Ally Ross: Ta-ra, chuck

As I’ve hinted on a couple of occasions, Ally Ross, the Sun’s TV critic, has tired of the gig, and now the Guardian confirms.

I’ve often wondered, as I try to source a few of his more elliptical news-driven similes, to what extent he writes over the heads of his core target audience: so many columnists must first please their editor – in the Sun’s case, a highly educated, multi-lingual middle-class girl who seeks séances at Butlin's for audience-soul infusion – and the readers must try to keep up. Ross is perversely anti-tabloid in his reflexes, contemptuous of bimbos and himbos and barely tolerant of soaps and reality TV: you won’t find his sort writing for Inside Soap, that’s for sure. Clever people have to keep interested in their job, even on a tab; one can only hope that the interest of the punters is incidentally caught in sufficient numbers.

I suspect that if press awards were doled out by reader panels, Ross wouldn’t figure even in a commendation list: his is a far too twisted and, er, ratiocinative mind – a word that could lose you an election in a moment. I suppose in my own funny way I’m paying him a compliment.