Are reality shows safe for the mentally fragile?

No, I don’t mean the viewers! The contestants! Like poor old Susan Boyle who rose to fame in the UK thanks to Simon Cowell’s “Britain’s Got Talent” talent show; then conquered world fame thanks to YouTube; and then hit the ground uni-brow first when she came only second and had to accept that she wasn’t what all the media hype led her to believe! Did no-one see this coming?

I mean, you can’t just be the most unattractive frump who lives in some shire straight out of Middle Earth the one moment and then be a world famous combination of Shirley Bassey and Chewbacca the next and not take strain!

Look, it’s the underdog story we all love to hear, but under that hideous gold curtain dress, and behind that wiry mono-brow, mop of split ends and gravedigger’s forehead is a simple, vulnerable and sensitive human being – with feelings, for goodness' sake! 

I just can’t believe how cruel people have been about this poor drab who looks like a cockney dustbin man dressed by Dame Edna. Let’s face it, she was more likely to die alone and be eaten by her cats than become the world’s most famous chanteuse for 15 seconds. The story does have a happy ending though; apparently the pre-sales of her Simon Cowell-produced album (due out this Christmas, folks!) has already ensured her a massive hit. There are also concerts planned and, most heartening of all, they have managed to somehow tame her eyebrow (yes, there is only one). 

But it could have ended badly. Susan Boyle nigh went postal after she failed to win on the show (she insisted on speaking to her cat on the phone from her mental ward, for goodness sake!) and it was largely thanks to the kindness of Cowell that she was mollycoddled away from near insanity and given the assurance that the world did indeed still want to hear her voice, and that some (concert-goers) were even okay with seeing her face will listening to her voice. Go figure!

But what about some of those other Cowell-less shows? The Bachelor, for instance, my daughter’s guilty voyeuristic pleasure, which recently concluded on Series. In a nutshell, this hunky British ponce dates, gropes and tongues a bevy of vacuous American princesses for however many weeks, spreading cold sores and breaking hearts on a weekly basis for our entertainment. The girls are voted off (by him) one by one but, it’s oh so sweet: get this, he gives them all a rose and demurely asks, “Will you accept this rose” to which the girls cloyingly blush and pant “YESssssss!” All except one bewildered girl each week who is then bundled off the show, doing the ugly cry in a limo racing away from the garish mansion, and snorting “But I thought he loved me” through her dripping tissue!

Is it just me, or is this some kind of glamoured up human trafficking? After all, the grand prize is… you won’t believe this – the bachelor himself! They get married!!!!! Yes, courtship and marriage is now the stuff of reality shows. Great entertainment, but these are real, living, breathing, vulnerable, people! (Albeit more attractive than Susan Boyle… but bimbos have feelings too!)

In the first few weeks it’s all pretty tame, but, folks, it gets really serious!!! As the weeks tick by the girls that get to stay get fewer and fewer and yes, some of them do genuinely develop feelings for this man. In the final episode he took the last two rose-clutching girls to meet his parents in England! Both these girls professed to be in love with him and both were totally convinced that they were “the one”. And in the final moments of the finale he has to dump one – ON TV!!! It’s cruel. (Yes, even crueler than my description of Susan Boyle).

And I can only wonder what that does to a person. I mean, I feel rejected when people don’t answer my SMSes within the 30-second buffer I allow. How must you feel to be not given the rose after declaring undying love for a man who has courted you on a public platform, taken you to his family home and even bonked you in the penultimate episode!

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned on 300 channels around the world! I’m warning you, this show is going to spawn revenge attacks. Now that’s a reality show I’d like to see!