The UK Friday night talk show The Jonathan Ross Show makes it's African debut on BBC Entertainment at the end of the month: on Friday, 31 July 2009 at 21h30.
The show's hosted by controversial Brit film critic and TV personality Jonathan Ross and features interviews with celebrity guests and live music.
The show has been running in the UK for eight years and is now on Season 16, which premiered in January this year.
We'll be picking up the show from this season. We'll see highlight episodes from it up until 4 September and on 11 September we'll start with the new Season 17, a week after it premieres in the UK.
From then onwards we'll continue to see the show a week after it's on in the UK.
Guests in the premiere episode: Lee Evans, Stephen Fry and (surprise surprise ... Couch Boy,
urgh) Tom Cruise.
Other guests coming up in the opening episodes include William Shatner, Glenn Close, Eddie Izzard, Lionel Richie, Hugh Jackman, Lady Gaga, Ben Stiller and Eminem.
Fast facts!
- The show's known as Friday Night With Jonathan Ross in the UK.
- It's also on in the US, Canada, Latin America, New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries.
- Ross was involved in the notorious prank call scandal, alongside radio shock jock Russell Brand.
This goss about it from wikipedia:
"The Russell Brand Show prank telephone calls row concerned a series of voice messages that presenters Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross left on the answering machine of fellow actor Andrew Sachs, which have been labelled obscene by many media commentators and politicians alike.
"It followed a BBC Radio 2 broadcast of a recorded episode of The Russell Brand Show on Saturday 18 October 2008. In the show, Brand and Ross left what have been described as lewd messages on the voice mail of Sachs, including comments about Sachs's granddaughter, Georgina Baillie.
"The two originally called Sachs as a guest to interview on the show, and after he failed to answer the telephone, Brand and Ross left the messages on his answering machine.
"After little attention, a Mail on Sunday article on 26 October 2008 about the show led to a record number of complaints and criticism of Brand, Ross and the editorial decisions of the BBC.
"The two presenters were criticised by a number of MPs, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Following the complaints, Brand and Ross were suspended from their positions at the BBC while both the BBC and Ofcom launched investigations. "
Both Brand and Lesley Douglas, Controller of Radio 2, subsequently resigned from the BBC. Ross was suspended without pay for twelve weeks on 30 October, later describing the experience as "fun". The BBC was fined £150,000 by Ofcom because of the scandal."
After the twelve weeks, he returned to his show in January this year - with the first episode of Season 16 - which we're going to see.
- Ross speaks with "w's instead of "r's".
BBC Entertainment is on DStv Channel 120.