So, the day after I published that previous post with my thoughts on the new series and Paxo's impending departure from the series, the BBC announced that Amol Rajan will be his successor. He's no stranger to the show of course, having competed in the Christmas 2020 series for Downing Cambridge; here's what I wrote of that series at the time.
The response to this announcement over the past week has been pretty mixed to say the least, with quite a lot of people not terribly happy with the choice of him for a variety of reasons, many of them relating to what else he's done and said in his career thus far; see the latest Weaver's Week for a concise summary of the main reasons why his appointment hasn't gone down all that well.
For me personally, the jury's out until we've actually seen him in action on the show; he probably wouldn't have been a choice I'd have made, but I'm very much prepared to give him a chance and see how he actually fares before drawing my conclusions.
Of course, to be fair, given how long Paxo's been doing the show and how popular he's become, he was always going to be a most difficult act to follow for anyone who tried to. Compared to Mastermind last year, where John Humphrys, while he did a perfectly acceptable job IMO, was never that popular, so when Clive Myrie was announced as his successor, it immediately felt right, and so it transpired when we saw him in action. (It's a shame Mastermind got him first, as I suspect he'd have also slotted into the UC job very easily too)
So, to conclude, I'm not going to say whether I think TPTB have made a good choice or not until at least a good few episodes into the next series; then we'll take stock. Until then, it's business as usual, and hopefully the new series on Monday will be a great one for Paxo to go out on!
Back on Sunday with a summary of the first four heats of this year's Brain of Britain; then, on Monday, Quizzy Mondays finally returns with my first write-up of the series. So, see you then...
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