....that he doesn't produce the programme or book the acts.

... Jools doesn't make the programme, but I'd say that Mark Cooper and Alison Howe and the other producers do fashion it to an extent around the sort of musicians Jools would like to have next to him on a piano stool - the sort that can play a bit, the sort who've been around the block, the sort that he just quite likes. I get the feeling he really enjoys being exposed to the newer, hipper stuff - I don't know for sure, but I get a feeling that he does, and this is part of his uniquely rounded, genuine TV personality (which is basically his own personality). I have no problem with him either. If he ever was a front man dropped into a format, he's now inextricably intertwined with it, in a way that most presenters aren't. He can't interview to save his life. But we forgive him, because without him, there is no show.

a great job,but it seems to be fashionable to slag him off for some reason.Any show surviving as long as it has must be doing something right.

which smack a little of "music industry insiders leaping to colleague's defence" I would also like to defend Jools. This is despite the fact that I now find Later an incredibly tired format and his big band records are only occasionally better than average.

But...he always comes over as passionate about music (up there with Peel, Maconie etc), he does seem to have the respect of fellow musicians and his piano playing has graced many a fine record. His championing of boogie woogie/big band music was (and perhaps remains) deeply unfashionable but essential for rekindling interest in a great style of music (although I'd recommend going back to the original artists rather than Jools himself). Finally, he was an integral part of Squeeze...

... but can the annual Tom Jones appearances, please?

There are better presenters out there, yes - but Jools does it well, and I'd rather it's someone who knows their musical onions than any yoof presenter who's skinny & has fancy hair.

I'm not sure how much clout his name has in musical circles (Messrs. Hepworth & Ellen will know more) and how tempting it is for these bands to appear on his show.

Maybe 'evil' is too harsh a word, but he's really not very good at what he does in my opinion. Sure he's a nice bloke and all and nothing against him, but the interview sections on Later... often make me wince.

Still, as previously pointed out, Later... is pretty much the only terrestial program that showcases music in the way it does and the world's a better place for it. Later... and Jools come as a package; I'd much rather have both than neither.

I don't mind him as a person. But he ruins everything with that awful tinny piano playing.

= what Joe R plus Five-Centres said. I find him to be something of an irritant I put up with in order to watch some good music.

Than Reggie, Fern, Moyles or any of those twunts who present for Freshly Squeezed on C4. Didn't Mark E Smith have it written into the contract that he couldn't play piano with them?

Am I the only one who finds it abit embarrasing and pointless. They are never new clips last weeks was the same old footage of the 'mode on top of the pops. It just seems a bleak exercise in the ravages of time and oxidation of video tape. The response from the singer involved is never revealing but ever week out rolls the video monitor.

Also in the this day age why fly someone all the way from America to play one song why not make more available elsewhere.

his work with The Millionaires in the early 1980s

Although, he was one of the interviewers in the Hey Jude Hitmakers' Anthology documentary. One can only presume his questions were written for him and tightly scripted.

..honky-tonk piano, he plays R+B/ Jazz styled piano a-la Pete Johnson or Dr John, and he's very good at it.
Now Winnie Atwell, SHE was a honky-tonk pianist.

'ver Mode - great, Raphaeel Saadiq - possibly behind the times but I thought this was great discovery, Sonic Youth - great (if only for Teenage Riot), Priscilla Ahn - I went and got the album , she was so *ahem* entertaining...and I really liked Lily Allen as well (even if she had been to mic on stand for verse, jig about freestyle for chorus-type school)

Overall, a really good episode. Some years ago, Grant lee Buffalo did a version of Fuzzy on Later that far outstripped the studio version, and it was amazing...

Yes, Jools can't interview, but hey, I can't play piano...or interview, to be fair, but still...

5 mins 30 secs Jools unplugs Andy Summers. Seemed quite shocking at the time. Its de rigeur behaviour now of course but I can't recall any other telly presenters being quite so irreverent at the time.

Seemed quite shocking at the time. Its de rigeur behaviour now of course but I can't recall any other telly presenters being quite so irreverent back then.

and his records aren't much cop either, but he is one of the best live performers I have seen, or, at least, the R'n'B Orchestra are. He actually is a top notch piano player; clearly he has a genuine love for the music. Plus, there are at least 15 assorted players, all far too good to be add-ons in the world of once was and who they, or merely as anonymous session-men, only too grateful to have him support a band of that size. He has some of the cream of british and afro-caribbean brass players, all of whom get ample opportunity to bedazzle, no lime-lighting purely by Holland here. I have seen him twice in only a few months, initially going to the NIA a little reluctantly, my views overturned in minutes, with a 2nd helping in the intimacy of the Jam House in Brum.
(Blimey, must take a lie-down, my cred is taking a beating today, as this is penned, fresh from supporting Mick Hucknall on another strand.... Next, M People and the Lighthouse family???? Be worried, be very worried!)

I've been watching Later.. for years and I've always liked him. I have no problem at all with what is described as his "interview technique", given that it's not really an interview, he just has a bit of a chat with a couple of his guests. It often feels informal and I like that.

If I ever played on there (note: not likely to happen) then I would definatly want him on piano.

...is perpetually having his talentless showbiz pal Rowland Rivron on his shows peddling his abjectly risible and utterly pathetic line in oo-er missus innuendo and cack-handed pseudo-surrealism. It's those moments of smug, unfunny, in-jokey interaction between Jools and RivWrong that show both up to be the kind self-congratulatory gits you'd swiftly move away from at a party.

When the history of broadcasting in the late 20th-21st century is written (or podcasted, or beamed by telepathy or however it will be disseminated in far-flung time) the greatest mystery of all, our descendents will be thinking, was how on earth such an utterly talentless cretin like Rivron just kept getting series after series of unfunny Radio 2 shows commissioned, how he got on radio or TV at all and why Jools found him fun to be around.

I like him.

Surely not....?

The 'ugly friend' thing begins to make sense, but only if we assume that Rivron inhabits that same role for every commissioning editor who's ever inflicted his torrent of crapitude on the license-fee paying masses.... There can be no other explanation for his presence on the airwaves...

Being out of the country, I haven't had over exposure to Later so I do enjoy it when I do see. Also agree that he is fantastic live - saw him here in Singapore last year with the R&B orchestra and it was a thoroughly concert and he can really play. I have a dim distant memory of seeing him as the host of an Edinburgh festival "Best Of" show (must have been back in the late 80s) - remember him doing various classical pieces (Beethoven etc) as Boogie Woogie numbers - he was good.

And he did the piano on FYC "Good Thing" - what more do you want ?

with Later.It was Live Aid, offering to pledge donations if Paula Yates would give him a blow job. I am sure some will find this infantile - me i thought it was hilarious mainly because it was live TV and they couldnt edit it.
Jools may have a stilted interview technique but as others have said its the only programme of its type around at present. He also gets the thumbs up in my book for his piano on Squeeze's Slaughtered, gutted and heartbroken.

His book (it was a present) was a bit heavy on the name dropping but I still can't see why he attracts so much ire. We're not exactly, even given the plethora of TV channels, over blessed with proper musicians doing it live (as opposed to miming in videos) on TV. Why knock a programme that not only has that but occasionally has different performers interacting with each other (and I'd like to see more of this)?

Jools maybe can't interview and I often wish they'd cut this section and just put in more music but I'm not the only viewer and I guess others like it. And there is no doubting that he's a formidable and enthusiastic musician. Why knock that? We might get Moyles or George Young instead.

And to name-drop myself, Jools used to go to the same youth club as me and, later, the same pub - but we didn't interact.

Agree about Rivron though.

or him that chooses the acts, they cover a wide spectrum, he introduces them with enthusiasm, they play live music (mostly), he plays with them sympathetically and he holds the whole thing together in a rather endearingly shambolic way. Agreed, we could do without the embarrassingly unfunny Lenny and Rowland, although Al Murray was good on this years Hootenany. ("Hootenany!"). I've no doubt that in a parallel universe there'd be a queue of people slagging him off for being too slick, for not being a muso himself and for showing off by asking tough questions of rather boring and inarticulate musicians. I'm happy with the Jools we've got in this universe.

...yes, but can't we send Rivron to another one? Shove him into the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and send him hurtling into a black hole in search of Higgs' Boson. I'm sure he could find a crappy sub-innuendo to squeeze out of all that (as his atoms are being smashed at light speed into a welcoming vortex of nothingness).

Ahhhh. I feel better just thinking about it.

Last night on the television with Booker T......Jones. Played some lovely unobtrusive piano alongside Booker T's Leslie twisting, funkier than a mosquito's tweeter Green Onions.

Grizzly Bear - absolutely wonderful.

Taylor Swift - why is this sub Dawson's Creek anodyne shite on my television?

I even spent my own hard owned on going to some of his gigs. Then one day, as a token non sales person at Allied Dunbar's annual sales conference at the Wembley Conference Center, I returned to my seat after lunch hoping to catch a few zzz's before the closing prize giving and back slapping. But up goes the curtain and and the whole band plus Ruby Turner and Sam Brown start to strut their stuff.

If it's one thing sales guys know how to do, it's "have a good time". So rugs were cut, people got down, and many did their thing. It was dad dancing on an unimaginable scale. I'd seen nothing like it ever before, and thankfully never again since. The trouble is ever since, as soon as I see him, I'm back in the conference center, with nowhere to hide.

I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies .... I didn't have to go the next year .... and it was Quo...

I'm going to say: I like Jools. I've always enjoyed Later, and quite like a 'hootenany'. I was a huge fan of him and Paula on The Tube. I even like Rowland Rivron (anybody remember the first all night TV in London back in the late 80s, Night Network?). And most of all I love Jools' playing on Uncertain Smile, ranking it as one of my favourite instrumental passages anywhere.

I don't think I will like kebab flavoured Pot Noodles however.

what you could do to appease those people who don't like him is to remove him, the audience and Rowland Rivron and just have the bands. Maybe get in that Ellen and Hepworth. What are they doing these days?

Revive the Whistle Test!!!

...and I do seem to recall this 'Night Network' mentioned above - or at least some kind of late 80s late night awfulness involving Rivron. Spike Milligan was on being interviewed by the Talentless Oik one time and in the middle of it he (Spike) said, tellingly, 'Why am I here?' Even inspired madmen realise that they have a limit and that limit is winding up as a stooge to a useless, cretinous waste of space like Rivron. I recall thinking at that time, 'Jeez, is this what it's come to Spike? After years of comedy genius you've ended up as foil to a genuine goon - who isn't in any way funny or entertaining?' I imagine his desperate comment on air meant that he too realised that very thing...

Whether or not it's Jools' fault, Later has turned into a depressingly formulaic show guaranteed to exclude any artist who's bent on following their own muse come what may. A typical show will bring you some permutation of a much-revered veteran act from way back for Jools to fawn over and accompany, some feisty young guitar bands, a roots act (folk, reggae, blues) and some completely unknown artist who sounds remarkably like Duffy or James Blunt. There's a helluva lot of exciting young talent out there who will never get a shot at Later (and thus never get a shot at British TV) because they don't tick any of the right boxes. The prosecution rests.

somehow, this reply ended up in the wrong tab on my browser

Well, yes, Chris Evans (not the.... never mind) has a point, the show has got a bit formulaic BUT it's still the best live music show on TV, admittedly mostly for those of us of a Certain Age. Having a truly live bit followed up later in the week with a longer show was a great idea. And yer man Jools always comes across as the sort of bloke you might happily spend an hour or two with in the pub, and does know a lot more about music over a wide span than your average scrawny youth or toothsome Indygal that might otherwise present a show like it. And his book was a lot better than most written by a muso too.
Last time I watched a similar type of show on more than the odd occasion may well have been when good ol' Mark Radcliffe was at it with the White Room, remember that?

Whether you like him as a presenter - or not - and whether you like him as a pianist - or not - surely NO-ONE can endure Jools singing? Thankfully I've not seen him do it on 'Later...', but he does sing on his records. Of which I own none, for that very reason.

A National Treasure, that's wot Jools is.