prosecco

TV executives seemingly have a giant spinner with a celebrity’s name on it and another with a preposterous premise. We could have had Ant & Dec’s 50 Best Postboxes or Sarah Lancashire’s Voyage Around Staines, but instead we’ve got Phillip Schofield telling us How To Spend It Well at Christmas (ITV, 12 December, 9pm).

Accordingly, the eternally young and oddly budget-minded Schofield oversees a test of prosecco in which Sainsbury’s Conegliano Superiore takes the spoils and a similar test of ‘reveal desserts’ in which a group of friends bludgeon a pudding with spoons. Co-op Cracking Orange Cheesecake Dome wins this one.

“Will they make my list of three festive treats?” asks Phil, thinly trying to inject an element of tension. He tests coffee machines and the Nescafé Dolce Gusto Jovia emerges with credit, while the Tesco Finest Christmas Dinner For Two takes top honours.

We don’t care. We’re smiling at how nice it all is, and how resolutely unthreatening. Even when helium-voiced unfunnyman Joe Pasquale tests Christmas cracker jokes, we’re too far gone into a comforting fog of televisual inanity.

It doesn’t even matter that the premise would be more credible if Schofield wasn’t as rich as Croesus. This is about family-friendly viewing in which the worst thing that’s ever going to happen is that a Michelin-starred chef manually chops his veg faster than Schofield can feed them into a blender. What larks, Pip.

Next on ITV, we have Jeremy Kyle’s top festive hats. Nice.