Dinner Dirt

Since allowing TV into my life, I have been lapping up its various treasures. Its lush and gossamer tube glow washes over me like the waves of a velvety ocean. I am comforted by its soft and plump bosom like pillows of the scheduling. Like a baby wrapped in swaddling, I drool and gurgle whilst prostrate on the sofa transfixed by the flickering images parading in front of me like marionettes in a puppet show. Wading through the various delights offered up I have found some programs that I actually enjoy watching. One of these is Dinner Date; ITV's answer to Come Dine With Me.

Come back CDWM, all is forgiven!!

At its core is a cooking show, but Dinner Date is soooooo much more than that. With the heavy burden that remains of the baggage created by Cilla Black, ITV seem unable to commission any show that doesn't involve some form of dating. Cilla's Blind Date was a massive hit for ITV and they always fall back on this
safety net when they need a competition to the other channels success stories. What about Take Me Out? That Saturday night dross where desperate single men were paraded like a piece of meat in front of thirty desperate, lonely and love hungry women. The vast amount of oestrogen was overwhelming even from the TV screen. ITV's obsession with hooking people up borders on a secretive breeding program where only photogenic (suntanned, bright white teeth and well groomed) couples are allowed to procreate in order to give TOWIE a cast well into the future when the present ones collapse under the weight of their fake tits or shrivel like prunes in their sunbeds.

You can and will be replaced by younger and better looking specimens from ITV's breeding ponds...

Well, this time ITV have upped the ante. They have taken the classic timelessness of CDWM and twisted it beyond all recognition in Dinner Date. It is like Jeff Goldblum after crawling out of the molecular transformer in The Fly, the bastard offspring of two forms of life. In this case, CDWM and Blind Date. The genetics of the two shows have been spliced together and we gasp in awe at the hideous beast that pulsates and thrashes around in front of us. We bray and clap as it tries to stand up on weak legs but collapses into a panting slavering heap time and again.

Get up, your public is waiting!!

Why is it so entertaining? Allow me to explain: A singleton is asked to choose three dates on the strength of five menus. This is the first elimination stage. Five hopefuls are instantly whittled down to three because the diner prefers rocket salad to haloumi brioche. Talk about separating the wheat from the chaff. Woe betide you if your menu isn't up to scratch. You have been judged on what food you think would make a good meal. How dare you think I might like braised steak, you filthy little oik, how could you even begin to think that Eton Mess is a perfectly normal dessert? The disgusting swill you are planning to serve me isn't fit for human consumption, try again, you fucking loser! Get back to masturbating yourself to sleep in tears on your piss stained mattress, you miserly cur.

In my hands I hold the power over life and death...

It would appear that all the people in the show have been recruited on the strength of their careers, they all appear to be soulless office types that work in advertising, accountancy, mergers and acquisitions or public relations (whatever the fuck that is...). They all appear to be perfectly groomed, plucked, tucked and fully loaded with make up. And that's just the men. The are vainglorious bastards, the kind of people I would crush with steamrollers as soon as I get in to power. I'd have them bound up and laid out in rows in football stadia, then slowly run industrial machinery across them, film it and show it on TV instead of the sports channels.

First up against the fucking wall...

I digress. The lucky diner then gets to meet each of the final three and have a dinner with them. This is where we get to see the interiors of the flats that the hosts live in. They are all the exact same flat pack, chrome and wood interiors that lack any depth of imagination or singularity. All of them are spotless, soulless places, just like their owners.

You could cut the atmosphere with a knife... But I'd rather cut my own throat...

Then the hosts are asked to rate the diner out of three, which doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre. It's either, 'I like them', 'I'm indifferent', or 'get them the fuck out of my house, they have already tried to chloroform me!' This voting has very little to do with the outcome of the show and the final blow is left to the diner. They choose, on the strength of the dinners offered up, who they would like to see again and go out for a meal in a restaurant. This is where the show delivers its fatal strike. All three hosts are instructed to get up in their finest clothes and await the knock at the door. Two of them are delivered a meal for one, which they get to enjoy whilst dressed in their best bib and tucker. The show ends following the winning couple to the date and getting a round up on the meal. But I would far prefer for the show to focus on the losers, filming them while they weep like babies dressed in a ball gown as they shovel down their Weight Watchers Spag Bol.

'What is love?'

So, anyway, I sent off my application.