There was a point when I called Take Me Out "the very worst thing that has ever happened to planet Earth". To be honest, I may have exaggerated: so long as ITV2 keeps employing Kerry Katona to make reality shows, Take Me Out can only ever realistically hope to achieve silver medal status in that given field. What's more – and this might rank as one of the sorriest things you'll read today – I've also slightly softened in my stance towards Take Me Out.
This isn't because the new series is any different from the first one. In fact it's desperately identical. A man with obvious self-esteem issues debases himself in front of 30 shrieking, bright orange women who gradually reject him one by one until he ends up attached to the one with the most embarrassingly low expectations. Then they go on a date, realise they hate each other and it all begins again. While Paddy McGuinness dances around like a monkey.
And the reasons why I originally hated it are still perfectly valid, too. It's still unquestionably bad television. Watching it is like being stuck on the last train home with the world's most intimidatingly drunk hen party. If the gender roles were reversed, and Take Me Out was about a woman being plonked in front of 30 leering men, it'd resemble the third act of Taken to such an alarming degree that you'd half expect Liam Neeson to burst in with a decommissioned CIA handgun and shoot everyone dead 10 seconds from the end.
However, during the course of the last series – to my obvious discomfort – I found myself in a variety of different situations where I was forced to watch Take Me Out. Not just that, but watch it with people who genuinely took pleasure from it. Often they were women, but not always – my 27-year-old brother came for dinner one evening and became so excited by the show that he started to play along at the top of his voice with food spilling out of his mouth. I couldn't escape it. That's when I started questioning myself. Maybe it's me, I thought. Maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like Take Me Out. And maybe that's only because I know I'd be instantly rejected if I ever appeared on it.
Eventually my resolve snapped and I developed a kind of warped Stockholm syndrome towards it. Fate had determined that I was destined to watch every single episode, so my best plan of action was just to shut up and realise that we have to exist together. And here's the funny thing: once you accept Take Me Out for what it is – a deliberately mindless hour of noise and lights and little else – then it becomes, well, not good, but not actively terrible either.
We're at peace now, Take Me Out and me. Some people have cited the show as an example of television that's so bad it's good. It's not. It's still bad TV. But it's like a scab. You just can't help disobeying common sense and picking at it. Even though you know that underneath it you'll find Paddy McGuinness dancing around like a monkey.
