Two quick stories: once, in a London hotel, a film publicist came to find me. Bursting with the pride of a tigress with a newborn cub, she shouted down the corridor: “I’ve got you four minutes with Orlando!”<\/p>\n
The other took place in a Soho caf\u00e9, when two TV agents pressed me to consider championing their beloved clients’ move from magic to cookery. I nearly choked on my macaroon. This was proper “youth hostelling with Chris Eubank” territory, as proffered by Alan Partridge. It turned out, in the world of televisual evolution, monkey tennis is very real.<\/p>\n
I mention these two incidents to shed some light on twin beliefs that threaten to consume our entire entertainment ecosystem: the first, that any time spent in the company of a famous face, on screen or off, is superior to that spent with what Liz Hurley helpfully calls “civilians”; the second, that celebrities will do anything, from boiling an egg to being taken hostage, if it means staying under the warm spotlight of another TV commission.<\/p>\n
The result? As pointed out in Ms Shearer’s recent letter to RT<\/strong>\u2019s Feedback (thank you!), a schedule that includes Jules and Greg\u2019s Wild Swim, Bear Grylls \u2013 Wild Reckoning, Dickinson\u2019s Real Deal, Ramsay\u2019s Kitchen Nightmares, Hippo Watch with Steve Backshall\u2026 all of them on TV on a single random Friday.<\/p>\n This week sees the arrival of Celebrity Sabotage, in which a gaggle of familiar faces set out to hoodwink unsuspecting members of the public who think they are taking part in brand-new ITV shows. How did we get here?<\/p>\n In 1997, the BBC One series Driving School simply followed learner drivers around Bristol and South Wales. What they hadn\u2019t planned for was one Maureen Rees. By the time the cleaner from Cardiff had passed her test at the seventh attempt, 12 million people had tuned in. An appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the release of her version of Madness\u2019s Driving in My Car followed. An unlikely sensation had become a star.<\/p>\n Two decades later, Paul Whitehouse invited his real-life pal Bob Mortimer to go fishing. So serene was their day out, Whitehouse invited the cameras to watch “two old blokes doing very little”. Eight series later, Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing enjoys the highest score of any show on the BBC\u2019s audience appreciation index.<\/p>\n Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer.\u00a0BBC\/Owl Power\/Tom Jackson<\/span><\/p>\n Pretty much every factual entertainment show in today\u2019s schedule is an attempt to emulate the success of one of these two models, either a) normal people becoming celebrities, or b) celebrities doing the most normal of things. Clive Myrie revealed that the BBC basically asked him, “What would you like to do?” Sensibly, he opted for a drive through Tuscany and a lesson in making pasta. Entertaining enough, but it does seem to be a case of tail wagging dog, person before idea, Fiat 500 before horse.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the problem? Diminishing returns in a culture built on the belief that nothing\u2019s worth watching without a sprinkling of celebrity stardust \u2013 because I\u2019m not sure TV bosses have thought it through.<\/p>\n They can fish in a familiar pool, leading to cries of “Not her again!”, or they can delve into the industrial pipeline of “talent” \u2013 Strictly dancers, Love Island alumni \u2013 in the hope that one of these becomes the new Bob Monkhouse, or at least a This Morning presenter.<\/p>\n Not all celebs are born the same, but you would never know it from the schedules. Did I really see Michael Ball presenting The One Show the day after he guested on it? Maybe it was a dream.<\/p>\n News just in: a new series coming soon to 5, Sam and Ade Go Birding<\/a>. Samuel West and Adrian Edmondson, two familiar, popular people, doing a thing. I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be fine. I\u2019ll go in with an open mind \u2013 maybe for a full four minutes.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times<\/strong> is out now \u2013 subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Celebrity Sabotage begins at 8pm on Saturday 21 March on ITV1 and ITVX.<\/strong><\/p>\n Check out more of our Entertainment<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide<\/a> to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.radiotimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two quick stories: once, in a London hotel, a film publicist came to find me. Bursting with the pride of a tigress with a newborn cub, she shouted down the corridor: “I’ve got you four minutes with Orlando!” The other took place in a Soho caf\u00e9, when two TV agents pressed me to consider championing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2334958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2334957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Is-nothing-worth-watching-without-a-sprinkling-of-celebrity-stardust.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334959,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334957\/revisions\/2334959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2334958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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