TV Eye: A motley crew

They say you grow into the face you've earned in your youth, and the trio of old rockers who are, allegedly, going to be the next big band in Rock Star: Supernova (premiered TV3, Friday, continues on Wednesdays and Thursdays) live up to that adage.

Tommy Lee, former Motley Crue drummer, has enjoyed a debauched lifestyle, and it's written all over his leathery kisser. Gilby Clarke, and Jason Newsted, of Metallica and Guns N'Roses, have weathered a little better, but with combined ages of way more than 100, would you want your son or daughter hanging out with these guys?

This series of Rock Star differs from last year's Rock Star: INXS quest in that the wannabes are heading into unknown "dirty rock'n'roll band territory" but the formula remains the same.

Rock mama Brooke Burke and Dave Navarro, whose persona has always reminded me of a word that rhymes with banker, are still playing hosts and uttering the most ludicrous rawk platitudes: "give it up", "right on man", "that was superdope". Add in the clenched-fist air-punch (from Lee and co) and the mandatory costume of junk jewellery, tattoos and itsy-bitsy tops and you've got a pretty droll line-up of old boys making a spectacle of themselves.

Although they do take themselves ever so seriously. "What's at stake here?" asked Navarro early on in the debut show. "It's HUGE," declared Tommy Lee. Yes, one of the 15 hopefuls will front Supernova on New Year's Eve in no less a venue than, gasp, The Joint in Las Vegas. The crowd went mad.

There was a lot of madness among the wannabes as well. The girls range from tattooed babes like Storm ("can she live up to her name?"), Patrice ("you killed that," complimented Dave) and the frankly scary Dilana, who husked and roared through Nirvana's Lithium, reducing Tommy Lee to tears. That was funny.

He perked up though with the performance of tiny blonde Jill, who bears a remarkable resemblance to his ex, Pamela Anderson.

As for the guys, they're the usual motley collection of delusionals who shout rather than sing. Chris, a self-proclaimed jock who lives to rock, flatlined through Roxanne at full volume and was duly admonished: "That sucked." A dude from Iceland, who pronounced himself one of the top 10 rock stars in that land, was awful. And dimwit Australian Toby, who hoped there'd be some single girls in the show, Jimmy Barnes'd his way through Knockin' on Heaven's Door. He won't make it.

All highly entertaining though, and Tommy Lee's red-tipped, spikey hairdo is excellent. In fact, he bears a remarkable similarity to one of Gordon Ramsay's turkeys in The F Word (TV One, Saturday).

Ramsay, cooking with a grand plan to bring Britain's females back into the kitchen, is also experimenting with his children. He wants them to know where their Christmas turkeys come from, so has installed a pen in his back garden to rear six turkeys which will then be slaughtered for the festive table. I predict trauma.

For not only do the kids regard the birds as pets, they've all been given names, after a handful of British celeb-chefs, like Delia, Nigella, Antony, Gary and Ainsley.

Never name an animal you're going to kill. Gordon "Ravaged" Ramsay can be nasty, but perhaps he could - like Supernova - narrow it down to just the one. The one with the most red spikes on top of his funny little head atop his old plucked-turkey neck. As Navarro would, and frequently does say, "You killed it man!"