Page 37Are you thinking
what she’s thinking?
moir
genuine hope of parenthood some
applicants will surely have, fills me
with sadness. And if they don’t have
that aspiration and just want to be on
TV? That’s unspeakable. What
happens after the baby is born? No
one has thought that far ahead.
However, now we must brace
ourselves for 15 hour-long episodes of
Singletown on ITV2, a new series in
which five couples split up for a
summer. The singletons (geddit?)
then relocate to London, where they
are paired up with their former school
sweethearts, exciting new dates,
invited to parties and generally subtly
encouraged to be as faithful as a jack
rabbit in the springtime.A
fTer facing many, many
‘dating dilemmas’ the
lovebirds will decide at the
end of the series whether
or not to go back to their partner?
God, will anyone still be watching
such a repugnant trial of love?
reality shows always involve an
element of manipulation and betrayal
between the crafty producers and
the human puppets selected for
our entertainment. But now, in the
race to capture audience attention
with ever more outrageous formats,
aren’t they dabbling too deeply in the
souls of innocents?
You might argue that all those who
take part in reality shows deserve
everything they get, but surely that
does not apply to the Himba, a semi
nomadic tribe who live on the plains
of Namibia.
They have been persuaded by
Channel 4 to take part in a reality
show about a British family spending
four weeks with them. Quite what
these blameless cattle herders have
done to deserve Scarlett Moffatt from
Gogglebox — plus her parents, sister
and gran — moving into their remote
village is anyone’s guess.
In The British Tribe Next Door, an
exact copy of the Moffatts’ Bishop
Auckland semi, complete with ready
meals, hair tongs and fake tan, will be
built to accommodate the family.
I have met the Moffatts, who arelovely people, even if they do believe
in aliens and have memorised special
code words to alert each other in case
of abduction.
Dad Mark and mum Betty even
store tins of food in the loft, while
Scarlett believes she knows the
secret to her success as a reality
television star.
‘It is because I have no common
sense. I just wasn’t born with any. I
missed that gene and I don’t think
before I speak,’ she says.
The poor Himba! In addition, the
Moffatts will have all mod cons,
including running water and
electricity, while the tribespeople will
continue to live in their cone shaped
structures made of twigs and count
the number of cattle they own as the
only sign of wealth.
While the series might turn out to
be a harmless and informative cultural
exchange (ahem), it shows every sign
of being an insensitive debacle.
It is hard to imagine how The British
Tribe Next Door cannot be tasteless,
potentially racist and exploitative,comparing the existence of one family
from County Durham against an
entire people who have survived
droughts, civil wars and colonisation
by the Germans.
Surely even Scarlett has grasped by
now that we are all people, irrespec-
tive of colour and creed? ‘This is
one of the most eye-opening experi-
ences of my life,’ she said.
Viewers have recently been shocked
by the Channel 4 documentary
series Jade: The reality Star Who
Changed Britain. Poor Jade Goody
was exploited by almost everyone in
her life, even as she was filmed
sucking on a drug lollipop as her life
slipped away.
Back then, Living TV had paid Jade
£100,000 to chronicle her battle with
cervical cancer, keeping the cameras
whirring against the tick tock of the
mortal clock, almost until the end.
It was a particularly low point in the
desensitised arena of reality TV.
I had hoped never to see anything
so exploitative again, but it looks like
there is little hope of that.The Summer
of love is a
little stormy
HONESTLY, can
anything on this year’s
Bake Off be quite as
marvellously
entertaining as the
saga of Paul
Hollywood being
dumped by his much
younger girlfriend,
Summer Monteys-
Fullam? After the
accusations and
pique, the arguments
over horse ownership and
the changed locks — not
to mention the lawyers —
the couple are battling to
win hearts and minds in
an Instagram war.
To negate the negativity
aroused by his bullying
behaviour towards his
former love — and with a
new Bake Off series about
to start — Hollywood has
taken to posting pictures
of himself with a litter of
cute Jack Russell puppies.
‘More time with the
puppies, I just can’t help
it,’ he chortled, givingthem all a cuddle. Look at
him! Perhaps we are
supposed to think he is a
nice fella after all?
Although most women
were warned off men who
tried to show them some
puppies at an early age.
Meanwhile, Summer is
posing for her followers in
an eye-popping figure-
hugging dress, looking
radiant. ‘Happy Saturday
everyone!’ she says.
Oh happy days indeed. In
the summer of Summer,
Paul is definitely
beginning to pall.And you
thought
reality TV^
couldn’t
sink any
lower...
Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019G
IVe me your tired, your
poor, your deluded and
your utterly desperate.
Autumn television schedules
are almost upon us — and just
when you thought reality shows could
sink no lower in terms of bad taste and
even worse subject matter, down, down,
down into the quagmire of crud we go.
The unborn, the broken-hearted, the
innocent tribespeople who have never
seen a television let alone a reality show
— plus Scarlett from Gogglebox roughing
it with the impoverished in Africa? This
year, nothing and no one is off limits.
Hard to believe I know, but a new show
called Parents To Be hopes to pair up
single women with sperm donor single men
who are all desperate to have babies.
The creation of life itself, bringing a new
human onto the planet as entertainment
and social experiment?
Complete with would-be parents who
are so stupid and self-absorbed that they
don’t mind exposing their quest to
become mothers and fathers on prime-
time TV?
It is hard to think of a more cynical and
squalid concept, although Love Island of
course will always rise to any challenge on
the sordid-o-meter.
Parents To Be will follow various
attempts to conceive, even if there’s no
romantic connection between the couples.
Not the actual deed you understand, but
the complicated process of procreation
for Project Baby when love and even sex
are off the menu.
Production company Naked Television
is soliciting for participants. ‘Are you
single but would like a baby within the
next 12 months for a new TV Show?’ they
chirpily ask.
everything about this, including theO OVER on ITVbe, ghastly Gemma
Collins continues to prove what a
deeply uninteresting and
unlovable person she is on Diva
Forever. Speaking with her mouth
full of burger and treating her
staff like dirt, she is the last
effluence still churning in The Only
Way Is Essex sewer. However, you
can’t say that absolutely nothing
good comes from reality shows.
Without Celebrity Big Brother we
never would have had George
Galloway in leotards pretending
to be a cat, one of the greatest
moments in TV history. Here are a
few of my other favourites...SEVEN DAYS WITH TAMARA
BRINGING a new understanding to
the term thick sliced, Bernie
Ecclestone’s daughter, one of the
richest women in the world,
struggles to grasp the differencebetween toast and bread. ‘Is it
called bread or toast when it’s not
toasted?’ she wonders. ‘So before
you toast it, toast is bread?’I’M A CELEBRITY
JOEY ESSEX says he is not a
confrontational person because
he doesn’t like to ‘confrontate’
people. He also reveals that he
doesn’t know how to blow his
nose and can only tell the time
when he is looking at a digital
watch and not ‘a watch with one
of them circle things’.THE JESSICA SIMPSON SHOW
THE dim-bulb pop star gets
confused when eating a brand of
tinned tuna called Chicken Of The
Sea. ‘Is this chicken, what I have,
or is this fish?’ she wonders. She
also thinks ‘buffalo wings’ come
from buffalo with wings.