Celebs aren’t what they used to be.  Whenever you saw “celebrity xxx” you hoped you might see some national treasures making fools of themselves.  This is still the case with show like Dancing on Ice (which we reviewed here the other week)  but E4 has set the bar much lower.  I mean limbo dancing low.

So who are these celebs who are going off dating?  In order of celebritiness:

• Olympian Jade Jones (good start, she’s a proper celeb).
• TV presenter London Hughes (ok that was a massive drop from Olympian to TV presenter, but she also does stand up so obviously possesses some talent).
• Singer Tallia Storm (that’s good, we like a singe, but when you search her on the Official Charts website you get the message “ARTISTS MATCHING YOUR SEARCH RESULTS FOR:TALLIA STORM total results: 0” so I’m guessing she isn’t that successful yet).
• Hollywood actor Jonathan Lipnicki who is famous for being the little kid in Jerry Maguire and Stuart Little, which is going to sound a bit weird on a date; “ladies, do you like little boys with big round glasses, because I used to be one”. Just wrong diddly wrong.
• Professional “hole faller into” Gemma Collins. Apparently, she’s on TOWIE as well.
• Love rat Mike Thaassitis off of that Love Island.
• Posh boys Ollie Locke and Sam Thompson from Made in Chelsea.

So the jokes goes “an athlete, a comedian, a singer, an actor and three reality stars walk into a bar….”.

The same production who makes this show also make TOWIE, Geordie Shore and Hollyoaks and previous series of Celebs Go Dating have featured stars from all these shows, so perhaps a more truthful title should be “Celebs who we have made…go dating”.  The concept is a simple enough one.  Two love gurus Eden Blackman and Lady Nadia Essex run an agency which they celebs have all signed up. They are a sort of Phil and Kirsty of Love  and they promise to find the celebs their ideal partner.   In episode one they recruited a room full of possible mates for the celebs in what they called “A Singles Mixer”.   The agency’s receptionist is Tom Read Wilson who is possibly the poshest man I have ever seen on telly.  He makes Jacob Rees Mogg look like a chav.  He seems to play the role that Frank plays in First Dates, whilst doing an impression of Freddie Mercury (sans moustache).   Rob Beckett (who is everywhere at the moment as we observed last week) provides the very funny potty mouthed commentary and the scene is set for a night of match making.

Over the course of the evening we discovered;

• Gemma Collins is seriously high maintenance.
• Everyone on this programme has amazing teeth.
• Tallia seemed to be wearing the skin of Pudsey the Bear in an off the shoulder style.

The twist though was that after an evening mingling, it wasn’t the celebs who chose their mate, but the punters who had been herded into the bar and they could only chose one celeb.  Now the fact that these celebs have had to resort to going a dating show must be bruising enough for their egos, but then to find out how liked are disliked could send this lot into therapy for years.  Especially when only one person chooses you, which is exactly what happened to Gemma Collins.    Poor girl, she probably wished the ground would open up and swallow her up…again.

The show is on nearly every night for the whole of February (20 episodes in total) so I really hope that if I end up investing 20 hours of my life into this venture that at least one of the celebs finds love.  But there again, I probably won’t keep watching.  Not because It isn’t fun, but because this show isn’t meant to be watched by old people like me.   I may struggle to recognise seven eights of the celebs but to the teen audience who this is aimed at they are heroes.  So, I’ll just leave them to it and go back to where I belong.  I wonder how Cheryl is doing on Dancing on Ice?

Whilst you are here, we are trying to grow our little blog, so any shares, likes or subscriptions would be greatly appreciated.  To receive updates from Shouting at the Telly, either subscribe using the buttons, like our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter.  Thank you.