Gideon Aryeequaye: Bigger & Better

Not long after the commencement of the latest season of Ghana’s Most Beautiful reality show on TV3, the noise level over the hosts started to increase.

Viewers were not too happy with the performance that Alexis Nstiakor and Ken Cabonu were putting up.

This is a show that has relied on strong hosts to run it. There have been some good ones, and there have been some average ones as well over the period of the seven seasons that the show had been running.

The producers, therefore, had thought they could get away with this one.

Unfortunately, the two could not bring the spark as many times as they tried. Alexis may have been a host of another programme on the same channel before, but Ghana’s Most Beautiful stage wasn’t her stage.

On his part, Ken Cabonu is an amazing singer, pianist and performer, someone I have known throughout my life. I was however surprised when I saw him on the stage as co-host of such a primetime show.

From the get-go, it was obvious it wasn’t going to go well (there are so many goes on here) and yet they kept at it.

Most certainly, the complaints of the viewers or the producers’ assessment of the situation determined that they were replaced. They would have debated who to replace them with.

In the end, they chose a former news presenter and host of the same show, Gideon Aryeequaye to take up the responsibility of presenting the show from where Alexis and Ken left off.

This gentleman had left the media with the aim of securing a parliamentary seat and also to delve into the murky world of politics. It wasn’t very certain when or if he was going to come back to the small screen again as a presenter.

But he did. He was Aryeequaye all right, but he looked bigger. That though did not take away from his mirth, smile and naturally good sense of humour. His presence was felt and whichever of the producers made the suggestion for his return was bang-on right!

The complexion of the programme has changed since Aryeequaye took over as he has brought his personality to bear on the show and his interaction with the contestants, audience as well as judges makes the show lively and easy on the eye.

I am not a fan of the show, but I like Gideon’s jolly-good-fellow nature and so I steal glances occasionally while I work on my laptop.