10 Shows That Prove BBC Three's Cancellation Is Actually A Good Thing

7. Most Annoying People (2006-2011)

By the mid-00s, TV€™s great obsession with elephantine, supposedly definitive lists (Top 100 Movies, Top 100 Albums, Top 100 Numbers) had been thoroughly derided, but the format wasn€™t dead. Like a threatened insect, it hid in the danker corners of the EPG and sprouted claws, crawling out annually in BBC Three€™s Most Annoying People. Appropriately named- for the wrong reason- Most Annoying People was a rundown of media fly-by nights who had riled the public at large over the course of the year. To do this, Three enlisted a cohort of desperate stand-up comedians who would die happy to be remembered as fly-by nights. Never has the term €˜talking head€™ been less apt- these wretches gibbered, simpered and shrieked the jokes they€™d been fed, all in the hope that at least one jaded Yuletide punter would remember them in time for their mediocre Fringe show. Difficult targets like Jim Davidson and Nick Griffin seemed scarily reasonable compared to these poor wraiths. As for the triumphant €˜Most Annoying People€™, none were half as bad as their vapid tormenters. Amy Winehouse, 2007€™s winner, was jokily chastised for drunken antics, because it€™s not like anyone ever died of alcoholism, is it? 2011€™s winner was the London rioters, a strangely reactionary decision from the channel of Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents. And few people can remember 2008€™s champion Agyness Deyn, let alone muster impatience with her. In chasing the media dragon, BBC Three became the very thing they claimed to hate- annoying.