He’s anarchic, matey and genuinely funny – Mo is exactly the kind of host you want to bring you lively, unforced fun at 10pm. Long may it continue
Why don’t we have a late-night TV culture in the UK? America has it: Seth Meyers, SNL, hundreds of men called Jimmy laughing emptily at the first sentence of an anecdote. And British hosts have conquered it, too: Craig Ferguson, hands in his pockets doing a monologue, or James Corden and five GoPros inside a car. But why do we not have that here? Why, in the UK, does the clock strike 10pm and TV folds itself up into Newsnight and maybe, on weekends as a treat, Match of the Day? (Imagine watching Ant and Dec host a show that starts at 11.30pm and ends just before 1am. I feel sick even writing it down.)
Personally, I think the issue is two-fold: we are, as a nation, on a deeply different circadian cycle to Americans; and also, in this country, we want our bombastic, celebrity-led jamborees to be on at a time when we can watch with the kids, safe in the knowledge that nobody is going to say a swearword. We’re either too sleepy or too conservative for true late-night: the clock edges closer to midnight, and all we crave is a mug of herbal tea and a news presenter quietly telling us the progress of a war.
