The Hell of It All (26 page)

Except they are in this case, obviously. It just doesn’t feel that way. The unreal whiff of reality TV has overwhelmed the senses, and now, if some booming voice-of-God suddenly announced the whole thing would be decided in a live election day sing-off, none could raise an eyebrow in wholly honest surprise.

I’ve seen some dumb things in my time. Take
Die Hard 4.0
. That’s astronomically dumb; like being smacked in the face with a mallet made of super-compressed dumb.

Merely watching it made me feel like a simpleton reading a Ladybird book on a dodgem. Then there’s
Bad Boys 2
, which I didn’t so much ‘watch’ as ‘catch glimpses of’ – it was showing on a plane while I kept intermittently nodding off: literally every time I opened my eyes a car was corkscrewing through the air in slow motion, surrounded by explosions, and I’d go back to sleep. It was dumb enough to sedate me.

But these are Hollywood epics. It took millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of gruelling labour to create such monuments of transcendent stupidity, such overwhelming pyramids of thick. The BBC, brilliantly, has managed to bring us something equally (and shamelessly) dumb at a fraction of the cost. You’d glow with national pride, if only they hadn’t done it by merely adapting a Japanese format.

I speak, dear reader, of
Hole in the Wall
, which is by far the stupidest gameshow I have ever seen. Just to be clear: in this context, ‘stupid’ isn’t necessarily an insult. It’s so openly, obviously and knowingly stupid, the whole thing is virtually immune to criticism. It’s the television equivalent of a gurgling jester repeatedly honking a horn.

It’s been described as ‘human Tetris’, which it is. Each week, two teams of celebrity contestants go head to head. One by one, the players stand on a pad in front of a pool while a wall moves slowly
toward them, ready to shovel them into the water. The wall has a hole in it. A person-shaped hole. The sort of hole Wile E. Coyote would leave in the side of a cliff when blasted through it by a cannon. The contestant has to contort themselves into the right position, like a key going through a lock, so the wall can pass them by without knocking them into the drink.

Just to make things stupider, the contestants are required to wear figure-hugging silver Lycra jumpsuits designed to be as humiliating as possible. One of the Hairy Bikers takes part this week; scarcely a moment goes by without someone cracking a joke about how big and wobbly he looks. All of them sport visibly crushed goolies or spectacular cameltoes.

If you’ve ever wanted to see former Blue Peter presenter Zoe Salmon lying on her back and hoisting her hips in the air, here’s your chance – although be warned: in a bid to ward off potential masturbators, Anton Du Beke’s standing in the background wearing a costume so tight his nuts are spread halfway across his pelvis, as though they’ve been buttered into position with an enormous pallet knife.

Anyway, that’s it. The first time you see the wall appearing and get a sense of how it works, I guarantee you’ll laugh out loud. Then it happens again. And again. And again. And then you realise there’s little or no variation: that’s all that happens, for the full halfhour. You’re watching celebrities being knocked into a pool, over and over, while the audience shrieks and applauds, and it all starts to resemble not just a dumb gameshow, but an almost nightmarishly dumb gameshow, the sort of gameshow you’d find in a dystopian science fiction film about an insane futuristic society. And you have to hold your head to quell the giddiness.

That’s how dumb it is.

But really, so what? We’ve been here before. It’s basically a Nintendo version of
It’s a Knockout
. And, what’s more, once you factor in the knowledge that the contestants are competing for charity, it looks less like the death of civilisation and more like a daft game at a village fete, writ large.

This is TV blowing off and giggling for 30 unrelenting minutes.

My only complaint is the variety of contestants: before the end of the series here’s hoping that we’ll get to see Simon Schama, Brian Sewell and Prince Philip adopting the position. And the Lycra.

How many more series, do you reckon, before
The X Factor
ditches this whole ‘singing’ thing completely and just concentrates on the storylines? I ask in the wake of the shock decision last week to punt Laura White off the stage, which – according to a bunch of squeaking voices in the tabloids – was the most unexpected thing to happen on live television since 9/11, and only marginally less upsetting. Knockerbrains. They protest too much. It wasn’t that big a surprise. It wasn’t like a hatch suddenly opened in the middle of her forehead and a mouse rode out on a motorbike. The public merely exercised its right to vote for performers it felt sorry for and, unfortunately for Laura White, the same tabloids had sealed her fate by claiming she was seeing an ‘
X Factor
executive’ and banging on and on about the age difference between them.

Incidentally, I’ve only just noticed I’m saying ‘Laura White’ instead of simply ‘Laura’. They’ve started using the contestants’ surnames this year, presumably because they’re in danger of running out of unique forenames. They must’ve had 28 Lauras by now, surely?

Actually, I’ve just looked it up and they haven’t. So why they’ve done it remains a mystery. Still, at least it means we get to enjoy Eoghan’s preposterous moniker in full. It’s Eoghan Quigg. Eoghan Quigg. That’s not a name, that’s a Countdown Conundrum. It looks like what happens when you hastily type a URL with your fingers over the wrong keys. If they still allowed text voting, he’d have been out weeks ago.

Or maybe not. Because the moment Eoghan bounds on stage, he triggers a dormant maternal instinct in millions of grandmas up and down the nation, enough to overcome any spelling barrier. Last week an elderly neighbour aahhed herself to death halfway through his performance of ‘Anytime You Need a Friend’. Because Eoghan’s got a baby face. And I mean that literally, as in someone’s
grafted a baby’s face on to the front of his head. Tiny little eyes and a ruby-red mouth. He’s like a cross between the Test Card clown and a crayon portrait of Jamie Oliver. Weird. Eerie. Like the spectral figure of an infant chimney sweep that suddenly appears in an upstairs window, gazing sadly at your back as you walk the grounds of a remote country mansion on a silent Christmas afternoon; alerted by an indefinable chill, you turn and, for the briefest moment, his wet, sorry eyes meet yours … and then he’s gone.

That’s Eoghan, the ghost of
X Factor
present. Even if he gets voted out, I’m frightened I’ll still spot him intermittently in the dead of night, popping up on screen during old black-and-white films, pleading through the glass like a kitten in a microwave. Swear to God, if he’s not gone by New Year’s Eve I’m having my television exorcised by a priest.

Daniel Evans is this year’s comedy entry, because he looks like Ricky Gervais and injects 400 tonnes of cheese into every word he sings. Simon and Louis are rude to his face every week, which is a bit rich since what he’s doing sums up
The X Factor
as a whole better than 200 hours of the histrionic wibbly-wobbly showboating most of the other contestants offer. He’s tacky and he sounds insincere. So what? The only difference between him and the average
X Factor
boot-camp joinee is volume. He can’t belt it out like the others can. Surely that’s a bonus in this case? At least he’s not a fucking ghost.

Anyway, either Alexandra or Diana (assuming she recovers) should win. The former because she’s got the best voice, the latter because she’s got the most interesting voice: sometimes she lets out curious little peeps and whistles when she sings, as though she’s accompanied by a baby bird randomly blowing air across the top of an empty milk bottle. Either that or there’s something seriously wrong with my television. We’ll know for sure when the priest gets here.

Must be nearly Christmas:
I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!
is back. How many times have we heard that wah-wah calypso
atrocity of a theme tune now, looping as a music bed while Ant and Dec read out the voting details? They’ve added an extra little saxophone bit to it this year, which, as it turned out, provided just enough novelty to distract me from the noose I’d started tying. A rare humanitarian gesture from ITV there.

I’m writing this on Tuesday morning. So far, Brian Paddick’s got his bum out and that’s about it. I don’t recall previous series being this light on incident, even at this early stage. They need more drink.

We want the Page Three girl to flip out and start knocking pots over. We want Esther in a fist fight. We want Kilroy-Silk to drop his guard and say something so offensively terrible he has to live in the jungle for ever rather than risk the flight home.

Still, what with reality show twists being what they are, let’s assume at least four of the celebrities will have killed and eaten each other by the time you read this, and another four will have been helicoptered in to take their place. I’m guessing Georgina Baillie, Ian Brown, Martin Daniels, and the plastinated body of Princess Margaret, on wheels.

I get £10 per correct answer, payable by YOU. There’ll be a knock at the door in the next few minutes. That’s me. Collecting. Get your wallet.

Aside from Kilroy, the rest of the camp is pretty nondescript. Carly Zucker freaks me out because her name sounds like a baby trying to say my name. Either Martina Navratilova or Joe Swash will win; the former because she’s strong-willed and funny, and the latter because he’s dopey and chuckly and looks like a half grown-up version of the sort of grinning freckled ginger boy you’d see painted on the front of a packet of cake mix circa 1978. He’s upholding what’s become a grand tradition for ex-Albert Square residents:
I’m
a Celebrity
is now the official decompression chamber for anyone leaving
EastEnders
. There’s probably a door somewhere round the back of the Queen Vic that magically deposits them in the jungle.

Being an emetophobe, I found the first of the signature ‘eating’ tasks difficult to watch, thanks to Swash’s wussy habit of violently retching each time he popped another insect in his mouth. It
sounded like his stomach was repeatedly yanking his throat in the belief it was some kind of escape rope, and frankly it was uncalled for.

The dishes served up were nowhere near as disgusting as the kangaroo anus chewed on by Matt Willis a few years ago. They still haven’t topped that, and on current form they’re unlikely to either. The tasks badly need an overhaul. They’re getting too complex and samey. Testicle-eating, ravine-crossing, swamp-dunking … we’ve seen it all before.

What’s required is a fresh blast of brutal simplicity. Here are some cheap and effective Bushtucker Trials they could do tomorrow, offered free of charge in the hope that Robert Kilroy-Silk has to tackle them on live television:

1. OK Robert, you have four minutes to jerk off five of our unit drivers. As you can see, they’re wearing blindfolds and earplugs; they think you’re Esther Rantzen. Try to imagine the sort of technique she’d apply, and mimic that.

2. OK Robert, you have 30 seconds to blind this kangaroo with a tent peg.

3. OK Robert, here’s a tab of breakdown-strength LSD. Put it on your tongue, and step into this cave full of glow-in-the-dark dolls’ heads. You’ve got six hours to find the one that looks like it’s crying.

4. OK Robert, here’s a loaf of bread. You’ve got 10 minutes to stick the whole thing up your backside. Tear it, moisten it, roll it – whatever helps. But the entire loaf has to go or it’s no stars for the camp.

Any of those would be a TV moment to cherish. Write them down, ITV. WRITE THEM DOWN.

Pity ITV. No really – drop to your knees and pity it. Last week the culture secretary Andy Burnham refused to accept a European Union directive that would have paved the way for product placement on British television. On hearing the news, ITV’s face fell. Its shares soon followed suit.

As advertising revenue continues to dwindle, money is leaking from ITV’s business model like blood from a harpooned steak. Cutbacks will be inevitable, and chances are we’ll see the results on screen. Forget dumbing-down; fear cheapening-up. Instead of a star-studded
Doctor Who
knock-off stuffed with pricey CGI dinosaurs, the next series of
Primeval
will be a reality show in which Patrick Kielty and Lembit Opik drive around Staines in an ice-cream van trying to catch dogs in a net.
Loose Women
will become
Loose Woman
, a daytime talk show in which a menopausal fishwife stands alone in a cupboard-sized studio, staring into a mirror and gossiping about herself. And in a bid to cut down on location fees, from now on the detectives in Lewis will be solving murders that have taken place in their imaginations; each episode will consist of nothing but footage of Lawrence Fox and Kevin Whately sitting in chairs screwing their eyes up and frowning a bit.

Boo hoo hoo. Bad news for telly.

On the face of it, Burnham’s reasons for rejecting product placement couldn’t be more sound. Trust in television is already at an all-time low following last year’s string of call-in scandals, when viewers were effectively pickpocketed by the box in the corner of their living room. Many people now stare at their TV set for hours not because they like the programmes it shows, but because they’re worried it might start nicking stuff while their back’s turned. And Burnham recognises that blurring the line between shows and ads won’t exactly help matters. ‘Product placement exacerbates this decline in trust and contaminates our programmes,’ he said. ‘As a viewer I don’t want to feel the script has been written by the commercial marketing director.’