Trinny And Susannah Undress…

I’ve worked as a TV journalist and shit-shoveller for many years and few sights can strike fear into my heart. True, the memory of Keith Chegwin nude (Naked Jungle) and Les Dennis towelling his bare arse (Extras) are two visions that can still send a shudder down my spine, but by and large I am so de-sensitised to the goggle box that I can stomach pretty much anything.

Then I read the TV guide last night and stumbled across the words Trinny And Susannah Undress… I suddenly felt that night’s evening meal start to head North. It couldn’t be? Surely? Two sloans whose only real claim to fame was knowing how to make people dress slightly better by spunking a few grand up the wall getting their kits off. Had ITV really become this poor?

Fortunately the title was intentionally misleading and Skinny and Fatty (to give them their rather wonderful Viz names) were merely rehashing their BBC show on a new channel. But here’s the twist…

Now they’re hoping their skills at spending cash on clothes can also help repair flagging relationships by getting couples whose zing has gone ming to become bling again (I’m so down with the kids…).

So step forward Elle and Lester, a couple who’ve not had sex for four months and who spend most of their time looking after their two autistic kids.

Then enter the Sloans whose job it is to put some magic back in their lives by putting them in slightly nicer clobber and using this simple task as a vehicle to examine the husband and wife’s relationship (and obviously give themselves the sort of ratings this voyeuristic, intrusive tosh will doubtlessly deliver).

You sort of know the rest. They spend a while ripping the piss out of the old them, then help them become the new them, then take them to a posh place so they can get some time on their own without the kids.

It’s the sort of self-help show the TV schedules are now littered with. But the difference between the likes of Jamie Oliver and Ian Wright and these two preening halfwits is that the former go on a journey where they genuinely care – and Trinny and Susannah merely care about getting ratings.

Cue Fatty taking the bloke to a sex shop and recommending light bondage, cue Skinny asking the wife if she’d had an affair in front of her husband. Nice…

It was car-crash telly under the guise of consideration and it was exploiting people who could probably have done with some professional relationship counselling rather these two simple sloans who obviously think clothes are the answer to everything.

What next? Aids epidemic – buy ‘em some jeans. Cancer? No problem, floral prints are in. It’s ridiculous and it extends my long-held view that Viz is still the only decently entertaining thing this pair have ever appeared in.

Get off my telly. Now!