The Week on the Telly: Secret Eaters & Step-kids in Love by Hannah

Secret Eaters, C4

Every year, Britain is getting FATTER. Channel 4 has a theory as to why this is: we are all secret eaters. You might think that you just had some Ryvita for lunch, but the six Mars Bars that you had for dessert have completely slipped your mind. Fatty.

In order to prove this convoluted theory with SCIENCE, Channel 4′s latest Anna Richardson vehicle has conned some of Britain’s most confused families into being filmed and followed by private detectives to see if they are lying to themselves about how much they eat. Craig, he patriarch of this week’s fat family is 17 stone and says he doesn’t eat a lot. Remember this, it will be important later. His partner Leanne weighs almost 16 stone despite similar under eating. They want to learn how to eat properly for their thirteen year old
daughter Ellie’s sake.

“What’s an average meal like in your house?” Anna asks Ellie.

“Probably just a take-away because Mum can’t be bothered to cook; it’s always about laziness and not being bothered.”

There’s no such thing as secret eating when there are kids around.

With the cameras all rigged up and two of “Britain’s top private detectives” trailing behind, the family head off to the supermarket to stock up for a barbecue. “Will 16 sausages be enough?” we hear Leanne ask, as Craig loads the trolley with celebration tray bakes. It’s this kind of behaviour that shows the sort of people that have been targeted to appear in this show. Would you really plan a lard-arsed barbecue on the same day as cameras are installed in your house to prove to the nation how greedy and deluded you are? Leanne eats 1000 calories in nibbles before the barbecue even starts. I don’t think I want to watch this part actually; no one wants to think about the extent to which lovely social gatherings are bad for us.

Next up, the family have a KFC and top PI Duncan is rooting through the rubbish to find the wrappers. This is completely unnecessary; the family have just been filmed eating the takeaway. Unless he is actually trying to find exhibits to put in Anna’s fancy “incident room”, filled with replica food, takeaway wrappers and lots of surveillance photographs of the subjects shovelling food into their fat faces to shame them with. Anna, like an improbably shiny haired Bond villain, presides over the secret incident room, inviting the unsuspecting family into what looks like a nice comfy lounge for “a chat”. The walls then slide apart, revealing the horrors within.

In his food diary, Craig recorded eating 2100 calories a day. This is, of course, a massive lie. He actually eats 4500. Now he knows that having a post-gym “pint” with a friend in fact involved two pints, a bag of crisps and two bags of peanuts. He seems surprised by this, he didn’t even realise that he’d eaten all those delicious salty snacks. It could happen to anyone; I often walk past Greggs then wake up twenty minutes later in a gutter, covered in pastry grease. Next it’s Leanne’s turn and, unsurprisingly, the fact that she is a lazy slattern who eats too many takeaways and rejects vegetables is what has made her fat. The programme is clinging to the “secret eating” gimmick, but it’s obvious that these are just people who don’t realise how many calories are in food, and I envy their ignorance.

Step-kids in Love, Sky Living

Kids nowadays have probably never heard of Drive Me Crazy, a romantic comedy starring Melissa Joan Hart. They’ve probably never heard of Melissa Joan Hart either, those pesky kids. The film ended with, as these things generally did in the 90s, with Melissa getting together with the correct boy at the prom. They go home only to discover that their respective single parents are also getting it on. Hurrah, everyone is in love! Happy ending!

This is not incest. You are not committing incest if you fancy the off-spring of someone completely unrelated to you who just happens to be in a relationship with one of your parents. This will not change, however many times Sky Living casually drop the word “incest” during their essentially pointless documentary about step-siblings who fall in love.

We are introduced to star-crossed step-lovers Rachel and Tony, whose love has overcome many obstacles. Rachel liked Tony soon as she met him after their parents got married, but it would be many years before they could be together. Tell us Tony, why does the course of true love never run smooth?

“I was twenty-four, she was fifteen. I was married.”

Oh.

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