Fake tans, big egos : just pawns in a silly TV game

I DON’T want to be the person who pours cold water over a new idea, but I’ve got a bucket of ice at my side as I write this column. Last week brought the news that the whole world is about to be graced with Glow: Glasgow’s own version of reality TV show The Only Way Is Essex, which will initially be broadcast on the internet rather than television.

The cast of 11 characters waiting to adorn our screens includes a former WAG (apparently that’s a job title now) Lauren McDonald, famous for having dated a Rangers player, and a Glasgow nightclub owner, famous for once dating Dayna from the explosive reality TV show The Scheme, which some dubbed “poverty porn” when it was screened in 2010.

With its starting 11, chosen from 3,000 applicants, Glow aims to showcase the glamour of Glasgow, with a full set of fake nails, fake tan and massive egos in tow. I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Up until now, it had been quite nice to know Scotland hadn’t succumbed to the modern magazine definition of glamour, which is really just easy, cheap dramatisation of willing participants who get used up and thrown away while the money rolls in for production companies and celeb mags. It’s a wonderful coincidence that one of the participants has a connection to The Scheme, because the two shows aren’t all that different. Successful reality TV finds extremes in our society and amplifies them tenfold, just for giggles. Anyone who remembers The Scheme will know what I’m talking about. The show followed the lives of some desperately poor residents in Kilmarnock housing estates – it featured families struggling to make ends meet, it featured drug users, and the children caught in the chaos who still dreamed of big things. In the days before Benefits Street and the slew of similar programmes that followed, The Scheme caused huge controversy.

It created a great deal of upset for those who’d taken part and felt humiliated in the aftermath, and the decision to make the show attracted plenty of criticism.

The characters in it were endlessly mocked, and how we all laughed at every Scottish stereotype we could think of wrapped up into one big stramash on our screens. Humour is the Scottish way but the truth is, it wasn’t funny.

It represented the most shameful things in our society: not the residents themselves, but the horrendous situations poverty had left them in, and, whether intended or not, it reinforced that Scottishness was largely defined by poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and hopelessness.

Of course, it doesn’t represent all that is Scottish, and neither will Glow.

Moving with the times, we’ve gone from one extreme to the other. It’s either desperation in the slums, or it’s a Glasgow “glamour” culture that most of us aren’t even aware of. Glow will attract less of the controversy that The Scheme did, but it should make us think about where we place our aspirations these days.

All the stuff that falls between the middle of these extremes – actual reality for the majority of people – isn’t sexy enough for the telly producers. But much like The Scheme, its characters will likely become pawns in someone else’s game, and they might find themselves worse off for it.

Reality television, for most, is shortlived, but the portrayal of its “stars” in the media sticks around, especially in the days of social media and Google.

But on the other hand, I’m really hoping that our Glow cast bring a good Glaswegian attitude to cheap glam culture and give it a showing up. Already on social media, people are having a laugh about it.

Comedian Janey Godley was quick to get in on the act, donning a blonde wig and posting her own spoof of the show on Twitter.

A meme even appeared, recasting the show’s participants as “Davey Dick (breeds pigeons)”, “Oor Trisha (cleans caravans)” and “Gigi Lamere (famous for two-for-wan brolly stand)”, among others.

The great thing – I hope – about Glasgow is that we just don’t take ourselves seriously enough for the kind of pretentious claptrap we’re served in the likes of Made In Chelsea. We don’t need to worry about others laughing at us because we’re the first to laugh at ourselves.

So come on Glasgow, let’s not get caught up in the mind-numbing celeb glamour culture. This city has plenty of real characters.

Let’s bring them out into the light and ditch the sunbeds.