A HOT flush came over Julian Clary last Saturday night.

Faced with This Morning’s Matt Johnson stomping around in skin-tight leopard-print leggings belting out Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? he panted breathlessly, paused and found the words he was after.

“I’m surprised this kind of thing is allowed on ITV at this time of night.”

Well, Julian, we are in silly season’s heartland.

They’ll show any old guff to fill the summer schedules, like Your Face Sounds Familiar, which has been ticking every box on the crackpot checklist for the past six weeks.

An endless parade of unconvincing pop-star impressions it’s been, by the same half-dozen celebrities.

Johnson’s Rod Stewart (More The Faeces than The Faces) was an accurate Limahl.

Bobby Davro’s Paul McCartney, complete with a Ricky Gervais’ Derek underbite, became an unwitting tribute to Auf Wiedersehen, Pet – a singing voice like Jimmy Nail, a spoken voice nailing Timothy Spall.

As for his Tammy Wynette, it could have been played by Sean Bean’s Accused transvestite Tracie without anyone noticing the swap.

Alexander Armstrong as Pavarotti couldn’t have been less authentically Italian if he’d come out juggling poppadoms and changed the lyrics to Nessun Korma.

And no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see Renato anywhere, to Armstrong’s Renée.

(Save Your Breath, My Darling, Save Your Breath.) It’s at the feet of Cheryl Fergison, however, where this show’s format properly breaks down.

No amount of prosthetics or vocal training can disguise the fact that she’s been EastEnders’ Heather Trott for the entire series.

Her Lulu was Hev doing Jimmy Krankie. And last Saturday she found herself having to be Madonna’s Material Girl, with this build-up: “For this performance I’ve got to find my inner vixen.”

Instead she found her inner hippo. Four blokes it took to carry her down the stairs, possibly followed by four months in traction.

Clary declared: “You look edible,”

(Madoner kebab?), adding: “It was a very interesting layered performance because we have you doing Madonna doing Marilyn Monroe and we ended up with Diana Dors.”

What we actually ended up with was Marjorie Dawes.

Call me cruel, but I’d redirect you if you do. It’s the show that’s really laughing and pointing at Fergison’s expense.

In any case, my guess would be Your Face Sounds Familiar won’t return after tomorrow night.

But if it does, some wholesale changes are required.

The judges, Clary and Emma Bunton, have been as diabolical as their casting.

The producers need to ditch the randomiser, which failed several times to give Davro what would have been TV greatness, Gangnam Style, before he was eliminated.

Instead, they should throw the celebs to the wolves. In other words, let the public decide on their weekly humiliation by choosing who they’ll impersonate.

They should also throw more celebrities into the mix and introduce a proper elimination element.

Yet, and this might incur the derision of fellow TV critics, there’s a decent show trying to burst out of Your Face Sounds Familiar’s shell.

Unlike anything the BBC has to offer outside the ballroom, there is a sense of a Saturday night TV event with this.

I can’t deny curiosity has kept me returning every week.

And having watched in advance what’s to come on the Beeb tomorrow night, I Love My Country, I’m missing the series already.

Please return next summer, Your Face. Silly season’s heartland needs you.

Spudulike awards

● Celebrity MasterChef’s return to form and to primetime.

● BBC1 and C4’s Sainsbury’s Anniversary Games, and BBC3 repeating the magical Olympic Opening Ceremony.

● Soap’s funniest character Steve McDonald’s impression of his dad Jim on Corrie, which is great, so it is.

● GMTV’s overlooked John Stapleton showing Matt Barbet and Aled Jones how to anchor breakfast TV.

● Some real gems on ITV’s You Saw Them Here First, which featured rare early clips of Daniel Craig in pants on a 1992 episode of Boon, Daniel Mays’ boyhood Jacko routine and Denise Van Outen, as one-half of a pop duo on Des O’Connor Tonight, apparently modelling herself on Private Helga Geerhart.

● The fitting tribute to a TV legend, Alan Whicker: Journey’s End, narrated by Stephen Fry: “Today we’re used to television being our window on the world. The travelogue has become a much-loved part of the TV schedule, but it wasn’t that way before Alan Whicker. He was the man who changed everything.”

Well said, ITV.

Spuduhate awards

● Daybreak’s idiots booking rent-a-gob Katie Hopkins for the 4,273rd time.

● This sloppy on-screen typo by This Morning’s summertime Bteam: “12.15pm: My youthful looks are ruining by life.” And indeed “my” life, I assume.

● The tragic shutdown of ESPN Classic, a TV sanctuary for men everywhere (thanks for the bluekeep- button memories).

● C5 reject Brian Dowling masquerading as a telly expert on This Morning with this assessment of Matt Johnson ahead of the Your Face Sounds Familiar final: “Of course he was guaranteed a place in the final anyway because no-one is eliminated,” three days after two contestants were eliminated in the semi-final. Polite memo to Brian: Try watching the telly you’re talking about if you’re going to pretend to be a telly expert, bozo. OK, so maybe it wasn’t THAT polite.