TUESDAY night’s Naked Education, on Channel 4, introduced us to a poor, self-pitying creature called Kimi who was told there was only one possible way she could conquer her body-confidence issues.
“You must dance naked. For a primetime audience. Straight after the News.”
“Take my gear off? Are you mad, perverted, or what?” countered Kimi, dialling 999 as she did so.
Well, no, of course she didn’t. Kimi went along with every barmy part of this charade and danced a flailing fandango, at the end of the show, with several other fan-wafting crackpots whose CVs could’ve been enough to have them all sectioned.
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“I am a fat, femme, fierce queen.”
“I am a yoga teacher.”
“And I live with my three cats.”
Words which are usually enough to get any self-respecting man shinning down the nearest drainpipe.
Exhibitionist victims
This is the new normal, though, on Channel 4 where they’ve worked out Britain has a huge surplus of exhibitionist “victims” and have been exploiting them for all they’re worth ever since.
There’s now: Naked Attraction, with Anna Richardson, where they can date each other; Send Nudes: Body SOS, where they can decide if they need cosmetic surgery; and Naked Alone And Racing To Get Home, where the desperate, shrunken idiots can scamper across the Highlands trying to win five grand.
The trouble with this “‘clothes off” obsession, however, was that it ultimately led to Naked Education, another project presented by Anna Richardson that’s also, by some distance, the most twisted, disturbing and confused programme I’ve watched all year.
The centrepiece here was meant to be Kimi who, in lieu of a sane explanation, told us she arrived as a shy 12-year-old, from Brunei, “during the Spice Girls era of crop tops” and it’s left her with so many hang-ups about her body she has no other option than to cavort naked for us.
Kimi had her doubts during the process, naturally, but whenever she did, one of Anna’s Naked Brigade was on hand to smother them with some woke flannel about everyone being beautiful and “embracing what we are”, even if that meant making a massive arse of yourself on Channel 4. It’s an uncomfortable piece of coercion, but nothing like the most disturbing part of Naked Education.
That would have to be the show’s Body School, presided over by Dr Alex George, off Love Island, who’s decided the best way for a group of 14 to 17-year-old schoolchildren to conquer their own body image issues is by getting four adult males to strip off in a segment which played out like the cockpit scene from Airplane! “Has everyone watched porn?”
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“Who’s seen a naked man before?”
“Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”
It’s all the more discon-certing because one of the four blokes who stripped off, called Michael, could not have looked more like Keir Starmer if he had a red rosette dangling from his under-carriage.
Nothing you think could possibly be worth salvaging from this abomination.
Yet, sandwiched between all this weirdness, there was an interview with a nine-year-old quad amputee called Luke, who without any of the adults’ self-pity, tears or woke nonsense, calmly explained how he lost his limbs to septicemia, but had said, “goodbye to my beautiful arms, you served me well”, just before the surgeons began operating.
Low self-esteem
It was the most stirring, beautiful hymn to the triumph of the human spirit I’ve seen in a long time and Luke deserved his own show or, at the very least, a dignified silence immediately afterwards.
Instead, though, Anna Richardson crashed straight back in with the news: “Kimi suffers from low self-esteem and is seeking ways to boost her body confidence.”
The background noise you may also have heard, at this point?
That was, of course, the world’s smallest violin playing Linda Ronstadt’s Poor Poor Pitiful Me just for all the “victims” on Channel 4.
INCIDENTALLY, if it’s such a “positive”, “liberating”, “beautiful” and “empowering” thing to do, as they all claim, why do none of the Naked Education presenters ever join in and take off their clothes as well?
Show's a bad Joe-ke
TOWARDS the end of Late Night Lycett’s “finish me off” slot, on Friday, host Joe asked Greg James: “What’s the worst thing about working with Joe Lycett?”
A dangerously open-ended question.
I’d start, though, with the endless name-checks for Birmingham that are meant to burnish his flimsy man-of-the-people credentials but can’t disguise the snobbery which rears its ugly head every time he adopts a thick working-class accent to mock Brexiteers.
Then there’s the fact the show itself is a witless, foul-mouthed, ego-driven shambles because Joe’s a chat show host with almost no interest in anyone else and a comedian without any decent jokes – just a scatological obsession with his own bowel movements and a list of soft targets, like Donald Trump, Liz Truss and Christianity.
It also reeks of self-satisfaction even though Joe hasn’t enough basic stagecraft to mask his hypocrisy or cowardice, and began Friday’s episode by admitting: “Channel 4 asked me if I could do a topical gag about Easter.”
There was no mention of an equally timely one about Ramadan, of course – presumably because that would involve the sort of balls, imagination and effort he and the network clearly haven’t got.
So what’s the worst thing about working with Joe Lycett?
Absolutely everything.
TELLY quiz. Where might you have heard the following claim made, last week: “The best thing to do is close your eyes and just imagine it’s the arse end of a Royal Berkshire pig.”
A) Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars?
B) Britain: The Cameron Years?
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In shared names, what J is both a Middle Eastern country with the capital Amman and a former pseudonym of Katie Price?”
James Haskell: “Jerusalem.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “The Halle Orchestra was founded in which northern English city?”
Carla: “Belf . . . er, Cardiff.”
Ben Shephard: “In April 2005, Camilla Parker Bowles married which member of the Royal Family?”
Mel: “Prince William.”
Random TV irritations
PLANET EastEnders seriously holding a gender reveal party for pregnant 12-year-old Lily Branning.
Simply Red chuff pipe Mick Hucknall wearing sunglasses on The One Show. MasterChef failing to automatically eliminate any contestant who cries. Anyone who says “strong-willed” when they really mean total pain in the arse. And strong-willed actress Amanda Abbington playing The Weakest Link like her very life and career depended on it.
Which, in fairness, it probably did.
Great sporting insights
JURGEN KLOPP: “Why am I sitting here, the last man standing?”
Ian Wright: “Whether I believe it or not, the fact is I believe we can do it.”
Neil Mellor: “What a terrible start for Plymouth. It’s actually been a decent start for them as well.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
IT’S pointless to pretend Blue Lights is perfect.
It is, after all, a BBC One police drama, which may be the reason the storyline suddenly downs tools, during episode four and starts lecturing viewers about stop-and-search laws.
Fortunately, it has admirable powers of recovery as well as great actors, like Richard Dormer as Gerry Cliff, who are more than up to playing the show’s wonderful set of characters and, most importantly of all for a series set in Belfast, it’s also got a sense of humour.
I’m looking forward to a second series.
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the week. Late Night Lycett, Joe Lycett: “This is a show for everyone.” Tempting Fortune, Lani, below: “I’m the smartest in the whole camp.”
And Inside The [Pork Pie] Factory, Cherry Healey: “Why have we got this blob of fat hanging around my pastry?”
A question which completely ignores the fact Gregg Wallace has lost 4st.
CELEBRITY Hunted, James Acaster to Ed Gamble: “Where do you know that would welcome us with open arms?”
Any f***ing student union.
TV Gold
THE coffee shop scene (“Dingo’s dead?”) on BBC2’s Colin From Accounts.
Succession’s brilliant handling of the death of Logan Roy (Brian Cox, below).
Celebrity Hunted’s MVP and voice-of-the-viewer Ray Howard correctly identifying Ed Gamble and James Acaster as being: “About as funny as piles on a bike ride.”
And the sensational performance of Steven “Danny Cho” Yeun and throwaway one-liners (“Epstein-Barr, what an unfortunate name for a virus”) on Netflix’s masterpiece Beef. A comedy/drama that’s so far beyond the capabilities of British TV executives I ball-up like a hedgehog every time I think about the woke, copycat BBC/Channel 4 version that will inevitably now follow, starring the fat bloke off People Just Do Nothing.
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Takeaway’s Stephen Mulhern dressed as Jurassic Park’s Dr John Hammond and that toxic dinosaur Jeremy Corbyn. Sent in by Paul Burkett, of Bermondsey, South London.
Picture research: AMY READING
