"Clear your desk and faak off." Janet Street-Porter in Deadline.
Reality TV quietly ate itself last night. And after feasting on its own carcass it belched up, like a giant furball, Deadline.
I thought the genre had already self-ingested when Jade Goody, made famous by Big Brother, took part in the celebrity version. But no, it went back for another nibble and Deadline, all the way out in the no man's land that is ITV2, sees ten celebrities put together their own magazine all about other celebrities.
Led by Janet Street-Porter as editor, stars like Yvette Fielding and Abi Titmuss must pap other stars like P Diddy and Madonna and hassle them for quotes in a bid to create a mini version of Heat which will then be published in Closer.
The format was like a televisual version of an Escher drawing, where anyone watching would have to stare really hard at the screen in order to believe what they were seeing.
Like Lisa I'Anson telling Janet Street-Porter "I'm really trying to practice honesty and truth these days" with absolutely no irony whatsoever considering she was working on a gossip magazine. Or Dom Joly who stood outside his own agent's office photographing fellow comics Catherine Tate and Harry Enfield; people who haven't had to resort to the same drastic measures to appear on TV. Well not yet, anyway. It was all rather like The Apprentice but with the production values of Project Catwalk.
JSP's killer line of "Clear your desk, you're out of here" isn't quite as snappy as "You're fired". I imagine in real life she says: "Clear your desk and faak orf" but sadly not at Deadline.
Someone will get axed tonight. But in yesterday's show Abi Titmuss was the only one who emerged favourably - which should surely be a clue as to the quality of the programme. She was in the middle of a press scrum all vying for a quote from an unco-operative P Diddy. Just as he was leaving the building Titmuss threw herself in front of him and with her insightful questions at the ready barked: "P Diddy, do you like my dress?"
It wasn't the dress he was looking at, but she got the quote she needed. Give the girl her own magazine.
