Reality! : Celebrity Quitters (Day 1)

Now there's a programme title that lends itself to a rhyme or two. This show follows five *celebrities* giving up smoking! And what a line up. No, actually, it's a good line up!
Chloe Madeley. Not since Rumer Willis has the offspring of a celebrity couple been dished out such an unfair face. She's a model? Right. And I'm getting paid for writing this old toss.
Paul Danan! Well, what can you say? He's a miracle of modern science. He's unbearable enough when stuck on a desert island with Abi Titmuss, how the fuck is he going to cope under these conditions?!
Derek Acorah!!! Has he brought Sam (his special imaginary friend) with him? I don't know about your personal favourite ever Derek Acorah moment, but mine was when he went to Yvette, 'You're a fucking bitch!' and 'Show us your tits!' and claimed he was possessed. Now THAT'S balls. You go, Derek.
There's some other guy who I think was in the jungle one year. A chef? I seem to remember him being a sour-puss.
Oh and finally actress Linda Robson. Career going well, is it? She quit smoking for 17 years! It's like my mum, she quit for a few years and then started again, it's fucking STUPID. I really can't believe she did that.
I personally don't smoke, because I'm not an idiot, but my boyfriend (sorry! haha- I'm already in the bad books today, let's keep digging) smokes about 1000 a day. I know it's hard to give up. So this should make good telly.
Paul Danan is brilliant. I'd need more than a coffee and a fag waking up next to that. Acorah didn't start smoking til he was 29! That's my age! What a mental thing to start doing at this age. Just do crack, at least you'd get high. Smoking is rubbish! If I'm going to die from a drug, I want to FEEL high off it! I want to be FLYING as they card me off, not spluttering black goo all over the place.
70% of all smokers want to quit. I guess the other 30% are about 13.
Moral dilemma: Who would you rather be stuck in a lift with? Derek Acorah or Paul Danan? Arghhhhhhhh! Too hard.
Smoking IS idiotic, but there's something quite friendly and heart-warming about how naughty smokers congregate together. They get away with a zillion breaks at work too. I've always liked smokers even though I'm not one; I think it's because my mum smoked when she was pregnant with me (thanks mum, that did me no harm at all! Right?!) I don't know, smoking is kind of cool and sexy. Until the tracheotomy.
I already know a lot of dangers from smoking because I used to work for Cancer Research UK. Smoking is basically twice as bad as any damage you can do from unhealthy eating (I console myself with this, because I have an appalling diet); and it affects every single part of your body.
It's quite interesting that if you give up in a group your chances of quitting are increased by four! That's pretty good.
Madeley spawn has a lisp. Did Richard and Judy do anything right by this girl? Add this to the drink-driving and the bong-smoking! She's a wrong 'un! Ha, talking about her photo-shoots! Get the big airbrush out, Julian!
I don't like the sound of doing those tests to see how clogged up your arteries are and how fucked your lungs are! I'd rather stick my head in the sand. I went for a blood test recently and amazingly, was healthy. I was expecting a death sentence.
Paul Danan is such a prat. He's just come out of rehab for drug abuse. Bet it was coke, he just seems that type. Is that his house? It looks like a bedsit. They told him his lung age was 46 and he looked like he was going to cry. Haha, then he went outside and vomited! I love a good vomit on a reality show. The absolute best reality vomit ever was on Vanity Lair when this arrogant, big-headed guy who said any woman over a size 12 was disgusting vomited at a photo of himself because he was SO ugly. Nothing can touch that moment!
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. The doctor gave them all a raisin and asked them to look at it 'as if they'd never seen one before in their life'. That's exactly how Paul Danan WAS looking at it.
I feel sorry for these people; I can't give up my addiction to crisps, and that's not even addictive. I don't know how people give up these things.
I saw a better show about quitting smoking in America (well I saw clips of it) called Cold Turkey where they thought they were going on some slick reality show to 'fulfil their dreams' and instead they were in some big brother style house and forced to give up smoking against their will, and tempted along the way. The winner won a million dollars.
I guess Channel 5 spent all their spare cash on Justin Lee Collins.
I might write another blog on this, depends if Paul Danan has a total breakdown and starts battering Derek Acorah. It's on all week anyway, so set your boxes to record. Or throw it out the window, whichever feels right.

The best thing on telly: Live from Studio Five

I've been intending to write a blog about Live at Studio Five for a while, and today Ian Wright has inspired me! I stumbled across it whilst staying in a hotel when we went to see Placebo, and I haven't turned back. It was a happy accident, fate, if you will! Haha.
In case you don't know, Live at Studio Five is Channel Five's 'news' programme; but it's so lightweight it makes Loose Women look like Crimewatch.
Presented by the amazing Melinda Messenger, Kate 'The Apprentice' Walsh, and the incorrigable Ian Wright, it's just a masterclass in TV presenting off the cuff. In the past you have had to physically restrain me from punching the screen when Ian Wright was 'presenting' so woodenly dire he has been. I genuinely felt a physical hatred for him, like almost as much as I do for Robbie Williams. But on this show, it's like you're sitting on the couch watching TV with him., which oddly, works.
And he's got thick person Tourettes. He literally says every single thing he thinks. On tonight's show they showed pictures of some fairly normal-sized scantily clad woman in the snow, and Ian Wright blurted out, 'Munter alert!' When Kate and Melinda went 'they look lovely!' he snorted and went 'are you having a laugh?' Then just to make sure he said, 'They aint going to be cold in the snow with all that padding.' Seriously, you don't get that kind of shit on The One Show. He makes Richard Madeley look positively demure.
I'm having a go at him, but I actually really like him now! You can imagine being mates with him and taking the mickey out of him a bit.
Melinda Messenger looks really pretty with Barbie curls, and big teeth, and holds the whole thing together with a surprising amount of charm and dignity. Kate, is actually a pretty good presenter, quite natural, although it sounds like she's struggling to get each syllable out past her teeth, which are somehow even bigger than Melinda's. I kind of want to give them all a hug and hang out with them, and be like their wise-cracking buddy.
Last week Ian Wright was off because his wife had a baby and his role was poorly filled by Michael Underwood (Northampton's unfinest), Ricky Sexist Knob Whittle, and Gollam Best. It made me pine for Wrighty! And he only had one weeks paternity leave! That guy is a TROUPER.
Another good part is they always discuss the kind of banal thing you've been discussing, or wanting to discuss but everyone around you is a little bit too highbrow to bother with, like Big Brother, or Mylene Klass wielding a knife.
This truly is the future of television. Watch it.
*edit I even got the name of the name of the show wrong! The stupidity is catching!