Christmas Spirit Quote by Ian St. John

Ian St. John is doing that classic athlete move: policing the borders of what counts as “real” entertainment, then daring you to argue with the simplicity of it. The surface complaint is about television fluff - home makeovers, garden transformations - but the target is bigger: a culture that hands out prizes for proximity rather than performance.

The line about not wanting to watch people “decorating a house or digging a garden” isn’t just taste; it’s a protest against the slow drift from craft to content. Those shows ask viewers to treat ordinary labor as spectacle, to consume productivity the way earlier generations consumed songs, routines, and punchlines. St. John’s bluntness works because it refuses the polite language of media criticism. He doesn’t say “low stakes” or “lifestyle verticals.” He says: why am I watching this?

Jonathan Ross becomes the symbol of a new kind of celebrity economy: the host as main event, the intermediary elevated above the art he’s supposed to introduce. “He doesn’t sing, dance or tell jokes” is a deliberately old-fashioned yardstick, and that’s the point. St. John is invoking a time when fame had to be justified by a visible skill, not just a quick tongue and a couch.

There’s also something personal in it: a sportsman’s bias toward measurable outputs. Goals, wins, technique. Awards without an obvious “for what?” read like rigged scorekeeping - and St. John, in his cranky clarity, is calling foul.