muckefuck | Ensouciation now!

My cable-enabled reality-t.v.-watching friends have let me down with a dearth of reports on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. From what I can gather, though, it appears our worst fears were not realised; this is not the latest stage in an insidious gay plot to twinkify all men. The accounts trickling in indicate that a tacky wreck of an apartment was straightened and redecorated and much decent grooming and questionable fashion advice was dispensed.

Nevertheless, am I the only one that pines for a makeover show which doesn't recapitulate the plot of a few dozen mediocre romantic comedies? For starters, I want to know why the aim is always up the social scale. The episode of Faking It we saw last Sunday was miraculously free of Pygmalion references, given that the entire plot was to take a provincial English girl, crash-school her in upper crust behaviour, then dump her in a dinner party and see if anyone could tell. Ho hum.

I would've found it far more interesting to take one of the priggish toffs featured in that show, make him over with a working-class brogue and shabby clothes, dump him in a Black Country pub and see if he could survive the evening without getting his arse caved in. I can't be the only lad whose reaction to yobbish toughs is a curious mixture of contempt and envy. I may console myself with the certainty that I've no wish to emulate a beer-swilling prole, but, I can't escape a feeling of inferiority when comparing myself to a butch workman who can create something beautiful and sturdy with his two hands and hold his own in a fight.

Enough peasants who becomes princesses! Where is the Prince and the Pauper-based reality t.v. show?