September 30th, 2007 by Lisa McGarry. Tags: celebrity wife swap, channel 4, Pete Burns
Wife Swap , the BAFTA-award-winning hit series, is back with a celebrity swap. The recently married Pete Burns and his husband, Michael Simpson, swap places with the hard man of football, the notorious Neil “Razor” Ruddock, and his partner, ex-page-three glamour girl Leah Newman.
No one gets the better of Pete, and husband Michael takes care of everything in Pete’s life. By contrast, Ruddock’s partner Leah would love some more me-time in her life. Wife Swap: The Aftermath follows on E4, with Pete, Michael, Neil and Leah meeting again after watching the show go out. Read more & comment »
October 3rd, 2006 by Lisa McGarry. Tags: celebrity wife swap
If you had to come up with a list of a million or so of the most popular people in Britain, it’s a pretty safe bet that Edwina Currie would not be on that list. Over the years, she has shown herself to be a pretty odious character, both in and out of office. So it’s saying something that after she spent a few days on Celebrity Wife Swap she seemed almost human.
The producers of the show had arranged for her to trade place with Jenny (better known as “Booby”), the long suffering wife of John McCririck.
As soon as they met, John was quizzing Edwina about her affair with John Major. (Note to self: check if inflicting Visions of Currie liberating Major’s tucked-in shirt-tails from his underpants can be classed as psychological torture and/or abuse of human rights.) And then it got worse.
Edwina found out that Jenny’s daily routine with John McCririck, a real life Jabba the Hut, was not fun, she had to act as his PA, chauffeur the Man Pig around, fetch and carry for him and put up with the human fog horn’s bellowed orders. Worse still was the fact that John spent most of his time at home wallowing semi naked in bed with only his off-white y-fronts to preserve his dignity where he expected Edwina to serve him with food and drink. Initially, Edwina seemed to take this in her stride but she finally snapped, throwing a glass of wine at McCririck who responded by cranking up his obnoxiousness to 11. Pretty soon after that he reduced the former Tory harridan to tears. It was at this point that I actually felt sorry for her.
Meanwhile, Jenny was enjoying a relaxing week with Edwina’s husband JJ, an ex-policeman who seemed to be a real gent. I’m pretty surprised that Booby didn’t run of with the Bobby.
The reunion was a pretty telling; Edwina nearly ran into JJ’s arms and hugged him whilst Jenny slouched up to John with a polite hello.
Edwina managed to spectacularly shoot herself in the foot at the last moment and blow any empathy you develop for during the interview between the two couples by shouting at Jenny. Oh well, what can you expect from a Tory Minister?
This article was written by Wodge, our newest contributor at Unreality TV. Check out Wodges own blog here.