Blokes

Whilst sitting pleasantly comatosed in front of the TV last night one of those shiny happy femininely positive fashion shows came on and neither Karen nor I had the gumption or the energy to reach for the remote. This particular one was called Twiggy’s Frock Swap and was basically just a televised version of that newest of trends to hit the UK’s Bingo halls and beauty parlours... the clothes swap party.

Premise: get a group of glamorous ladies of assorted ages and sizes together in a warehouse with cartloads of their old clothes and cast-offs and let them swap their clothes in a vaguely entertaining fashion conscious eco-friendly way. The clarion calls runs along the lines of: ladies of Britain recycle your clothes don’t bin them (or send them to starving children in Africa) – it’ll save you money if not wardrobe space!

It was slightly more interesting than the cushion whose soft woolly surface my face was half submerged into.

But while I listened to the glorious voice of Lauren Laverne wash over me like a warm Geordie breeze I had the thought: why don’t they make programmes like this for men?

And the answer hit me almost straight away.

Picture the scene: Gok Wan cakewalks around a group of Weatherspoon’s throw-outs in his high heeled diamante winkle pickers.

“C’mon guys let’s get swapping those g-strings and string vests! Woohoo!”

One shambolic hoody steps forward offering up a pair of torn and faded baggy-arsed Levi’s. “Er. Yeah. I got these to swap.”

Some nerdy looking sci-fi junkie steps hesitantly forward. “Yeah. Cool. Er... I’ll give you a couple of Playstation games for them if you want... Grand Theft Auto and Halo...” He shrugs noncommittally.

Hoody, nodding Noel Gallagher style: “Yeah nice one. Done mate.”

Goods are exchanged. Silence reigns. The men nod mutely among themselves and fidget uncomfortably before the camera.

In the background Gok tears out his hair in long thin oily strips and collapses sobbing to the floor – obviously overcome with the intensely broiling testosterone. The producers meanwhile tear up the series' contract and head out to the pub.

Blokes, you see, we’d just be too damned sensible to be entertaining.

Stick Witch

Feeling in a malevolent mood I deliberately watched Gillian McKeith’s new show – Three Fat Brides One Thin Dress – yesterday evening with the sole intention of taking it to task on my blog today.

Am I a sad git or what?

Anyway, as always Ms McKeith didn’t disappoint…

The thing with Gillian is… she might do health food. She might do dieting. She might do nutrition. But she sure as hell doesn’t do people. Not unless it’s to do over somebody’s already crumbling self-esteem that is.

Gillian’s emotional blitzkrieg approach gets my goat right on it’s belligerently hairy nelly. I honestly think she is rude, nasty and bitchy for the sheer hell of it. “Being cruel to be kind” is really no kind of excuse at all. Not when you are attacking someone on such a personal level in front of the entire nation. There is no need for it. It is unjustifiable. I bet Gok Wan pulls out his carefully dyed two-tone hair in absolute horror at Gillian’s Cruella antics.

I know that at the end of the day these women have agreed to appear on the programme but I’m sure a lot of their willingness to be televised is down to transient gratitude and inordinate relief when, at the end of Gillian’s 8-week regime, they find they are at last 2 stone and (more importantly) one sabre-toothed Scottish battleaxe lighter. When Gillian disappears back up her drainpipe they must all cheer and break out the stotty cakes in celebration. Awful woman!

She dares to tell them off for not loving themselves enough right after she’s landed the mother of all guilt trips upon them! I need her to see the full horror of what she’s doing to herself, says Gillian, as she presents one of the women with a coffin freshly engraved with her name. Into this she pours trifles, take-away curries and a host of other victual-based crimes that the poor woman has committed. How classy. Next she’s presenting the terrified women with beautifully wrapped mock wedding presents which, when opened, turn out to be diseased livers and clotted up hearts, etc… manky offal fresh from the butcher’s shop. Cue much heaving and gagging. But it’s all for their own good of course…

Surely there are better ways of getting someone to change their way of life than by scaring them and brow beating them into it? Gillian plainly sees herself as a God and these poor overweight women as her unworthy acolytes with which she may do anything in order to achieve the end result. What I see is a megalomaniacal dictator stomping over everybody’s feelings just to score points and ensure that her programme achieves its only selling point…

Weight loss.

Pure and simple.

It’s not about the women accepting themselves or undergoing counselling to deal with the issues that have possibly lead to their unhealthy eating. The goal is weight loss. Nothing more nothing less. Oh look. They’ve all lost 5 inches from their waists in a mere 8 weeks. Job done. Mission achieved. And off Gillian trots like one of those freaky automatons from Bladerunner… onto the next fat target that needs taking down a peg or two as well as a dress size.

What annoys me most about Gillian’s programmes is that the over weight people featured on them stand no chance whatsoever. They’re set up to look fat, gormless, contemptible and infantile. Last night saw three overweight brides-in-waiting struggling to get into wedding dresses that were deliberately chosen to be too small for them. Of course they looked awful. They looked dreadful and were naturally mortified. But if I tried to get into an outfit three sizes too small for me I’d look pretty horrible too! As my wife, Karen, pointed out: if these women had been put into dresses that actually fitted them every one of them would have looked gorgeous. But that, of course, is the Gok Wan approach.

Unfortunately this was Gillian’s show. So instead of beautiful Buddha we got bombastic Beelzebub.

One last thing. Gillian smugly pointed out that obese people live 9 years less than their thinner counterparts. Hmm. But if I have to look like Gillian McKeith to gain an extra 9 years on my lifespan then I’m breaking open the lardy cakes right now…

What’s the difference between Gillian McKeith and a walking corpse?

No. I couldn’t think of anything either.

How To Look Good Naked

What the hell is going on with Channel 4?

Tuesday night’s have suddenly become bap-night. I actually lost count of the number of "hooters" (Gok’s terminology) that filled my TV screen with their curvy hypnotic looks on this week’s episode of How To Look Good Naked.

Gok Wan (his REAL name) is taking the pre 9 O’clock watershed by the scruff of its neck, ripping away its halter neck and exposing it’s sumptuously bouncing breasts to the whole wide world. What a guy!

In fact forget the 9 O’clock watershed: Tuesday nights barely tip over into 8 pm and Gok is bopping us with big boobs a-plenty... all in the name of fashion and reality TV you understand.

Despite the increased number of male viewers that the show is undoubtedly acquiring the whole premise is oddly un-titillating (no pun intended). There’s nothing salacious or unsavoury about Gok’s agenda. He seems a genuinely warm, caring, funny, intelligent guy and scores a major hit on the old gaydar. Maybe that’s part and parcel of how he gets away with it? From a female point of view he is completely unthreatening – his attentions are purely aesthetic as opposed to sexual – and ordinary women are falling all over themselves to celebrate their baptitiousness and get their jugs out on national TV. It’s bloody marvellous.

The best thing about Gok’s school of thought is that no surgery is needed or even endorsed. There are no fantastically expensive hairdos or make-up jobs. What Gok seems to genuinely want to celebrate is the natural beauty inherent in us all. Gok’s major gift is his innate ability to instil confidence in people – even those shy, wilting, wall-flowers among us who can barely look ourselves in the eye let alone anyone else. It’s a refreshingly compassionate feel-good approach and I have to confess to being a big Gok fan.

Gok’s a great guy and will undoubtedly move onto to bigger things.

Meanwhile I have sent my CV to Channel 4. I’m a hands-on kind of guy and I’m ready to take over the post of show compere as soon as he leaves...