Turbanator II, DD’s Comedy Show & a bahu unleashed

Someone we didn’t expect to see is Navjot Singh Sidhu (Turning Point, NDTV 24×7). Whatever befell the Turbannator in the Box? Eighteen months ago, the English press hailed his verbal assaults on their language. He’s been missing from the mike since the World Cup, so it was rather reassuring to hear his homespun googlies (never mind the only occasions he spun a ball, it was with his bat): ‘‘If they are to make headway, the Indians have to use their heads,’’ and, he obligingly, indicated the correct part of the anatomy!

A slimmer, slicker (than before) Shekhar Suman did a Steve Bucknor on the Indian team: he declared them out before they’d even got in. Why will the Indians lose inside three days? So they can shop for the other two. Why has Anil Kumble been taken to Australia? If they’re going to shop, ‘‘someone is needed to carry the jhola’’. After his five wickets on Saturday, maybe Kumble should pass the parcel to Harbhajan Singh.
Suman’s career as a stand-up joke, sorry, comic, and talk show host is well illustrated by the titles of his programmes. He began as a Mover(s) and Shaker(s), he switched to being Simply Shekhar and now he is struggling to Carry On. On a good day, his jokes are inventively funny; on others, they’re flatter than the floor and he falls with them. He’s got stuck in a groove. Something has to give or, er, move.

Learn from Oprah Winfrey (Oprah Winfrey Show, Star World). A superb potter, she recasts herself, beautifully, each season. She was a bitch goddess, an agony aunt, a fitness fiend, a literary agent — and always an advertisement for herself. More recently, she’s an advertisement for others: watched her with singers Shania Twain and Dolly Parton: as you’d expect, they went tra-la-la. However, Winfrey (her face looking more and more like a sumptuous chocolate cake), let them do the talking too — and it worked. Shekhar?

Smriti Iraani might seek out Oprah and learn to address her guests and dress herself. She is the worst dressed anchor on TV. Why does she favour these synthetic vegetable jaalfrezi designs? Asides from her look, it’s her attitude that’s distressing. She stands far from her guest (distancing herself from them?), her arms wrapped around her chest (protecting herself from them?) and often, literally looks down on them. Which is such a pity because the subjects she addresses are unique to talk shows. She looks at people and issues closer to home. Last week, the mother (or should that be saas?) of all bahus took on the gentleman who runs a school for prospective bahus, Aidaf Hemnani, and exposed him like camera film: she got him to describe why a woman’s menses makes a papad see red: a) because it is poisonous and, b) certain bad vibrations from a woman’s body communicate with the papad — a communication that, evidently, doesn’t spare its blushes.

Whatever else he may or may not be, Dilip Singh Judeo is a big-hearted fellow. ‘‘Not at all, not at all,’’ he repeated hospitably, as though Rajdeep Sardesai (The X-Factor, NDTV 24×7) was thanking him for dinner rather than asking him probing questions about the Judeo tape.