Scripting The Bottom Of The Barrel

Mockumentaries aren’t exactly new: the genre can be traced back via Spinal Tap to 1938, when Orson Welles's War of the Worlds panicked gullible American radio listeners into near hysteria. But the current rash of British scripted mock-shockers is really scraping the grubby bottom of an already well-emptied barrel. Just when you thought The Only Way Is Essex - its vacuous vajazzlers manipulated into ever more preposterous situations - was the nadir of civilisation, along came Caggie Dunlop,  that mane-tossing tosser in the Union Jack trews (Ollie? Mollie? Nelly?), and the rest of the SW3 gang to demonstrate why so many Londoners hate Chelsea and all that’s Made (up) In it. But for sheer mind-boggling inanity, visit Geordie Shore, MTV’s lurid British answer to Jersey Shore. If any of what its revolting clap magnets get up to is less Fake than their Bake, it will be a blessing to mankind if Orson’s Martians nuke Newcastle.