“Welcome to Love Shaft, a dating show set in a LIFT!” Will Best (us neither) breathlessly intones at the start of Love Shaft. We’re thrilled that E4 have noticed the big gap in the dating-for-arseholes market since Take Me Out finished. Even The Love Machine can’t match the sheer horrors of lift-based entertainment extravaganza Love Shaft. If you find the word “shaft” inherently funny, you’ll probably get on with it. The lyrics over the opening credits even manage a cheeky “going down”. That’s the level.  The basement.

A woman, displaying the trademark “roll around in make-up and grab the first thing you spot in New Look” style that’s mandatory on dating shows, gets in a lift.   It “stops” on each floor of a tower block, where a waiting bell end attempts to charm his way into the lift. Whether it’s by dancing to Olly Murs or performing back-flips with no shirt on, it’s a display of peacockish twattery that seems to be exactly designed to annoy us as much as possible.

The lift, by the way, isn’t a standard, grotty piss-and-carrier-bags style affair. There’s a disco ball, lights and all bloody sorts. There’s forced jollity and games – would you invite Susan Boyle to a dinner party, can you dance around for a bit, and a midget giving a massage. Such jokes, such japes… It just leaves us praying for the brakes to fail.

As the lift “stops” on each floor, she has to pick between her current date and the next waiting dick-end.  This is the best part, watching the chap’s heart break as they find out that the next bloke is more attractive and has more charisma, and the lift doors slam shut.  By the way, it’s clearly stood still with the doors opening and closing in the same place (because it’s a small room, not a lift), which even denies us the pleasure of someone getting motion sickness and sitting in the corner, rocking. Which is where we ended up after just one episode.

The show rolls on interminably, with Will Best doing his, er, best to interview the shaftee’s friends, getting stunning insight like “I dint fink she’d go fuh him”.

Highlights of the first episode include a Debenhams advert, a Panasonic advert, and the trailer for a film called “What To Expect When You’re Expecting”, and that looks rubbish.

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