It’s no Top Gear, but this new car show has a nice line in knitwear: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV
Bangers: Mad For Cars
Fake or lucky?
Giles Brandreth took a closer look at his braided laurels. Since she first wore the Scrabble design on screen in the 1970s, the morning TV star has paraded an endless array of glorious jumpers.
But he has competition from rapper and TV presenter Tinie. Kicking off his celebration of the engines his generation grew up with, in Bangers: Mad For Cars (Ch4), Tinie flaunted his jersey.
An oversized blue and red striped sweater made him look like a little boy who had invaded his big brother’s wardrobe. But the yellow tank top, with dozens of fine blue dragonflies, was a serious challenge to Brandreth’s dominance.
Tinie is known for his fashion statements. Hosting the art show Extraordinary Portraits last year, he modeled a series of men’s bags, including a sporran worn around his neck and an under-arm bag like a gun holster.
The trailer for next week’s episode shows him wearing a delicate green cobweb cardigan that looked like something Miss Marple might crochet as a cozy teapot.
Kicking off his celebration of the motorbikes his generation grew up with, in Bangers: Mad For Cars (Ch4), rapper and TV host Tinie flaunts his jersey
Tinie is proving he can run all kinds of programs, but perhaps his spiritual home will be with Patrick and Esme at the Great British Sewing Bee.
Bangers is a shameless copycat of the Top Gear challenge. Tinie and co-host Naomi Schiff — a former racing driver best known for presenting Formula 1 on Ski Sports — each choose a car for the test series. This week there was a rush at the supermarket followed by a run to school: Naomi chose the Volvo 850, while Tinie preferred the Ford Sierra. . . the boy racer’s favourite, the Cosworth RS500.
None of these vehicles were representative of family cars. Volvo estates were usually driven by a brigade of Labradors and Wellies, while Cosworths were supercars disguised as saloons.
The real thing was the Renault Espace, the original ‘people mover’, a kind of transport container on wheels. Tinie shuddered every time he looked at him.
But Espace pointed out a big problem with Bangers: It’s missing one frontman. The Top Gear challenges worked because there were three of them, all arguing and bragging. It’s easy to imagine Jeremy Clarkson insisting on a Cosworth, Richard Hammond as a midget behind the wheel of a Volvo, and James ‘Captain Slow’ May driving a Renault.
What’s less easy to imagine is Clarkson in a thin yellow sleeveless pullover adorned with delicate woolly insects. Fortunately, we were spared that.
Cosworths can now fetch up to £150,000 at auction, putting them in the same league as some of the artworks explored on Fake Or Fortune? (BBC1).
The abstract expressionist Arshilo Gorky’s canvas was insured for 200,000, although the artist erased the painting with a coating of white emulsion shortly before he killed himself in 1948.
Cosworths can now fetch up to £150,000 at auction, putting them in the same league as some of the artworks explored on Fake Or Fortune? (BBC1)
The abstract expressionist Arshilo Gorky’s canvas was insured for 200,000, although the artist erased the painting with a coating of white emulsion shortly before he killed himself in 1948.
Efforts by conservators to dissolve the white paint hinted at the priceless work beneath – but Fiona Bruce and Philip Mold were taken aback when told that if the layer of ordinary house paint was removed, the work might no longer be considered an original Gorky.
That sounds like a forger’s dream. Put a Duluk over an Ikea painting and announce that you’ve lost your Picasso.
This was a prime candidate for an X-ray, always a fun part of the Fake Or Fortune probe, but the canvas was so large that the team had to borrow a machine from the vet, who usually used it on horses.
What the rays of radiation revealed was incredible – a third layer of paint, dating from much earlier in the artist’s career, and identified as one of his early missing masterpieces. In a reliably fascinating series, this was one of the most surprising yet.