And you thought reality TV couldn’t sink any lower...

GIVE 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 primetime 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 the 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.

AFTER 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 are

lovely 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, irrespective of colour and creed? ‘This is one of the most eye-opening experiences 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.