Telly Talk

My betrothed managed to walk in just as I was watching the bit at the beginning of Trinny and Susannah’s The Great British Body where the pair were getting women of all ages and shapes to talk about their breasts whilst getting them out on national television.
So now that’s what she thinks I’m into.
But lo, as we continued watching a programme that we initially came to with no small amount of scepticism, we were won over by a genuinely good-hearted attempt to understand body image while making Britons feel better about theirs.
The "plot", as it were, had T&S canvassing the country looking for comfortable, confident (read: not model-perfect) Britons to represent the country in sculpture. It ended, as these things often do, with two naked television personalities in a field, surrounded by a somewhat windblown and just as starkers gaggle of their countrymen and women.
As T&S talked about and occasionally felt up people’s abs, butts and in the case of one voluptuous 52-year-old woman, "puppies" (hint: there were no golden retrievers in sight), one thing became clear – there wasn’t much sexuality, embarrassed or otherwise, on display here. Oh, there were people talking about why they felt sexy, why they were comfortable (or less so) with themselves as sexual beings. But the programme itself didn’t set out to titillate, and it didn’t.
I sat down with an idea that this would be post-modern seaside-postcard television, a "tee he, I’m making you get your kit off in public" parade of boobs and backsides. Utterly wrong. This is reality television with a big heart – non-fiction telly that gives you a big hug and tells you your bum looks fantastic in those jeans. Or out of them.