There were some great shows on TV this year. But equally, there were a good many moments we'd just as soon forget. Here's a selection...

From Russell Brand to Great British Bake Off scandal - the worst TV moments of 2014

What makes a genuinely dreadful TV moment? Take a truly embarrassing scenario that any fool could see coming a mile off. Add a central character with that special quality known as “anti-charisma”.

Spoon on lashings of fake sentiment or synthetic excitement. Or just point the camera at Russell Brand or Keith Lemon.

See if you agree with our choices of 2014’s very worst telly moments…



10. The Apprentice’s “camera in a jumper” (BBC1)

Inexplicably deprived of the usual force nine blowhards and world-class idiots, The Apprentice was actually a bit boring this year. But the boys of “Team Summit” - as in “there’s summit seriously wrong with this lot” - took up the slack with their foray into wearable technology: a grey jumper with a hidden camera in it.

Suitable only for stalkers and 1970s television presenters, this ill-conceived item was a candidate for the worst Apprentice product ever and they didn’t sell a single one. “Even the shoplifters would bring it back,” grumped Sir Alan.

9. Tumble (BBC1)

A contender for the worst show of the year, this Saturday night catastrophe featured ten “celebrities” - one of Girls Aloud, one of TOWIE, H from Steps etc - staggering through gymnastic routines in the leftovers from the Strictly costume bin.

It was both baffling and boring. The BBC would have been better commissioning one of Alan Partridge’s ideas: Monkey Tennis, maybe, or Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank.

[Related: From Doctor Who to The Fall - what were the best TV shows of 2014?]

8. How I Met Your Mother delivers the worst series ending in history (Fox)

Spoiler alert: You know the mother that Ted Mosby has been droning on about for nine seasons? With loads of diversions and red herrings? And an infuriating mix of quality sitcom writing and pure, uncut schmaltz?

Turns out she was dead all along and he was just looking for the kids’ permission to try it on with their Aunt Robin. Fans went berserk. They should have called it How I Met Your Stepmother.

7. Russell Brand meets Evan Davies on Newsnight (BBC2)

The Comedy Store Che Guevara’s book-plugging chat with Paxman replacement Davies in October didn’t start badly at all, apart from the regulation thesaurus-gobbling moan about “pedagogic figures didactically shouting at us.”

But Brand was soon shouting his half-formed fantasy politics over every reasonable question, smugly goading his interviewer, waving away details, and glancing away for an encouraging laugh or cheer from an audience that wasn’t there. “I ain’t got time for a bloody graph, mate!” he blustered.

By the end you’d want to join both the Conservative Party and the Bilderberg Group.

6. Luis Suárez bites Giorgio Chiellini in the World Cup (Everywhere)

Uruguay’s serial chomper Suárez turned football into cannibal again this year, with an unprovoked shoulder-bite that left Italian hardman Chiellini parading his puncture wounds in the final Group D game.

Liverpool fans’ hearts sank as they foresaw a lengthy ban and the inevitable loss of their talismanic striker. But what did we expect when Uruguay were playing a four-four-chew formation?

5. The Taste (C4)

It was supposed to relaunch Brand Nigella after the unfortunate revelations that came out in her divorce from the odious Charles Saatchi. But this snooty foodie’s mix of The Voice and MasterChef - where the “Domestic Goddess”, professional batboy Anthony Bourdain and somebody called Ludo Lefebvre blind-tasted the contestants’ offerings - was a stilted and strained flop, offering you nobody to root for and no relatable food porn either.

Somewhere, in their vast mountain-top headquarters, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood clinked glasses and guffawed into the night.

4. Katie Hopkins plugs her fat documentary (ITV)

Foghorn bore and professional poor-people-hater Hopkins went on ITV’s This Morning to “reveal” how she put on three stone in three months in order to prove that eating lots makes you fat. Amazing!

Her tearful insight? “I hate fat people for making me do this.” Er, they didn’t, love. You did. The full horror, Katie Hopkins’ Journey to Fat and Back, is on TLC in January.



3. Helen Wood wins Big Brother (C5)

If you were still watching TV’s equivalent of a large space of wet ground where a horse used to be you’ll have encountered perhaps the show’s nastiest-ever contestant.

The former 'escort' best (well, exclusively) known for her “romps” with Wayne Rooney turned out to be an aggressive bully who “told it like it is”, i.e. a massive, massive pain.

The fact that she then went on to win it tells you all you need to know about a franchise so far past its best that it’s crying out for euthanasia.



2. Dapper Laughs: On The Pull (ITV2)

Hateful grope-merchant Dapper Laughs - AKA Daniel O’Reilly, a man so oily he could put OPEC out of business - was a colossal bad moment all on his own, with numbskull catchphrases (“Proper moist”, “She knows”) designed only to put women on the back foot.

His TV vehicle, in which he advised fellow insufferable bantersauruses how to get lucky with the ladies, was a car-crash which ITV2 quickly decided “not to recommission”. Within weeks, a shell-shocked O’Reilly was on Newsnight claiming pathetically that it was all satire, like bullies always do. We’ll probably never hear of him again.

1. Baked Alaska apocalypse on The Great British Bake-Off (BBC1)

Like all truly agonising TV moments, this one was kind of amazing too. Looking for somewhere to chill her ice cream, twinkly old Diana Bird “accidentally” removed bearded hipster Iain Watters’ Baked Alaska from the fridge - whereupon it melted LIKE HIS HOPES before the TV lights. Naturally he chucked it in the bin and stormed out of the Tent of Dreams.

Then, sifting 500g of coarse-gran insult into 1 litre of boiling injury, Iain then had to present his bin to Mary and Paul, who cooed over Diana’s Baked Alaska Swan as if it had Prince George himself sitting astride it.

Viewers were outraged at the show’s first visible case of nobbling; one changed Diana’s Wikipedia entry to describe her as an “ice cream melting supervillain”; and Diana left the show for mysterious health reasons.

If Bake Off is going to be like this every week, maybe it should be on the WWE Channel? “Let’s get ready to crumble!!”

What did we miss? Which TV shows made you throw up your hands in despair this year? Let us know in the Comments section!