Richard Branson has brought us many things over the years. Flights to New York. A mobile phone service we don’t use. His beard. But possibly his weirdest contribution as Britain’s most successful entrepreneur is a channel that has a show which is a direct merge of Panorama and Babestation. Instead of news and current affairs about the Iraq Inquiry or how bloody high petrol prices are these days you get street interviews about whether New Yorkers are happy about the size of their penis. Instead of reporters like Kate Silverton and Kate Adie you get bad porn names such as Joanna Jet and Gia Darling. Plus I don’t think any of the BBC Newsreaders have so many nipple piercings that their breasts are possibly magnetic.
Each week has a flurry of bizarre and wonderful topics. In this week’s edition it was about Swingers. That’s right. Weeeeeeeee! The show started with a giddy reporter in her twenties gallivanting off to Merry Old England to report on a new swingers pub. Now picture this. The report starts with the reporter very excited to be in Sheffield town. She enters a normal looking building, has a chat with the owners who seem nice and normal. A large round man who is behind the bar is interviewed (you know the one who normally speaks in a monotone voice in the pub, asks for your ID and passes you the peanuts). He details subtle but notable benefits of swinging in a loving relationship. Fine. Well not fine this is sort of weird, but fine. It all progresses fairly normally. Nothing visually surprising so far. The interview seems to be coming to a close. The woman in her twenties does a piece to camera. You expect Jeremy Vine to be rounding off the section and informing you that Spooks is next. But no. Mr Large Man takes off all his clothes, brings on his 40 year old landlady wife who is also naked and this is then followed by several slutty sequences where you see her nipple dancing round-and-round in the bar’s newly developed downstairs sex dungeon.
This is why you have to watch this show. No, shut it. I know that people would probably think that I have been watered down from a TV reviewer who makes comments about Adrian Chiles and the This Morning opening titles to a pervy man who encourages his readers to watch pornography on a channel that’s ironically called Virgin 1, but I’d like to think that you’d be mistaken. What makes this programme watchable, but probably not if your mother’s in the room, is the sheer amazing belief that everyone who stars in it; the presenters, the directors, the porn stars and the weirdos, think that they are acceptable, non-creepy human beings.
There are wonderful stories to highlight this. In an episode last week there was a story of a man who, as part of a story in a city film festival, had full fun-time intercourse with a blow-up doll on camera. As you do. However he was portrayed to be an average Joe. You know average Joe. He happens to have his own personal bouncy castle that you can watch whilst eating popcorn.
What’s even weirder is that the female presenter also thinks he’s normal. In fact the only intervention made by this journalist about this whole bloody mind fuck was “What’s it like acting with a blow up doll?”. He replies, “She’s very flexible, and I felt that I went to a deeper level with her than with an actress”. This show is so bizarre I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a feature about a woman whose breasts are so magnetic that her best gig is having foreplay with a fridge, but the show makers just judge it as a post modernist representation of vegetarianism in Poland.
Then there are the adverts you would no doubt notice. You get to see the far-reaching demographic that this show drags in during a weekday night. There is a Match Text Sexy Sexy one (“There are HOT girls in your area. They are all TERRIBLY HORNY. Ooops… their clothes have fallen off. Better ring ‘em”), followed by Big Boobs chat lines followed by an advert of a new AGA oven 30% off at John Lewis. Fancy teaching at schools? Oh wait sorry we’re going to distract you with this giant breast pump. The most extreme edition is an advert that has a camera zooming into each boob of a woman advertising a sexy text number on her bra followed by a child crying for the NSPCC. Thats just what you need to get in the mood for the porny.
Then there is the guy who does the sex quiz. Unless I am mistaken he sounds very much like one of the male continuity announcers on Radio 4. After he does a voice over where he asks viewers to guess how long the longest female orgasm is I always expect him to say “And now, The Archers”. Derr der der der der der derr..
I could go on for ever. I could go on about the fact that the women reporters get naked but for some reason the men keep their tops on, that for some reason all of the stories attempt to have a backstory such as being a single parent with a young child who wants to go to drama school, the slutty titles and the fact that in the UK they only tend to show four episodes, but we’re approaching an arousing advert about an adult website where people try their bessy to get undressy followed by an advert about a new lethal food blender. So instead here is a list of the best pornographic titles ever made I found whilst researching this article:
5. James Bondage
4. The Sexorcist
3. Star Whores: Attack of the Bones.
2. The Merchant of Penis
1. Chitty Chitty Gangbangs
Penis.