Jonathan Ross has announced he's not going to be hosting this year's British Comedy Awards, the event which he's made his own for the last 17 years. Yes, it's more sad fallout from the whole pathetic Manuelgate affair. We've lost the brilliant controller of Radio 2, Lesley Douglas; one of the funniest shows on the radio is gone (Russell Brand's that is) and we have to do without Jonathan's peerless radio and TV shows for the next few months. And now this. I must say at the end of one of the most demented weeks of news in recent history (matched only by the Shilpa Shetty saga), it feels like the world has gone round the bend – or at least the world of the British media and the BBC. No one approves of what Brand and Ross did to Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter, but to say the whole thing has got out of hand is the understatement of the year. In a few weeks' time, when we're watching some yawnsome film on a Friday night instead of Ross' chat show, or we're listening to God-knows-who on Radio 2 on Saturday at 9pm, I reckon most sensible people will be regarding the whole affair as a bewilderingly surreal farce, with some rather sad consequences. And as for the Comedy Awards, well I love them, but of course they won't be the same without Jonathan hosting. Who will they get to replace him? My money's on Alan Carr, or maybe ITV1 favourite Harry Hill. But tell me who you would like to take the reins, and maybe what your final feelings are about Manuelgate, now we've seemingly reached the end of the whole silly, sorry debacle.
Ross quits Comedy Awards