Michele Hewitson: In your face telly

It is getting awfully, well, intimate out there in tellyland. We can't just watch a chat show with Willie and guests called, well, no, I suppose you couldn't have simply called Willie Jackson's show after the host. So we have Eye to Eye with Willie. Which is perhaps worse.

We can't just have a show called Kim Hill - or what would be wrong with Him Kill as some wit once dubbed the gesticulating dame? Nope, has to be Face to Face with Kim Hill. Both of these titles are designed to sound terrifying. Kim Hill sometimes is because nobody can get in your face - and look out for the flailing hands which could end up in your eye - like Ms Hill.

Eye to Eye with Willie (they really should have another look at that one) sounds scary but is actually quite laid-back. It's a natter and I quite like it but the most dangerous thing about it is being interrupted by Willie. He is a random interrupter which adds an element of humour, even while it rather slows the thing down.

Both of these shows are interactive telly in that you tend to talk, or shout, at the telly while you're watching. With Kim you're likely to shout "oh ha, ha, you got the idiot on that one", or, "come on, answer the question", or "stop interrupting, Kim."

"Oh. No." That's what you're shouting while watching Willie.

It's all good clean simple fun.

But not as funny as watching Jeremy Wells asking deadpan questions of the sort he asked Ian Wishart. Actually, the Eating Media Lunch writers could just recycle those questions for every guest. Because, when you think about it, under what circumstances would asking "Do you like women?" and "Are you a lesbian?" be inappropriate?

I'm waiting for somebody to give John Tamihere a show. Well, why not? There's the little matter of his other job of course, but that aside, he's got to be funnier than Mike King now, doesn't he?

But I am certainly not going to suggest a title. One does suggest itself but it is even more awful than the Willie one. It would be fun to see Tamihere interview Wishart.

He could just pinch the Eating Media Lunch questions and make them his own. As in: "Do you like front bums?" I'd watch that.

I like the way Campbell Live has started pie-ing politicians who won't turn up on the show when they've jolly well been told to. The naughty things. But do they get rewarded if they do then turn up? Do they get un-pied? How do you un-pie 'em? I'm waiting to find out.

I'm also waiting to find out what the point of interactive TV is. I was watching How Normal Are You? the other night and I wondered how, should I have had the slightest inclination to do so, I would have played and watched. This is all beyond me. Do people watch and play with their laptops from the couch?

And if so, what do they do with their TV dinners and their cellphones? It's getting awfully complicated. Goodness knows it's hard enough to eat your dinner, watch the telly and text message your mates with really good lines from Corrie all at the same time. That's about as interactive with the telly (that and shouting at it) as I think we're going to get around here.

I do want to send a text to Paul Holmes some time though. But that would mean I'd have to watch it and we may be a bit behind the times technologically speaking but we don't want to be seen to be watching the show nobody watches. That'd make you a loser, wouldn't it?

Imagine: Just you and Paul, alone together in the lounge. Now that would getting far, far too intimate.