Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CBB ‘stars’ can learn from the Cbeebies generation
Fair play to Channel 4’s schedulers for the alternative to Celebrity Big Brother they offered last night.
Both shows featured a bunch of immature attention-seekers sharing living space with proper grown-ups.
On Channel 5, some of this latest batch of Z-list celebs were simply behaving like small children.
However, in C4’s case we were dealing with actual pre-schoolers.
Of the two programmes, I’m willing to bet Old People’s Home For 4 Year Olds stands the best chance of improving anyone’s life.
It was a six-week social experiment to see if the lives of the residents of what Michael, 87, called “God’s waiting rooms” can be improved by spending time with young kids. Last night we saw how well the two sides came together for the first few weeks.
Tonight, we will discover just how much of a difference the experiment made over the full project as the psychologists and physios – who closely monitored the process throughout – reveal their findings.
I’m guessing the news will be good. You only had to look at old Doubting Hamish, 89. One minute he was sitting alone, hiding behind a copy of the Guardian.
The next he was rolling around on the floor whipping the kids up into near hysteria during a game of Sleeping Lions.
To call this wonderful programme life-affirming would be to do it a disservice. It could and should be life-changing, too. When the results are so obvious, it makes you wonder how hard it would actually be to organise inter-generational sessions like this all over the country. That’s one for Theresa May. I have more pressing matters. Such as finding out exactly which comedy programme Hamish was watching during that scientific observation last night. The only clue he gave was: “If I’d been watching that on television I would have changed the channel.” Cheers Hamish. That’s really cut my shortlist down, pal. To around 40.
One minute Hamish was sitting alone, the next he was rolling around floor with the kids