is one of a breed of celebrities whose crowning, and only serious achievement, is to have a baby and subsequently not shut up about it.

The point is that TV presenting is a curious activity. A presenter does nothing, but actually does everything to drive a show forward. They are the fulcrum. Unfortunately for some, the job requires something more than a pretty frock and a reading age of about 12.