By CHRISTOPHER STEVENS, TV CRITIC<\/a> <\/p>\n Published:<\/span> 23:31 GMT, 22 March 2026 <\/span> | Updated:<\/span> 03:54 GMT, 23 March 2026 <\/span> <\/p>\n Celebrity Sabotage (ITV1)<\/p>\n Rating:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n You know a show must be stage-managed when a celebrity is revealed \u2014 and everyone recognises them. No one ever says, ‘Who are you? Are you meant to be famous?’<\/p>\n Never once on The Masked Singer<\/a>, for instance, has a sweaty face poked out of a costume to be greeted by a baffled look from the judges.\u00a0<\/p>\n At best, I’d be going, ‘Oh, it’s you! Didn’t I see you on MasterChef? Name’s on the tip of my tongue!’<\/p>\n In the pre-internet era, when the news cycle still had a silly season, one reliable space-filler was to send a junior reporter into a shopping precinct with photos of various royals<\/a> and politicians, to see how many people could recognise them. Invariably, many shoppers couldn’t name a single one.<\/p>\n But as members of the public discovered they’d been pranked by semi-famous comedians and influencers on Celebrity Sabotage, all of them reacted as though members of their own family had appeared.<\/p>\n ‘Sam Thompson!’ gasped one, as he spotted a bloke who used to be on Made In Chelsea, and is now just famous for being famous.<\/p>\n ‘GK Barry,’ marvelled another, spying a TikTok performer who’s appeared on Loose Women a couple of times. I couldn’t tell GK Barry from TK Maxx, and neither, I suspect, could most of the country.<\/p>\n Sam and GK spent much of the hour, along with fellow celebs Joel Dommett and Judi Love, lurking off-screen or appearing under heavy disguises. The cruel fact is that all of them could have been wearing name badges and they’d still be unrecognisable.<\/p>\n Comedian\u00a0Joel Dommett (pictured) hosts Celebrity Sabotage alongside Judi Love, Sam Thompson and GK Barry<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The format of Celebrity Sabotage is hopelessly overworked, with new presenters and guest stars each week, and a show-within-a-show set-up to ensure that players are even more confused than viewers.<\/p>\n For the opening episode, Dragon’s Den businesswoman Sara Davies posed as the host of a game show called The Applicant, set at a country estate and blatantly modelled on The Apprentice.<\/p>\n Six would-be tycoons tackled tasks, such as filming a promotional video or organising a yoga workshop. Behind the scenes, from a cellar HQ filled with giant screens like a supervillain’s lair, the celebs planned pranks.<\/p>\n They flicked yoghurt from a height, so that the players would think they’d been splattered by a bird, and dressed up as paintballers or gardeners to cause disruption.<\/p>\n Judi lurked under a table at a wedding venue to make the pyramid of champagne glasses collapse. Sam, or possibly Joel (bet you can’t tell the difference either) wore a suit of armour, while Joel (maybe it was Sam) hid inside an armchair.<\/p>\n This week’s special guest was veteran comic Jo Brand, who managed to look both bored and bewildered throughout, like a woman roped into playing a video game by her grandchildren.<\/p>\n She had no idea what the rules were, or why anyone would think it was fun \u2014 she just wanted to get to the end of the day unscathed. It’s a familiar feeling.<\/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.celebrity.land.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By CHRISTOPHER STEVENS, TV CRITIC Published: 23:31 GMT, 22 March 2026 | Updated: 03:54 GMT, 23 March 2026 Celebrity Sabotage (ITV1) Rating: You know a show must be stage-managed when a celebrity is revealed \u2014 and everyone recognises them. No one ever says, ‘Who are you? Are you meant to be famous?’ Never once on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2341699,"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":[25884,452971,426150,367391,348224,438995,453928,453927,22488,21913],"class_list":["post-2341698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-dailymail","tag-gk-barry","tag-joel-dommett","tag-judi-love","tag-loose-women","tag-made-in-chelsea","tag-sam-thompson","tag-the-masked-singer-australia","tag-tiktok","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CHRISTOPHER-STEVENS-reviews-the-weekend-TV-Celebrities-Even-with-name.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341698","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=2341698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2341700,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341698\/revisions\/2341700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2341699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2341698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2341698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2341698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Comedian\u00a0Joel](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2026\/03\/22\/22\/107336075-15669793-image-a-11_1774217526571.jpg\")
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\n CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews the weekend TV: Celebrities? Even with name badges this bunch would be unrecognisable<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n