Richard Herring once wrote that he is irritated by the title of Never Mind The Buzzcocks because the Manchester punk band was called Buzzcocks, so the title should really be - pedant alert! - Never Mind Buzzcocks. The Christmas edition goes out on BBC2 tonight and it is on a relative high thanks to a piece of broken crockery. In November it made the news pages when Huey Morgan had a hissy fit and smashed his mug on the table. The news shocked the nation. Not shocked that a pop star could be so naughty, but shocked that the programme was still going. These days Buzzcocks seems to tick over quietly, rarely does it cause such of a kerfuffle.
The programme has been taking the piss out of pop stars since 1996, making it virtually senile in TV years. There really are 17-year-olds who were not born when it started. It was part of the first wave of post-alternative cheeky, chummy comedy panel shows along with Have I Got News For You and They Think It's All Over, but while HIGNFY has settled gently into its irreverent dotage and TTIAO blew the final whistle, NMTB refuses to behave like a televisual elder statesman, preferring the demeanour of your middle-aged uncle at the disco, desperate to be down with the kids. The programme is still fun to watch, I'm just not sure if the regulars on it are having as much fun as they used to.
There is something that seems particularly unusual about the way in which people leave the show. For some reason ex-Buzzcocks folk seem to end up fending off a wave of self-loathing. The usually benign Bill Bailey summed this up on his recent tour when he joked that he realised that the show was not quite right for him when he was miming to a Britney song and had the following thought: "I've got Grade 6 clarinet, I'm better than this." It is just not a job for a grown-up. Simon Amstell went further - writing two whole series of Grandma's House based around the idea of a character called Simon Amstell having an existential crisis over the shallowness of his job as a TV presenter.
As for previous host Mark Lamarr, his time on Buzzcocks may have had something to do with the fact that since then seems to have had enough of doing television altogether. Sean Hughes also seemd a bit disillusioned when he finally left in 2002. In 2012 he told Time Out why he left: "I hate the whole world of celebs. It doesn’t interest me. That was one of the reasons I had to leave ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’. I was getting recognised just for that. I really didn’t want that on my tombstone."
The programme seems to be a particular victim of a panel show paradox where you get the gig because you are a brilliant quickfire stand-up comedian and then find you are unable to do what you are so brilliant at on the programme. It is also probably too well-paid to leave easily. Hughes took a while to find his stand-up legs again, and it is only in the last two years that he has really recaptured his pre-Buzzcocks form onstage. It's a bit of a Faustian pact and we aren't talking Krautrock bands (ask yer dad). Fame and fortune but ultimately a high risk of artistic frustration.
The trouble is that Buzzcocks and music on TV in general is so youth-orientated it may be only a matter of time before you realise deep down that you are too old to continue and by then it may be too late to get out. Noel Fielding manages to survive by being a permachild, maybe Phill Jupitus has a large mortgage to service or the BBC is holding a member of his family hostage. Maybe the BBC should just opt for the Logan's Run philosophy and kill off any panellist when they reach 30. Or maybe just put the whole series out of its misery now. It would save a lot of middle-aged men the pain of having to quit.
