Robbie Williams, resplendent in full England kit, is sneaking a crafty fag at the back of the clubhouse while Paul Gascoigne puts himself through a punishing regime of stomach crunches and Angus Deayton completes a series of stretching exercises.
This scene, being played out this week on a training ground in leafiest Surrey, is not the latest tabloid celebrity rehab story but a training session for Soccer Aid, the latest in a string of "event TV" marathons. The show combines all three themes that will dominate television in general, and ITV in particular, this summer - football, reality and celebrity.
Every night this week a series of programmes fronted by the ubiquitous Ant and Dec have tracked the progress of two teams of football legends and celebrities. It culminates tomorrow night in a live match between an England team and the Rest of the World in front of a sellout crowd at Old Trafford who will witness the faintly bizarre prospect of Maradona lining up alongside Alastair Campbell.
The warm-up programmes have been getting respectable ratings for ITV, a bright spot amid gloomy news from its advertising department showing that revenues are down on last year despite the impending World Cup.
Ronnie O'Sullivan, the snooker player, trots off the training pitch singing the praises of his team mates, who also include John Barnes and Les Ferdinand. "They've all been great with us."
Tony Adams, former England defender, said the former players and showbiz stars were each fascinated by the lifestyle of the other.
Kickstarted by the success of Channel 4's Big Brother, which is continuing to pull in viewers this summer with its most outlandish lineup of contestants yet, and exacerbated by the fragmentation of viewing as more and more households sign up to multichannel television, the trend towards event television is reaching epidemic proportions. Some of the themed runs, such as Soccer Aid and the BBC's upcoming Sport Relief, have a charity element; others focus on boosting ratings.
Once the final whistle sounds on Saturday attention will turn to X-Factor: Battle of the Stars, which starts on Monday and features the likes of Paul Daniels and lairy Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles singing in front of a studio audience and judges including Simon Cowell.
That will be followed by Love Island, dropping last year's celebrity moniker but featuring a similar mix of the young and single denizens of celebrity magazines and hoping to burst Big Brother's ratings bubble. Later in the summer another Ant and Dec-fronted sports show, the All-Star Cup, will see celebrities taking part in a glitzy golf tournament.
The common characteristic of all these shows is that they will flood the schedule for a short period of time, supported by a significant marketing spend and attendant press coverage. The policy is the brainchild of Simon Shaps, ITV director of television, brought in last year to arrest falling ratings on its flagship channel.
Soccer Aid executive producer Nick Samwell-Smith said Soccer Aid was "more of a traditional observational documentary than a reality show", but he was confident the scale of the event would lift it above the competition. But others believe the surfeit of themed blocks of programmes will backfire.
