Bling and you’ll miss it

THIS isn’t commonly known, but when it comes to commissioning new programmes, Channel 4 takes a slightly different approach from other TV channels. Before giving any proposal the go-ahead, it has to run it by one of its most important departments – namely, the Department For Making TV Critic Mike Ward Feel As Though He’s Beamed Down From A Different Planet.

For a programme to proceed any further, this department must award it at least six points out of 10 in that respect. Not that this is as hard as it sounds. Plenty of Channel 4’s score considerably higher.

One such example is DIAMOND DEALERS AND COCKNEY GEEZERS (10pm). Narrated by former Love Island winner Dani Dyer (that alone is worth a good five), it’s a one-off documentary about an independent East London jewellers called Trotters (yes, really) and the gift-of-the-gab geezers who run it, 26-year-old owner Judd and his old schoolmates, Alex and Kallum.

“We’re almost like the people’s jeweller,” is how Alex describes the business. “We get a lot more working-class than posh people.”

Radley, a London brickie, pops in to buy himself a kettle. Not the sort you boil water in, which is just as well as they don’t sell those, but the kind of kettle that’s Cockney rhyming slang for “watch”.

His budget is strictly limited, mind. “I’ve got £12,000,” he announces.

We also meet Zara, who’s travelled down especially from Bradford to buy some bling for her little boy’s second birthday. Zara’s budget is a mere four figures, but Judd seems happy just to secure her repeat business.

“That baby’s only going to grow…” he points out, once Zara’s paid up and left.

In her voiceover, Dani tells us that 80 per cent of Trotters’ sales “now come from their gran”, which I must say surprises me.

So much so, in fact, that I rewind my preview to replay that line. Turns out what she’s actually said is “…from the ’gram”, referring to the name some people like to give to Instagram.

By “some”, of course, I mean people who’d like me to slap them.

Also tonight, episode two of COLD FEET (ITV, 9pm) opens with Adam having a lovely dream, in which life for him, Karen and their respective kids, now all living under the same roof, is a picture of pure domestic bliss.

He wakes to be bluntly reminded it’s anything but.And to make matters even more challenging, Karen’s mother Heather (Gemma Jones) is about to show up.

Elsewhere, in HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT WELL (C4, 8pm), you can hear about the potential pound-shifting benefits of knitting. You really can.