BRIAN PERN: A TRIBUTE, BBC4, 10pm
THE world was plunged into mourning recently when the great Brian Pern died in a tragic Segway accident. Now the biggest names from the worlds of music, politics and film, plus Brian’s dentist, pay tribute to the singer of Thotch.
Elton John, Paul McCartney, Tony Blair, Nigel Havers, Paul Whitehouse and Angus Deayton appear, as do some other big names I’m not allowed to mention, and half the fun is in seeing which famous face will pop up next in this deeply felt tribute to the musical master. He wrote protest songs about Brexit, climate change and stranded donkeys, and did great charity work for Mollusc Awareness Week. He also funded rehab programmes for bats who can’t hang upside down for psychological reasons.
And he was a tech wizard, ahead of his time, releasing his album Worm Equinox “solely on CD-Rom … which hadn’t been invented yet”. Yes, sales were poor.
This is brilliant, cheeky, disrespectful fun. Rest in peace, Brian Pern.
MASTERCHEF, BBC1, 8pm
FANS of this long-running show will be disturbed to find they’ve tampered with the format again.
As the 13th series kicks off tonight, we see John Torode proudly exclaim: “We’ve built you a market!” The 64 contestants are provided with a “market” from which to select their ingredients – though you and I might call it “a really big cupboard”.
Tonight the first eight hopefuls ransack the market, but only five of them will succeed. The remaining three have to create a three-course meal to try to win a place in the quarter-final, and their dishes have to impress Torode and Greg Wallace, plus the finalists from last year’s contest who are back as “tasters”.
With such high stakes, you will wonder why a budding chef has dared to create “custard ravioli”. There’s a balance between playing safe and playing it completely daft.
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