Highs and lows with Ramsay, then another BIG letdown

For the second time in the space of a week I felt a little let down by the misleading title of an ITV documentary. Last Thursday, we were offered Gordon Ramsay On Cocaine, even though he clearly wasn’t. Then, last night, it quickly became obvious almost half the obese Brits featured in The 18-30 Stone Holiday were OVER 30 stone. Okay, so I wasn’t really expecting Gordon to be off his nut on Colombian marching powder.

However, in the case of the 18-30 documentary I do worry about the relaxed editorial standards of a factual department that appears unwilling to let facts get in the way of a catchy programme title. There were a few other puzzling things about this new hotel in the Bahamas which caters for the plussize holidaymaker. For somewhere claiming to have been “purpose-built”, it didn’t half look a bit old and tired. And for somewhere offering a bespoke experience, it didn’t appear to be that well-staffed. Still, I expect this documentary will have got people talking. And I expect that once they started talking, those people will have been neatly divided into two camps. There will be those who think we should make special allowances for obese people who have body confidence issues. And there will be those who think this kind of pandering and pampering does the health and fitness of these people no good whatsoever in the long run. I’m afraid I had no strong feelings either way. I was too busy compiling a list of possibles for the inevitable celebrity version of this show.