Well the big news is, Thornton’s back. Yes – after getting the bum’s rush from X Factor, Kate Thornton is pitching up on the Royal Variety Performance, as co-host with the irrepressible, grey-haired filth-badger Philip Schofield. As long-time readers will know, Kate Thornton has long been my televisual nemesis – second only to Stephen Poliakoff as a source of feelings of “Gah!” “Ngk!” and borderline despair. Having subsequently looked into these feelings in a series of lengthy talking-therapy sessions, I slowly realised that the locus of my unease is the impression Thornton gives of being so keen to be on TV that she would present anything. Anything. A Punk’d – Inappropriate Touching special.

Worm-smashing. In the Actor’s Studio: Dev from Coronation Street. It really doesn’t matter to Thornton, so long as it has Thornton in it.

She employs her catchphrases – “That’s amazing!” and “What was that all about?” – with an undiscriminating enthusiasm, no matter what has come before them. Over the years, I’ve realised that this is because she’s not really back-referencing what’s just happened, but is giving a general statement about how she’s on telly right now.

“Amazing!” “What’s that all about?” It’s the simple rising of the subconscious to the surface.

It’s not the blind, naked ambition I mind – I love a blindly ambitious woman, me. I think every woman needs to be 40 per cent more Bette Davis in their day-to-day life. And wear gloves. With rings on. And drink Gibson martinis. And shoot people with tiny silver revolvers while standing in doorways smoking a fag – but the fact is that having finally made it into the public arena, Thornton doesn’t have anything to say. I’ve never seen her make a joke or a point. She has struggled, nay thrashed her way into the white, ecstatic glare of the spotlight – and all just to wave at us, really.

And I suppose I have to ask myself, after all these years, is that so wrong? In a world of pain, misunderstanding, loneliness and struggle, is one waving woman really so vexing to me? Can’t I let this unevolved, petty fury go?

And I’ve looked deep inside myself, and found that actually, no. No I can’t. I’m fixated. It’s an issue. It’s not her, it’s me. Except it’s not me. It’s her.

Hey-ho, though – if your primary employment skill is being able to present a show without actually saying anything at all, then getting a gig on the Royal Variety Performance is the one to land. It’s a notable success for Thornton’s Restart officer. The always incongruous Variety – typical make-up: 43 per cent light operetta/ show tunes; 7 per cent puppet who says “cheeky”, “rude” things; 4 per cent someone very old; 1 per cent someone black and/or a “modern” pop band (the two are interchangeable); 37 per cent red curtains; 8 per cent the Queen – would be ruined by a presenter north of, say, Tess Daly in the “maverick gunslinger” stakes.

I don’t know about you, but I find that the Variety works as a neat conduit for all my feelings about the past, ie, when I see the Variety in the listings, I think “Aw, lovely. Family entertainment on a Saturday afternoon – it’s a part of our heritage. Cor, nice one. I’ll get some crumpets in, and really feel the vibes.”

But then, when the reality of two hours of Paul Potts, Kiri te Kanawa, Katherine Jenkins, James Blunt, Enrique Iglesias and Bon Jovi has kicked in, I find myself suddenly longing for brutalist, Modernist Corbusier-style TV – maybe something with lesbians, and swearing, and crunk in it. Or online mass isotope separators. Or Clostridium difficile.

Still, no doubt Joan Rivers (the “someone very old”) and Russell Brand (this year taking the role of “puppet who says rude, cheeky things”) will have a fine time, trying to top each other in penis-based anecdotes which are, nonetheless, ultimately acceptable to the Queen.

More old-school Event TV with BBC Sports Personality of the Year, which has gone from being presented in a spare dressing room at the BBC – as it was in the 1980s – to a “ceremony” in front of 8,000 people at the NEC in Birmingham. While the idea of honouring a sportsperson of the year is, obviously, a fine one, it’s always been a trifle puzzling to me why one would do that by putting a load of hot, buff, but essentially monosyllabic athletes in nondescript suits, and then making them make speeches. Still, Thornton’s unlikely to win, and that’s the important thing.

Royal Variety Performance, Sun, ITV1, 8pm; BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Sun, BBC One, 7pm

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