By Liz Jones
Last updated at 4:15 PM on 18th April 2011
What a performance: Britain’s Got Talent judges Michael McIntyre, Amanda Holden and David Hasselhoff
So here we are again: obscene limousines spewing coiffured, pan-sticked millionaires on to the dirty, chewing gum-splattered pavements of Britain in search of the Next Big Thing; the baying audience, like something out of ancient Rome; the baseball-capped, be-lashed misfits from society; the teachers and the care workers and the schoolchildren, all sporting a long number on an identity tag, like a piece of livestock.
The tears and the hugs; the old-before-their-time parents cheering on their bright-eyed, hopeful offspring; the obviously insane, the odd and the poor. It just has to be the first episode of the new series of Britain’s Got Talent.
I never thought I’d miss Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan. In their stead we have two newcomers – former Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff and comedian Michael McIntyre.
Hasselhoff wore a Union Jack bomber jacket beneath mirrored shades and a beehive. The jacket was probably to remind him which part of Europe he was in.
McIntyre – obviously here to be Mr Nice Guy – doesn’t have one funny thing to say.
Ant and Dec are still in the wings, sniggering like Muttley, and Amanda Holden is still in her central chair, as if she has been there since the lights dimmed on the last series.
As they go up again, the lights bounce off that smooth face so violently she resembles a disco ball.
Last night, we were in Liverpool. On to the stage walked 44-year-old care worker Mary. ‘I’m so excited,’ she told Ant and Dec. I’m sure she also probably said she was going to give her performance 200 per cent. She was dreadful, of course, on the harmonica, but the wonderful thing about her was that she mistook Amanda for Joanna Lumley.
If Amanda’s face could have registered surprise, it would have done. You could almost see her brain trying to work out how many years older Joanna Lumley is than her. Her ears actually started to smoke.