Bossy pants
Simon Hoggart
T never guessed that What Not To Wear Iwould be the harbinger of the hottest new trend in television: bossy women. In WNTW, Trinny and Susannah bossily told other women how to look ghastly. In their bestselling book, some of the outfits would be thought over the top by the Ugly Sisters' costume mistress.
Next we got How Clean Is Your House? (Channel 4, Wednesday) in which bossy Kim and her whey-faced sidekick Aggie go to someone's house and tell them that it's filthy. The makeover I saw was of a pad occupied by a father and son, David and Nick Worboys, who, as Kim bossily pointed out, live literally like pigs in shit.
Kim is a big-boned bossy lass and takes no nonsense. 'If I saw you in the street, I'd say "What a handsome young man," but if I came hack here you'd not get me into that bed!' A look of relief passed over Nick's face. 'Look at that grot; she exclaimed, 'it is beyond disgusting!' The lads feeble efforts to help were met by more abuse. 'There is no point in dusting with a filthy duster that is full of dust!'
In the end, the house was clean. You could have eaten your dinner off their plates. But it seemed to me that the Worboys had been happy in their sty, got on well with each other, took pleasure in their lives, and were perfectly healthy in spite of the zillions of bacteria they ingest every day. But that's not the point. Like Trinny and Susannah, the bossy cleaners insist that their victims stick to tyrannical standards which they have invented and which bear only passing resemblance to real lives. Likewise Victoria Mather and Meredith Etherington-Smith, who are The Dinner Party Inspectors (Channel 4, Tuesday). They don't confront anyone. Instead they sit in an upstairs room watching the meal on monitors, making bitchy, bossy comments. The programme works because it's everybody's fantasy to spy on someone else from a secret hideaway, and pass comment. And these bossy women really are witty, especially Victoria Mather, who creates new layers of inventive snobbery. Snobbery is funny because it's arbitrary. Some years ago I met a terrifically grand Italian woman from an ancient family. She announced that it was quite plebeian to speak Italian, 'French is the only language any civilised person needs,' she told me, in English.
In the same way, Victoria demands, 'What on earth is that? Please don't let it be something made with Bailey's Irish Cream!' One of the guests (a strange bunch, mainly gays, but with two attentionseeking women) asked another. 'When did you realise you were gay gay?' and Victoria squirmed in her upstairs eyrie. 'You do not have sexuality with the starters!'
But she was having a horrible time, and the more horrid it became, the more she enjoyed herself. 'I feel prickles of embarrassment going up the back of my neck. I would rather be at an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical,' she announced, and thousands of middle-class viewers must have felt guilty, thinking that they had quite enjoyed Cats. And the odd glass of Bailey's Irish Cream. But you can't win. As one of the bossy women said, 'Being middle-aged is so middle-class' — one of the most baffling remarks I have ever heard, but calculated to spread a deep unease.
I guess that the appeal of these shows comes from memories of our mothers, those women who had complete power over us, who instructed us in mysterious, arcane rules that must never be broken. I offer the production companies my suggestions for more bossy woman programming: Now Blow Your Nose!, What's The Magic Word?, and Eat All Those Carrots Or You Won't Watch Tiswas! Then the craze will die.
In Kelvin Saves The Tories (Saturday, Channel 4), the former editor of the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, set about reviving his favourite party with a selection of populist policies which a half-witted Poujarclist would have thought simplistic. It was postfifth-gin saloon bar nonsense, badly expressed.
He raved against the BBC. All Murdoch satraps want to get rid of the BBC and the licence fee. But the licence fee is roughly one-fifth of the £500 per annum I pay to let my children watch the swill poured out from Sky. Murdoch's myrmidons will tell us that their charge is optional. No it isn't. For instance they have stolen our greatest sporting events and force us to pay vast sums to watch them. Now they want to break up the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world to make Murdoch even richer than he is already. And there are people who appear on television to support this demented greed.
If you wanted proof that the licence fee was worth every penny, in The Big Impression (BBC1, Friday) Alistair McGowan and Ronnie Ancona performed a pastiche of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, starring Burton and Taylor as estate agents. It was perfect — so precisely judged that it went beyond funny. You just sat lost in admiration. And it would have fused the synapses of all those bossy ladies.
Previous page
