KEY POINTS:
How does an ugly American with a frozen face, dead eyes and a personality as delightful as a cane toad realistically aspire to become "a big star" in Britain?
The so-bad-it's-good reality series This Is David Gest (Documentary Channel, Sundays) will leave you scratching your head as to why the former Mr Liza Minnelli has any profile at all.
The whole thing would be sad if he wasn't such a repugnant character. The series so far showed Gest holed up in the Grosvenor Hotel in London, embarking on the big push, telling all and sundry as he passed them in a cab that he was on two primetime TV shows, including this series (the other one was I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! in which he appeared in a state of sweaty collapse which was awful to watch).
Last week's episode opened during Gest's rehearsals for a duet with Jason Donovan at a gay party. But he can't sing - and, on the night itself, his memory failed. When he got up on stage with Donovan, he made up bizarre mumbling lyrics to Sealed With a Kiss, as the gay fans pointed and laughed their heads off.
Then he got signed, after much kerfuffle over the money (it's always about the money for him), to be a judge on an ITV series called Grease Is the Word, a talent contest. Apparently ITV consequently found him impossible to deal with and the relationship - like his marriage to Minnelli - is doomed.
A "star" needs a PA so Gest interviewed a series of women who were astounded to be asked if they played ping pong or knew a song he believed to be the national anthem. When they said they'd never heard of this song, he shook his head as if it were they, not he, who was wrong.
He's a funny mix of arrogance and nervous fragility. He had to get a vitamin B shot before the Grease launch party because he was feeling so frail. How did he put it? "It won't get your pecker up but it makes your brain move." There was absolutely no evidence that the latter part of that statement was true.
If you are watching the new Jaquie Brown show on Friday nights, stay on TV3 for The Librarians, the excellent Australian satire that follows. Set in the Middleton Interactive Learning Centre, the library is ruled by a control freak called Frances, who is racist, patronising and deeply insecure.
Her staff includes Dawn, a cheerful paraplegic whose injury was recently sustained during a team building exercise at Camp Dingaroo. The person who let Dawn down, literally, was Frances.
Frances can't stand people who come to her library speaking "gobbledegook" - Arabic. When a Middle Eastern-looking man challenged her command to leave his backpack at reception, her response was, "I think you know why." No wonder poo is regularly posted down the return chute.
Frances' nemesis is the arrival of her childhood ex-friend, glamorous hottie Christine, who needs a respectable job as children's librarian because she is facing criminal charges.
Frances flashbacked to the past, to the reasons they are friends no more, and said no. But Christine had an ally in Neil, a fraudster doing community service at the library. He had the Camp Dingaroo dirt on Frances.
This is terrific pot-shotting Aussie satire. Last week's debut ended with the library's poet in residence delivering an ode to childhood called Bite the Teat. As the search for a theme for the impending Book Week continues, this series looks like delivering plenty of bite.
