Paul Burrell: What Really Happened (C4)

Watching a Jaques Peretti programme is always taking a gamble with your valuable viewing time, principally because he seems to have attended the Dawn Porter School of Investigative Journalism. “You mean, Jacques Peretti sucked wall-to-wall cock to fill the gaping void where talent should be?” you cry. No, no, not that, I was referring to Dawn Porter-style research methods.

Peretti has been touted as ‘Channel 4’s answer to Louis Theroux’ but it’s difficult to discern any connection between the two, other than that they both have heads and facial features. Where Theroux uses a tried-and-tested method of faking naivete to lure subjects into a position of trust, Peretti simply is naïve, creating programmes that are essentially a clumsy rehashing of Wikipedia pages and tabloid stories that are already widely available to anyone with a functioning broadband connection.

There’s a strong degree of ambiguity in the series’ title. The ‘what really happened’ part announces itself authoritatively, offering an insight into the dark underbelly of a story that we, the ignorant viewer, can’t possibly see. Instead, the show’s title is more consistent with Peretti driving around aimlessly and repeating “What really happened…what REALLY happened?”, while never actually managing to answer his own burning hypotheses.

Placing Peretti’s complete incompetence aside, watching anything featuring Paul Burrell is invariably brilliant train-wreck TV. Public revulsion of him appears to stem from the fact that he is the concentrated incarnation of every middle-Englander that displays a disarmingly servile admiration for the Royal family. You know the type: they’re the same people that buy commemorative Diana plates that sing Elton John tunes at the touch of a button. And they’re responsible for every Christmas number 1 that Cliff Richard’s ever had.

Unfortunately, it still all comes back to whether the programme sheds any new light on the question of “Why is Paul Burrell completely mental?”

With a line of enquiry as inane as “who would play Paul in the film of his life?” it’s unlikely that we’ll ever find out, though the viewing of this programme does serve as a valuable reminder of Burrell’s weirdness.

Half Ton Son (C4)

“It’s like a prison that you just…move around in!” sobs Billy Robbins who, at 60 stone, has the dubious accolade of being the fattest teenager in the world. Your body may be a prison Fatboy, but it’s arguably a tasty prison of your own making, one in which the bars are made of sausage rolls, with walls of delicious puff pastry.

Bodyshock’s Half Ton Son is markedly different from the series’ previous efforts: Half Ton Man, Half Ton Mum and Half Ton Dad. Oh wait…No, it’s not at all different as once the fatties pass the 30 stone mark, categories such as age, race and gender are all rendered invalid as distinguishing markers of identification.

Let’s deconstruct the title of ‘Bodyshock’ here: where, precisely, is the ‘shock’ factor in the programme? We’re told that Billy’s mum (who isn’t getting asked to do Paris Fashion Week anytime soon) has been feeding him up to 8000 calories a day. This is the equivalent of eating 26.66667 Scotch eggs, all day, every day. Shocking, would be if Billy’s massive caloric intake was utilised to create a new kind of super-efficient magical fuel that would solve the world’s energy crisis. Not shocking – taking up eating as a full-time occupation makes you porky.

One of the crueller ironies I’ve noticed in documentaries on the morbidly obese is that they’re often obliged to spend a significant chunk of their screen time buck naked (it would seem clothing manufacturers have only so many Xs they can add to an L).

Admittedly, there is a certain freedom made available to fatties as lumbering around in the buff does not bring the usual host of worries it would with the majority of the population. For instance, the thought of ‘don’t want to be naked on telly, might ruin future sexual opportunities’ probably flew out the window for Billy Robbins, right after he realised finding his willy from under a vast apron of fat is much akin to a game of hide-and-seek, a game he loses all too often.