It's amazing to think that this show was first broadcast back in November 2001, recorded at Television Centre in Shepherds Bush on a Thursday evening; and is shown on BBC1 at 10.35pm on a Friday night after the 10pm News.

The show is one hour in length.

The setup of the show is that you have the main presenter holding the thing together, you also have a live band that plays the intro music specially tailored to every guest that appears. This is the American styled guest show rather than the more traditional style of Wogan or Aspel, but let us take a step back and compare this show to that of Aspel or even Wogan and you will see one main difference in style.

The fact is this show is just an excuse to get big stars on the show to talk about their new product, or to put it another way, plug the thing they're in! This is a shame really as the whole mainstream chat show thing has turned that way now and you don't actually get any stars appearing on theses types of show unless they have something to sell.

The standard agenda of the show will be a story (usually personal) being told at the beginning by Ross, then introducing all his guests who are held in what is called the Green Room, basically a place with alcohol and food and a lot of people telling them how good they actually are, then the first guest comes out to be interviewed, they go and Ross talks and brings out his second guest. They go and then we have live music from a guest artist or group, and then the final guest followed by the guest artist or group playing their latest single before Ross signs off and the end credits appear.

The style of interviewing is quite in your face and at times crude, which it seems is just played for laughs, although thinking from the guests point of view it is obvious on some occasions that the guest certainly wasn't expecting Ross to ask how many times the actor has shagged his leading ladies, so for me this is crossing the line and not giving the guest, whether male or female, the respect and courtesy they deserve. A good example is when the cast of X-Men 3 appeared and Ross ended up playing with action figures from the movie in front of the guest, the guest who at the time was Famke Janssen just looked at him totally bemused in what he was doing, something he realised quite quickly when only a few of the audience were laughing at what he was doing.

Mix this with clips and on some occasion embarrassing photos of the guests as well as holding conversations with the other guests in the Green Room half way through an interview with a guest in front of him and you have what the BBC calls prime time entertainment

The calibre of guests that appear on the show are a very high standard and cannot be faulted as I wouldn't expect half of them to appear tom Richard and Judy or the Friday Night Project as a guest presenter, but appearing with Ross gives a certain amount of uncertainty that could happen as in some cases the stars history is delved into to find something that would make the audience laugh. I suspect bringing the now retired Micheal Parkinson on as a guest was intended to be the passing of the baton to Ross as the new char show king, but in my book this didn't quite work out that way as Parky will always be the king of chat shows.

Again if we compare this to Parkinson then the style interviewing is totally different. As I said above where as Ross is full on, where as Parky just asked a question that lasted about 15 seconds in length and then let the guest talk, in fact they didn't stop, with the assistance of a minimal amount of follow up questions the guest could easily be kept on the boil for a good 20 minutes and the amount of information and entertainment that was produced was phenomenal to say the least. With Ross the guest gets an 8 minute timeslot where most of the talking is done by Ross in an attempt to creep up to the star in question.

Also another factor has to be accounted for; there are no longer starts like John Wayne and Paul Newman around to be interviewed. There were actors with gravity who could pull in big box office receipts, today the films are produced differently and the star of the film is utilised far more than stars of forty years ago, and is used more as an advertising board rather than the part they play.

Having watched Ross for a number of years, it's now plainly obvious that the show is focussed completely on him; in fact he seems to get more airtime than most of his guests! This is one thing that puts me off from watching as I rarely tune in unless he has some 'out of this world guest' appearing that isn't actually related to a release of a new film, book or anything, and to be honest that is quite rare to see.

Although I have to say that the Four Poofs and a Piano quartet that accompanies Ross when introducing a guest do make that entrance a little different and in some cases quite unexpected, depending upon what the four men sing. The name of the group is spot on as that is what they are and that is what is played, no more and no less. Again I feel they deserve more time than what they actually receive, has anyone thought about them being interviewed by Ross at all? The whole show appears to be heavily scripted and the self-centred actions of Ross really brings the show down to a lower level that I think after recent events that people are just getting sick off.

Due to the recent stupidity of both Ross and cohort Russell Brand the show is off the air till the New Year, but the funny thing is that BBC1 have been replacing the timeslot by showing movies such as Speed or Armageddon and this is pulling in a higher audience figure than the chat show itself. Now if this doesn't send a message to the BBC then I don't know what will. Personally I feel that as Licence payer that we are not getting a fair return with Ross. The main one £6 million a year so for starters the man is totally overpaid and appears on the majority of BBC programming and appears to be spread thinner than butter on a piece of bread, something I hope the BBC will take into account when his contract expires.

Bottom line is that it is a different age that the chat show guests are participating in and the reason why this quite aggressive style of chat is used is simply at the end of day to make the product look good.