Top Ten Media Personalities

Emma Thompson

Pardon me while I lapse into inarticulate drooling over The Greatest Megababe Of All The Ages. Fwooooooar! Hubba hubba! *Melt!* My house is still resonating from the reaction I had during the 1994 Oscars, when She Who Is Divinity Incarnate introduced an award --- and smirked! I want this woman, I want her badly, and I will willingly translate Shakespearean dramas into Klingon in my underpants for her!

Kenneth Branagh

The smartest man in Britain for having wedded himself to the aforementioned Babe-All And End-All Of Human Existence and forming the mostest couple in filmic history (and please, let's not mention the divorce, OK?), Ken the Man is himself not the unhopefullest man in Messina. Especially when he does the beard. Yummericious! To have him gallivant about bearded and shirtless in Frankenstein was a richly rewarding experience. (And am I the only person in the world whose critical faculties are so suspect that I actually liked that movie?) His Hamlet, too, was of a fancy most excellent --- although the bleached look did sorely puzzle me...

David Letterman

He is funny! Obviously not all the humour makes it across the Pacific; and it's clear from perusing the huge backlog of Lettermaniana on the Web that we here in Australia have missed the Golden Age of Letterman (squandered for us by that ultra-unfunny ripoff, Tonight Live with Steve 'Triangle-Head' Vizard); but the way the man doesn't just let a joke die, but beats it about the head until it's blood-raw and splattered against the wall, is something I find deeply endearing. I think my lecturing style owes a lot to the man, actually. A perfect bring-me-back-down-to-Terra after the Star-Trek-du-Soir. Now to get Letterman and Herman's Head on the same network...

Danger: Low Brow

It would be bloody typical of me if I said they were better before they sold out, wouldn't it? But it's true. Ten years ago, when they were on Public Radio 3RRR, these guys would spin the highlight of the radio week (Saturday 10:30-12:00), playing any music they liked (invariably Aerosmith), and embarking on positively Asgardic comedic sagas on whatever fell within the compass of their wrath. When they were first snapped up by commercial station 3MMM (Sunday 20:00-22:00), the Aerosmith was out the window, but the sagas were still in place, even if tamer and not quite as majestic. Then, lackaday, they ended up on the pre-breakfast shift on FOX (weekdays 06:00-09:00), day in day out, and their majesty was been reduced to just two of the original four Horsemen (Leapin' Larry had far too much sense), talking in sound-bites! How could a show built on locker-room humour now have a female member? And why would they play host to Beelzebub's agent in Victoria, State Premier Jeffrey Gibb Kennett? A bloody good thing I never wake up that early in the morning, and a cautionary tale for us all; it is no surprise that they have now disbanded, its members scattered amongst other radio breakfast shows... (The homepage of the most excellent RRR presenter Kate Langbroek agrees with my evaluation.)

Headley Gritter

A cautionary tale, whatsmore, certainly heeded by this man; he's been on air easily for seven years, hosting an incredible talk-back show of a Saturday night (Sunday 12:00-2:00), on which politicians are quizzed on the legalisation of marijuana, the leadership of the Australian Football League is regularly lambasted, Scottish psychiatrists vie for attention with Swiss psychics, and every week, at 1:23 and fifth, the needle is dropped on Elvis Presley. Headley --- a man who never shows his face in public --- has influenced my language much more than Letterman: my exclamation of Correct! after others' assertions is the stuff of legend around the hallowed halls of Melbourne University...

Al Roker

In the days before Letterman, and indeed until quite recently (when the pox of infomercials spread to our screens), late-night television in Australia was leavened by the wonders of The Today Show, and its cast of luminaries: Bryant 'Ego' Gumbel, Katie 'Almost as cute as Yeardley Smith' Couric, Matt 'Find this man a woman' Lauer, and the notorious Willard Scott. Of Willard Scott, much can be said, little of it good; let it stand as sufficient indictment against him that he is responsible for Ronald McDonald. What a delight and balsam to the soul, then, when Al Roker stands in for The Anti-Christ. He has a rare comic spark, and can work the crowds with the greatest of ease; Al Roker for President, I say! Audiences still tell with hushed wonder of the day when, in a radio broadcasting museum, armed with sound-effects paraphenalia of yesteryear, Al improvised an entire radio saga lasting a good three minutes --- complete with chains, horses, drawbridges, and centegenarian birthday calls.

Armin Shimerman

His Quark on Deep Space Nine is the most interesting character in the entire Trek mythos. 'Nuff said. (Although Odo-philes I know have responded to this that they always did know I was a bit wierd like that...)

Rowan Atkinson

Comic factotum. The plasticity of his face and talent for mime has won him acclaim as Mr Bean --- it's acclaim enough that my cousins, out of touch with Anglo comedy enough that they didn't remember Fawlty Towers --- regularly taped the show; but it is his deadpan viciousness in the five incarnations of Blackadder that has made the man legend.

Billy Connolly

That the man can have you rollicking in helpless laughter for two hours with one turd joke, a Glaswegian accent, and a hypertextual approach to narration, proves that the man is God (on Emma Thompson's days off), and should be given shitloads of money. Which he indeed has been.

Steve Martin

Another erstwhile glory; a wild and crazy guy before he went all soppy from Father of the Bride on. Tsk.