The Week on the Telly: August 5 2011 by shoutingatco.ws

The Geordie Finishing School, BBC3

So far at the Geordie Finishing School, the posh girls have been amazed by normal-looking houses, baked potatoes, and shops that are not Waitrose. Oh, the grim joyless reality of places north of Watford!

This week they are going to be doing ‘hard, sweaty, labour’. Despite having the highest unemployment rates in the country, Geordies are grafters, and the jobs on offer involve working in a chip shop, and gutting crabs at 4am. Youth worker Hufty is sent over to break the bad news.

Delicate Lucy is troubled over what to wear. Will her fancy fur boots be suitable for getting down on her hands and knees to clean out a grease trap?

‘Shut up, your boots are made of real rabbit?’ cries a shocked Hufty, unable to comprehend such decadence, ‘you’re wearing rabbit made boots?’

Yeah, Lucy, get your extravagant rabbit feet out of Newcastle before they get robbed off your legs. Back in London, Lucy works as an events manager, a position that seems to involve necking champagne and laughing. She seems to glean little joy from the knowledge that had she had been born in Newcastle, she would have spent her days wearing a hair net and scraping out the yellow internal organs of crabs into a bucket. She spends her shift looking sulky and threatening to vomit.

Meanwhile, MP of the future Steph attacks making up fish and chip boxes with military precision, while declaring,

‘I have a very low tolerance of and patience for people who don’t make something of their lives, and wait around for life to come to them.’

Personally, I can’t wait until Steph joins the next wave of Conservative politicians, touring around the country wearing court shoes, telling us all how we should be living. Despite Hufty introducing the posh girls to some unemployed teenagers who are unable to find work even in McDonalds, Steph maintains her blank, political face. Clearly, unless your parents have endless millions, you are being too lazy to work.

Speaking of being too lazy to work, spoilt princess Fi is forced into cleaning a toilet for the first time ever, as a VT shows us the luxurious, idle life she lives back down South. She receives £700 a month from her parents, which sadly means she doesn’t have time to get a job, and life is one long champagne picnic with Ollie, her blond boyfriend. Fiona, who lives with her banker boyfriend off the King’s Road in London, and is trying to make it as a singer, also has no patience for people on benefits. She is despatched next door to meet her neighbour, a father of eight who lives on benefits after being made redundant. She is amazed that the scrounger has a four bedroom house, with the rent paid. I’m similarly amazed that a struggling singer can afford a super shiny Mini, but then the world is full of surprises.

Things just keep getting worse. The posh girls reflect on the different world they inhabit, as Hufty reveals that the Geordie girls are being taken to a fancy do, in ball gowns, while they have to go to a traditional Geordie pub with Hufty. Sigh. Though, to be honest, the black tie dinner looks like the most boring thing ever, full of men called Rupert snorting and cutlery-related anxiety attacks. On the other hand, Hufty is clearly the most awesome person ever, although I think she is prone to exaggeration. Before entering The Butchers Arms in Byker, she gathers the girls round and warns them they’ll get a Geordie teacake if they act posh. Once in the pub, the girls are completely ignored by the regulars, and free to shriek in horror as loud as they please.

Tonight’s the Night, BBC1

Saturday night TV is usually pretty poor, but as the nauseating title music fades into plastic faced crooner John Barrowman gurning and hamming up ‘I’ve got a feeling’, the viewer realises they’re in for a special ordeal. The idea is simple; make deserving people’s performance-related dreams come true with the help of celebrities, although the cynic in me wonders if those celebrities involved, such as Glee’s Matthew Morrison or Sophie Ellis Bexter, really want to help a worthy soul or are just after some sweet free publicity. Clearly I’m a horrible person for thinking that; which fortunately means I will never find myself on Saturday night TV in a sparkly dress, with John Barrowman singing Enrique Iglesias awkwardly into my face. By this point in proceedings, I’m not entirely sure about the decision making capabilities of John’s agent.

In order to help those singing dreams come true, Barrowman must first use his comedy skills to fool his victims in (not at all) hilarious ways. Tonight, Bobbie, a call centre worker whose musical ambitions were stalled by the death of her brother, must endure endless prank calls from Barrowman pretending to be Mrs. Doubtfire. Somehow, Barrowman has also roped nice Matt Baker into this madness, forcing him to pretend to be a crazy artist in order to surprise a little girl. They must have the same agent.

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