The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Googlebox These celebrities don’t have to dance on ice or learn to ski jump; they have to join the police in fighting crime, tackling criminals and helping people – and it looks like this job worth doing may actually be one they do well...
Police programmes have the same effect on me as Hobnobs: I can’t get enough, often they form the basis of my evening tellybox viewing, and I’ve been known in the past to cancel planned social activities so I can stay in with them. Both are weird obsessions but police programmes relax me, as I often get frustrated by the smallest of injustices.
My mum has video evidence of me in one of my first school plays, moving my classmates about the stage and into their “correct” positions because I couldn’t cope knowing this injustice was happening and nobody was doing anything about it. It’s a trait that hasn’t always served me well but I think it’s why I find police reality shows so appealing – seeing people getting “telt” for their misdemeanors.
So when I learned of a new tellybox show that combines my love of police shows and my fascination with the world of celebrity, I was intrigued.
Channel 4’s new kid on the block, Famous and Fighting Crime, does exactly what it says on the tin. A handful of celebrities become voluntary special constables and are thrown straight into a 10-hour shift tackling the most robust of criminals to venture the streets of Cambridge and Peterborough.
The first series follows five celebrities: Rod Stewart’s wife Penny Lancaster, comedian Marcus Brigstocke, reality TV star and McVities heir Jamie Laing, TV presenter Katie Piper, and Sandi from the “other” Gogglebox.
Despite the Famous Five being out of their comfort zone, the programme is well within mine. Initially I held some reservations at the thought of Jamie Laing being on it, particularly when he admitted at the start he’d be getting his training at the one station he’d ever been held in following an arrest.
These reservations were further supported when we learned the celebrities would be going out into the field over payday weekend – one of the police force’s busiest of the month.
“What’s payday weekend, is it like a bank holiday?” came the response from Jamie, who has undoubtedly never had to work a proper job in his entire life.
But my qualms were quickly eased when I realised these weren’t just any folk the producers had chosen to fight Cambridgeshire’s roughest and toughest. There actually seemed to be logic behind the madness.
Jamie was able to outrun his fellow police officers and wrestle a thug to the ground without a second thought. Marcus Brigstocke was faced with caring for a severely drunken party-goer, following his tumultuous teenage years wrestling with an alcohol addiction.
Similarly, Katie Piper, a victim of a widely-reported acid attack, as well as sexual abuse and assault, donned the vest of the people who saved her and took to the streets to face members of a society which had brought so much fear and pain to her life. This is a genuine look into Britain’s frontline policing, through the eyes of people we’ve come to know from their various modes of tellyboxing. An excellent premise.