In the absence of any actual scandals, the Daily Mail has got its big white M&S undies in rather a twist at Channel 4’s cult afternoon hit Come Dine With Me. It has emerged that, for fairly sensible and self-explanatory reasons, some contestants on the celebrity version of the show were reluctant to have their own homes filmed. The show’s producers, for example, rented panto demi-god, all round nice chap and eventual winner, Biggins a fairly modest house in which to entertain his fellow celebrities. The (lack of) controversy seems to centre around a feeling that CDWM are fallaciously passing off these houses as having been kissed by the majesty of celebrity, and therefore, by extension, lying to the great, just and virtuous British public.
- The Daily Fail: nothing to see here
This is, of course, utter rot and an epic non-story. CDWM is a sly, funny spin on ‘reality’ shows, a sometime crude and mocking glance at people’s culinary pretensions and a good excuse to gawp at middle-class wine snobs, social retards and self-righteous pescatarians all squished round a little table and loaded up with booze.
For a show so defined by its entertainment qualities- narrator Dave Lamb’s aloof mockery of the show’s lesser lights, cheeky pre-break misdirection, the big cash prize- to be pilloried for staging a venue is ridiculous straw grasping from this most maudlin and elitist of newspapers. And to pick on the celebrity version is like whining at a circus when its revealed that the clown’s bucket is filled with glitter, ‘but I was expecting water, I feel so let down, this is a sad indictment of our country...’. Everyone else is having a good time, why do you have to spoil it? Just look at the size of their shoes and their impractical means of conveyance, Tee hee hee!
The Daily Mail knows that even the most robustly real television shows are inevitably predicated on camera tricks, editing and other partial fictions. TV would be an unwatchable, tedious mess otherwise. I don’t know where Biggins really lives, and I’m pretty sure Dane Bowers and Hannah Waterman don’t know where Jan Leeming lives. It doesn’t matter, just let it lie and enjoy Philip Olivier shirtless for the fourth time this week.
This is just another venomous attempt from this outrage starved carrion-bird of a publication to provoke its little-Englander readers to create a story for them. Do some work, and let us continue to titter and tut at Come Dine With Me in peace.
