London Colin

Just wasted an hour of my life watching Undercover Boss on Channel 4.

I can't remember the last time I saw something with such a fatally flawed concept.  The Chief Executive of Tower Hamlets, the catastrophically deprived East London borough, goes literally undercover to spy on unsuspecting departments to experience life on the front line of council services provision.  We see lots of shots of him in a suit, in meetings, looking out of a window while frotting his blackberry - he's a man in an ivory tower.  He needs to get out there and see what's really going down.

All he needs is a way of getting a realistic view of the coal face.  One that won't make people behave unnaturally around him.  The Channel 4 execs convene an emergency mind shower  before emerging triumphantly for an early lunch ten minutes later.  He will pose as a trainee trying out various council jobs and be mentored by a member of staff in each.  A 50 year old trainee who reads with glasses that cost more than the annual salary of his mentor and looks exactly like the Chief Executive wearing a week's growth of stubble, and who takes a camera crew everywhere with him.

The sheer pointlessness and artifice is demonstrated by the choice of mentors, heart of gold diamonds in the rough one and all.  Because if you need to choose someone to be on telly representing your department, you choose the most presentable.  After all, the Chief Executive might watch it.  That is if he wasn't shuffling around onscreen dressed as Colin the Hollywood Hobo and remembering to put on his northern accent every time someone asks where he's from.

He gets shown meals on wheels, pest control, a homeless advice centre, community coppers etc etc.  'Colin' can't believe his luck - every department of his council is staffed by professionals burning with zeal, compassion and unrealised potential.  The creak of the door to the storeroom containing all the sewer-mouthed tattooed mutants who failed the telly test can be occasionally heard as it groans against its padlocks.

So 'Colin' shaves off his bumfluff, has an erotic reunion with his blackberry and goes back to playing Sir Alan, albeit with a renewed sense of perspective.  But wait - there's one last twist.  He needs to reveal his true identity to his mentors.  The best of these meetings goes as follows:

Chief Exec: "Do you know who I am?"
Underling: "Yeah Chief Exec seen you on the internet innit."
Chief Exec: "So, I hear you had an interesting day yesterday?"
Underling: "Yeah showed a geezer round the market yeah?"
Chief Exec: [leans forward, slowly removes designer glasss]
Underling: "NOOOOOO! You is Colin!"

He tells them they're wonderful and gives them unpaid jobs on vague and uninspiring committees.  Well, except Malechi, a gentle young black man working in the homeless advisory service.  He's on a temporary contract.  The Chief Executive offers to become his permanent career mentor.  We learn during the voiceover that he "hopes to have a permanent job soon".  Shit mentor.

Just wasted 20 minutes of my life whinging about Undercover Boss on Channel 4.