Revival of a popular game show and a controversial host

He likes to be home every day at 5.15 to watch it, and he would like to appear on it.

Clarkson was famously sacked by the BBC from his position at the helm of the massively successful TV show Top Gear.

He had behaved appallingly and punched a producer Oisin Tymon over the lack of a hot meal at the end of a day filming.

In almost any other line of work Clarkson would have met the same fate, but without the wave of sympathy that there was for him.

While the BBC would have found it difficult not to remove Clarkson from Top Gear, given the increasing general awareness of issues such as bullying, the fact remained that he was a much loved presenter.

Top Gear has struggled ever since he left, and his colleagues quit in solidarity. Its audience figures are now less than half what they were then.

But Clarkson has always had, for all his macho humour and bluster, an awareness of his own absurdity. He spends almost as much time poking fun at himself as others.

Now he is back at the helm of another TV show that was once hugely popular with a popular host, Chris Tarrant, but that gradually faded: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Viewers loved it precisely because the participants are so ordinary — members of the public who are not polished or celebrities, but are suddenly thrown into a situation where they might, through a combination of luck and knowledge, pick their way to a million pounds.

Audiences found themselves rooting for people as they took serious financial risks to get another level up the prize chain.

It was a remarkably simple format for good television that is ripe for revival.

Tomorrow it comes back, hosted by a man whose career return to a mainstream TV channel was also almost inevitable.