Dating Naked is a needy Love Island with knobs on – how the hell did we go from Blind Date to this abomination?
IT’S not the fact all of the contestants are naked and unpixelated on television’s latest dating show abomination which gets me.
Nor is it the way the blokes keep doing press-ups, inside their starkers compound, that has me wanting to lob bricks at my television.
It’s the very earnest but misleading health and safety disclaimer which pops up at the end of every episode that really pushes me over the edge.
“Strict hygiene and dignity protocols were in place during filming.”
DIGNITY?
In place where? The sixth circle of hell?
’Cos those protocols sure as hell weren’t in place on the seventh, where you’ll find Dating Naked, a series hosted by Rylan Clark and available from today on the Paramount+ subscription channel, the only people on Earth who watched Channel 4’s Naked Attraction and thought: “All that’s wrong with the show is the studio setting. Ship these exhibitionist morons out to Colombia and we’ve got ourselves a hit.”
So they did, and then let the Love Island blueprint take over in all but one very crucial respect.
The big issue here being the contestants, who are suitably cocksure but all seem to have ended up on entirely the wrong show, especially Romeo, who says: “I love a girl who dresses well.”
Slim pickings, then, with this bunch, who also fall very awkwardly between two dating show stools.
For they’re certainly not odd-looking enough to appear on Naked Attraction, but nor are most of them quite fit enough for Love Island, which adds a layer of desperation to proceedings so intense you can almost smell the neediness coming off some of the “daters.”
Indeed, in all my time watching dating shows, I don’t think I’ve ever seen contestants set about each other with such longing and enthusiasm.
Hygiene and dignity be damned, the first episode is barely under way before Rico’s all over Lauren by the pool and voices from the gazebo are heard exclaiming: “Assume the position!”
“Is he . . . ?”
“Faaar-kin’ ’ell.”
“He’s rock solid.”
I’ll have to take their word for it on that one, as there are some horrors even Paramount deems unsuitable for broadcast.
It seems like the right moment, though, to lower expectations among Britain’s “nulling-the-void” community who may tune into Dating Naked expecting it to offer an erotic experience.
It doesn’t.
Instead, they will discover a show that, if it’s got any redeeming qualities at all, has the gift of comedy, largely because some gremlin in the technical department has fixed the diary room cameras at crotch level, so it looks like the contestants are talking out of something other than their mouths.
Dating Naked does raise other things, however. Serious questions, for starters, ranging from the comparatively trivial — why have the bedrooms got sock drawers and clothes cupboards? — to the slightly more serious ones, like how the hell did we go from Blind Date contestants asking each other “If you were a crisp flavour, what sort would you be?” to Rico’s rod arousal in under 40 years?
Worst television shows
Was it all the fault of ITV allowing unmarried couples on Play Your Cards Right?
Or was this show inevitable from the moment Beat The Clock contestants first tried keeping a balloon in the air on Brucie’s Sunday Night At The London Palladium?
Frankly, I’ve no idea, but I cannot put the problem in any starker terms than this: Rylan is far too good for Dating Naked.
Rylan, in fact, as Rob Rinder tried to tell him on their recent BBC Grand Tour, has a very sharp brain and a natural gift for television that he chooses to hide behind an affected idiocy and some of the worst television shows ever made.
For his own sake and that of the viewers, Rylan needs to stop playing the fool at some point soon, or he’ll find himself trapped and there will only ever be one response to contestant Chrislove’s dilemma.
“Every time I see Rylan, I don’t know whether it’s going to be good or not.”
In the most hygienic and dignified manner as protocols will allow, Chrislove, it’s not.
Paddy’s tragic history
IT’S a fair enough question, from BBC1. Who Do You Think You Are? Paddy McGuinness.
The man who helped drive a much-loved TV institution into the ground?
One of the last-ever Top Gear presenters? Or just a former comedian whose self-confidence remains so high he actually claims “I get my quick-wittedness from Mum,” even though he does say so himself?
Definitive answers are thin on the ground here, I’m afraid.
Amid all the usual poverty porn, one thing does slowly occur to me, though.
At the relatively modest age of 51, Paddy is the oldest celebrity on this new series of Who Do You Think You Are? which also features Olly Murs, Mel C and Gemma Collins.
It’s a line-up that, I think, is meant to endear the Beeb to the sacred youth audience it so pathetically craves.
All it will succeed in doing, though, is annoying its core audience and reminding people that our forebears were braver, tougher and infinitely more heroic than us, which is why the snowflake generation indulges all those woke fantasies and tries to pretend being misgendered puts them on a par with the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Suffragettes and Rosa-bloody-Parks.
The one exception to this rule, last night, being the moment a local Bolton historian tells Paddy: “In 1915 things took a tragic turn for your family. Your great- grandfather gets committed to a month of hard labour.”
For if it’s a real tragedy you want, just wait until 2021 when his great-grandson gets the Question Of Sport gig.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In the popular nursery rhyme, Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to fetch her poor dog a what?”
GK Barry: “A pail of water.”
Romesh Ranganathan: “In celebrities, which Australian entertainer was best known for his comic character Dame Edna Everage?”
Guz Khan: “Madge from Coronation Street.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “What facial features are thick and overhanging when described as ‘beetling’?”
Ian: “Cheeks.”
The Finish Line, Roman Kemp: “In basketball, the Celtics represent which city in the NBA?”
Will: “Scotland.”
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, with a makeover, and Rylan, wearing a wig.
Sent in by P Burkett, of South London.
Random irritations
BBC News’ North America Editor Sarah Smith fangirling Kamala Harris in the most biased and nauseating fashion.
Celebrity MasterChef contestant Harry Aikines-Aryeetey referring to himself in the third person as “Harry Double A”, like an Absolute Ar*e.
And Dating Naked host Rylan Clark failing to use the most obvious elimination catchphrase in TV history. Get your coat, you haven’t pulled.
Unfortunate subtitle of the week
UNFORTUNATE subtitle of the week was provided by the Scotch pie-filling element of ITV’s Cooking With The Stars.
’Cos her name’s actually Carol Vorderman, but if you want to go with “It’s mutton”, that’s “OK” by me.
TV gold
THE forbidden fruit of Challenge TV’s heroically un-PC Bullseye repeats.
Brazil looking as beautiful as I’ve always imagined on BBC1’s excellent Celebrity Race Across The World.
Proper public service broadcasting from Nick Stapleton’s Scam Interceptors, also on BBC1. And the slow-burning brilliance of Channel 4’s Merseyside Detectives: The Murders Of Ashley And Olivia, where the two separate cases can sometimes confuse the picture, as the police try to make sense of the utterly senseless, but it is a very necessary and important piece of television.
Great sporting insights
KRIS BOYD: “Mike Dean is 100 per cent correct in getting it wrong.”
Sue Smith: “Diallo has not featured for United and that might be down to not being selected.”
Clinton Morrison: “Will it happen? I’m not sure. But it will.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
SEISMIC moment at Paul Chuckle’s farm on the Really channel’s Celebrity Help! My House Is Haunted. Recording equipment hidden inside his toilet detects a familiar voice, which ghost hunters think:
“May well be your late brother Barry Chuckle.
“And he’s saying . . .” No. Let me guess. To me, to woooh?
lGREAT TV lies and delusions of the month, Who Do You Think You Are? Phil Davis: “Paddy McGuinness is one of Britain’s best-loved TV stars.”
Miriam Margolyes’ Australian Adventure, an escort called Zoe: “You know what you are, Miriam? You’re a GILF.”
And Celebrity MasterChef, Eshaan Akbar: “I’m nothing if not the king of the vibes.”
OK. Nothing it is.
INCIDENTALLY, is The Gentle Art Of Swedish Death Cleaning the single most depressing title ever broadcast on British television? Or is it still That Antony Cotton Show?
CELEBRITY Help! My House Is Haunted, supermodel/pub landlady Jodie Kidd: “I have definitely felt there’s something trying to let us know it’s not happy. There’s been a box of tools thrown at staff, a wine bottle thrown in the cellar. I’d do absolutely anything to get rid of this entity.”
Then just tell her: “Naomi, you’re barred.”