This promised the naked truth, all we got were bare bottoms
When a failed actor called Roy Plomley dreamt up a radio show about celebrity castaways, early in World War II, the concept was so clean and simple that it has never been off the air since.
Seventy-five years on, guests are still choosing the eight records, the book and the luxury they couldn’t live without, on Desert Island Discs.
When Channel 4 attempted the same minimalist trick, all they could manage was a one-off documentary that ran out of steam after half an hour. Life Stripped Bare (C4) was supposed to be a show about getting rid of all the extraneous possessions and needless tat in our lives, but it failed because it was simply too cluttered.
Messy, unfocused and puerile, a programme which should have been thought-provoking frequently made no sense.
The six unmarried participants, in their late 20s and early 30s, renounced all their possessions, including their clothes, and saw them locked into a storage container on the first day. They could reclaim one item each day: the question was, what?
By making guests imagine life alone and fighting for survival, Desert Island Discs encourages them to bare their souls. This show was more interested in making people bare their bottoms.
everyone made a great palaver of cupping their hands over their bits, but it didn’t take long for an exhibitionist streak to reveal itself.
Fashion designer helen, 29, sat starkers on her windowsill in east London and watched the traffic go by. Then she plundered a neighbour’s vegetable patch for rhubarb leaves, which she wore like eve in the garden of eden while she slept in the bath. none of that seemed remotely logical.
housemates Tom, Andrew and Georgia scampered nude through the streets of Cardiff with their arms in the air. Meanwhile, in Manchester, workmates Jon and Laura enjoyed being naked together so much that they didn’t go to collect their first items — two pairs of onesies — till the very end of the day.
We were never quite sure about Jon and Laura. They worked together, lived together and happily shared a bed. But when they were first naked they hid in separate rooms, and the vague voiceover referred to them only as ‘friends’. Were they strictly platonic, ex-lovers, or an on-off couple? Perhaps they preferred the allpurpose phrase beloved of Facebook users: ‘It’s complicated.’
You might think it rude to wonder. But this programme promised to reveal the raw truth, using the brutal psychological tool of deprivation. If, after an hour and 20 minutes, it hadn’t even clarified whether Jon and Laura were an item, we plainly had learned nothing. Within a few days, most of the participants had reclaimed their smartphones, and were living pretty much as they always did — texting friends, sending tweets, surfing the web... even if they were doing it without petty privileges like deodorant or toothpaste. On social media, after all, no one can tell if you’ve got bad breath.
The new inmates at the Albany County cells in new York, in Life Inside Jail: Hell On Earth (ITV), had exchanged all their possessions for orange jumpsuits, and the absence of toiletries was the least of their problems.
Much worse was the food — a ladleful of macaroni cheese, a scoop of coleslaw and a fistful of stale crisps, served on a battered plastic tray. The jail had a budget of less than $3 (about £2) a day to cover three meals for each inmate. Looking at that slop, you had to wonder where the rest of the money had gone.
‘Junk food,’ confided one convict, ‘that’s how you survive in here.’ They bought noodles, peanut butter and Pop Tarts from the commissary or jail shop.
The documentary focused on two prisoners: Shea, who was bereft without her three-year-old daughter, and Jarquell, who was accused of murder.
his denials convinced nobody, certainly not the judge who sentenced him to 25 years.
‘he’s going on to the next adventure in his unfortunate life,’ gloated a sadistic, smug warder. ‘Maybe he’ll die there.’
For the next instalment of this grimly gripping show, the film crew should focus on the guards.