Channel 4's Wife Swap is about to throw its last hissy fit ever. The trailer for the last-ever programme plays stirring music and proclaims that this is the end of an era.
Really?
The show has been aired for 6 years and in that time, there's been some staggeringly crass broadcasts.
One of the first stars of the show was the walking urinal-cake that was Lizzy Bardsley. Remember her? She thrilled TV viewers by claiming £37,500 a year in benefits and using language that would make a chair cry.
Thanks to Wife Swap, the nation got to see Lizzie showing her mammaries in The Sunday Sport. So yeah, the beginning of an era of golden television.
The show, basically, thrived from getting people who would clearly despise each other and making them live in each others houses until they snapped. They purposefully picked the most prickly gits they could find and then set them loose while we all brayed and honked at the TV like animals.
It goes without saying that, occasionally, we like berating our brothers and sisters. We like to see people we think are idiots... or too stuck-up... or too dippy... or whatever... humiliated in a public forum. However, what happens when the joke wears thin?
Well, then the show becomes a lesson in cruelty. That's why Channel 4 decided to get celebrities involved because, as everyone on Earth seems to agree, it's okay to put famous people through abject misery. They'll get over it because they own massive houses, right? They're not even human, right?
So we got to see John McCririck living with Edwina Currie... we got Freddie Starr living with Samantha Fox... Rhona Cameron and living with Stan Boardman... and a whole lot more.
Tuning in for these shows would supposedly allow us to see the foibles of the kinda-rich and kinda-famous. This would make us all feel better wouldn't it?
Well, no.
You see, what Wife Swap (and the spin-offs) did was to actively make us self-harm. Instead of laughing at someone, we saw how horrible human being intrinsically are. We don't get along with each other. We're prejudiced against people on grounds of colour or class. We take sides and hope the other fails. Failing that, we just hate everyone concerned and that's more depressing than singling one group out.
Wife Swap turns your averagely sweet person into a misanthrope.
So now that's it is vanishing from our screens forever and ever, will we miss it? I hope not. I certainly won't. Whilst I have enjoyed the hate it conjures up in me, I'm glad that it is getting buried in a lead box six miles into the soil. It didn't start a debate, rather, picked a fight. I'd like to think that this is the endgame for HateTV. Big Brother, another show that provokes hatred for mankind, will be joining it soon. The immediate outcome is that tabloid rags will have to look elsewhere for people who will get their baps out... and maybe our self flagellation will stop just long enough for our sores to heal up.
Pass us the ointment when you're done with it.
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