The Big Breakfast

Every country has their morning TV ‘news’ shows – you know the ones, where news is unimportant and ends up losing time to thirty minute interviews with whoever has a movie out that week? Lots of folks sitting on couches trying to look comfortable as they pretend to sip coffee from empty mugs? The UK's Channel 4 ran The Big Breakfast as their entry into this genre from 1992 until 2002, offering a lighthearted mix of interviews, news and ‘reporting’ that generally came closer to talk show standard than news show standard. Denise van Outen, Patsy Kensit, Gail Porter, Lisa Rogers, Donna Air, Kelly Brook, even America’s own Jenny McCarthy hosted this show from time to time but as the new millennium approached a loss of on-screen talent foreshadowed a loss of audience and, in 2002, Channel 4 execs finally dumped the show. No hard feelings, if not for The Big Breakfast, would we have seen Patsy Kensit go topless with Stephen Baldwin in Bitter Harvest? Well, yeah, probably…