Tan fanatics get unvarnished truth
REMEMBER the televised guilty pleasure and de-Tangoing marathon that was Snog, Marry Or Avoid?
Yes you do – it was a make-under show which took Bisto-skinned Jodie Marsh wannabes and tried to make them renounce their streakyteaky, clumpy-lashed, trout-pouting ways.
You know the type – or at least you will if you’ve spent so much as one evening in provincial night clubs around this country on a Saturday night – lasses wearing belts for skirts and with more slap on their cheeks than a drunken Oliver Reed would get stumbling naked through a nunnery.
Well, Snog, Marry or Avoid returned to our screens last week – sort of. Now called 100% Hotter – which made it sound like a manufacturer’s warning on the label for Bacofoil jogging trousers – it was actually a carbon copy rip-off of the old appearance shaming favourite which ran on BBC Three from 2008 – 2013.
Broadcast this time on 5star (the channel, not the band) it dragged in from the streets some of the nation’s more aesthetically unfortunate, laughed in their faces and told them they looked like a big bowl of wrong.
“Oh God, those extensions... I’ve never been so offended,” said hair designer and de-cosmeticator Daniel K Palmer as he dry heaved into his Prada man bag at the sight of a heavily pierced Goth girl called Maisie.
Equal parts Fabio and someone who’d have been a shoo-in for the role of “German terrorist #4” in the first Die Hard film, Daniel is a man who takes his facial topiary very seriously. Sporting a beard so finely sculptured as to resemble the chin strap of an otherwise invisible bike helmet, he had the sour look of a chap who’d mislaid the toothpaste and accidentally brushed with haemorrhoid cream.
But, before breaking out the cleanser and cotton balls in preparation for giving each “contestant” a thorough scrub down – although you got the feeling Daniel would have rather used a bucket of Swarfega and a hazmat suit – each make-up obsessive was placed at the mercy of the public.
Or, as was the case with Bristolian fake tan fanatic Jade, packed off to the nearest branch of B&Q to stand next to the Cuprinol concession and have shoppers compare her skin tone to the shades of fence preserver on sale.
Yup, that’s the level of spite this show covets, and it’s often nasty and uncomfortable to watch.
To try to homogenise the quirks and peculiarities that make us a population of individuals and not some bland amorphous mass, just to comply with the latest fashion mag aesthetic, is out of order. In fact, it’s downright ugly.
SO long then Peaky Blinders (BBC2), season three of the Brummie period crime drama having bowed out last week with a corking finale.
Paddy Considine’s paedo priest was offed, a train was blown up (leaving the Shelbys with yet more innocent blood on their hands) and Tom Hardy’s beard intimidated everyone else off screen.
Hardy’s hulking Jewish crime boss Alfie Solomons ended up stealing the entire series with only three all-too-brief appearances. Please BBC, can we have an Alfie-related spin-off some time soon?