TV Review Fionola MeredithWell, we were sold a pup. The Real Cherie promised a candid insight into Tony and Cherie Blair's 10-year stint at 10 Downing Street, with all the highs, lows and controversies covered.
It sounded juicy - surely we would get the inside track on Cherie's notoriously fractious relationship with the new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, her ill-advised friendship with New Age guru and former topless model Carole Caplin (who came complete with convicted fraudster boyfriend), and maybe - oh please God, yes! - the unexpurgated details of that mud and papaya-splattered Mayan rebirthing ritual that she and Tony reportedly underwent while on holiday in Mexico.
What we got instead was little more than the hour-long documentary version of the traditional Downing Street Christmas card, where the Blair family pose together looking pristine and cuddly. Sure, we got to see Euan and his mother in the Downing Street kitchen discussing the merits of tinned vegetable soup - for this we are supposed to be grateful? - and now we are aware that they had to sit on some nasty red-padded banquettes to eat their morning cornflakes for a whole 10 years.
Yes, we did get one or two controlled peeks at the charmingly informal Blair photo album - lots of shots of little Leo, "with Mr Bush and Daddy", or being pushed in his buggy by Bill Clinton. And let's not forget that we are now privy to the information that Tony proposed to Cherie in Tuscany, while she was cleaning the toilet in their villa, crazy romantic fool that he is. But apart from that, The Real Cherie was about as authentic as her super-styled, gravity-defying hairdo and brittle, defensive smile.
In fairness, it must be said that Cherie is clearly a person who laughs a lot - in one stage-managed shot, we saw her shrieking away with glee with her old schoolfriends from Liverpool - but the trouble is, when she laughs, you do feel that she's about to eat you.
In fact, the fearsome effects of that ferocious toothy cackle could go some way towards explaining why reporter Fiona Bruce failed to give Cherie a proper grilling over the more controversial aspects of her Downing Street years - the bits we were all agog to hear about.
Or, let's see, could a guaranteed soft-soap approach have been the price of access to Cherie? One by one, the tricky topics were tentatively raised by Bruce, and quickly dispatched by Cherie, swatted away like a pesky fly.
The business of Caplin's conman boyfriend, Peter Foster, reportedly negotiating the price of a flat in Bristol for her? "A fuss about nothing." Her assumed hostility to Gordon Brown? "Gordon will make a great Prime Minister."
Even the Mexican rebirthing ceremony was kicked into touch, turning out to be nothing more than "a traditional Mayan sauna". What, no naked primal screaming then? Still, at least we have the mental image.
IF THE REAL Cherie was strangely absent from The Real Cherie, Princess Diana was an even more nebulous presence at Saturday's Concert for Diana, beamed live from Wembley Stadium. Well, the princess does have the excuse of being almost 10 years dead.
Her sons, princes William and Harry, who organised the event in her memory, offered up a bizarre compendium of artists, packing in Status Quo, the English National Opera, Duran Duran and P Diddy, not to mention Tom Jones, with a truly execrable granddad-rock rendition of I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor by The Arctic Monkeys.
Okay, so this genteel concert was never going to scream sexy, dirty rock'n'roll. It was suffused instead with a benign young fogeyism, perhaps best encapsulated by Prince Harry coming on stage in a brown corduroy blazer and - irresistibly - shouting "Hello Wembley!"
IF YOU'RE LOOKING for authenticity, the last place you're likely to find it is on a chatshow, where celebrities compete to parade their glittering wares. Luckily actress-turned-therapist Dr Pamela Connolly, fresh from her private practice in California, and with the preternaturally silky yellow hair to match - had the antidote to all that chatshow fakery. It's her new Channel 4 show Shrink Rap, which, it's promised, will allow harried celebs to bring forward their "true self", the one that isn't always "adorable and perfect and funny". Right.
First to feel the force of Connolly's formidable empathy was Sharon Osbourne, talent-show judge and wife of gormless metaller Ozzy, not a woman known for her reticence. I mean, Sharon, is there anything left to tell, any further agony to emote about? Feet tucked up on the sofa, Sharon was soon off on her usual course - bad dad, bit of rough, chucking ashtrays, Ozzy's extra-curricular babes, the works.
It was inevitable that her famous propensity for pooing in a box and sending it, packaged as a gift, to people who had annoyed her, would pop up at some point, and sure enough it did. You would think this was rich fare for a psychosexual therapist like Connolly - come on Pammie, remember your Freud, deferred anal phase, wouldn't you say? - but her underwhelming verdict was that Sharon was posting off poo as "a statement she can't make with her voice". At least we've got to the bottom of that, then.
Connolly is the very antithesis of her Scottish comic husband Billy, with his bristly manner and fierce, barking laughter. Face perpetually set in an ultra-solicitous expression, Pamela's empathy drips all over her interviewee - and, by extension, the viewer - like some kind of saccharine-sweet ectoplasm. Soon we were all awash in the suffocating gloop, as Sharon recalled the dysfunctional early days of her marriage to Ozzy, and Pamela nodded empathetically and intoned "Yes . . . joined at the wound . . . " Oh yuck. There's such a thing as too much authenticity - and a lot to be said for a stiff upper lip.
SOME MIGHT SAY that the endearingly eccentric participants of RTÉ's new series Consuming Passions, this week focusing on doll's house enthusiasts, were ripe for psychoanalysis. After all, for the uninitiated, it's hard to imagine why you would spend hours and hours creating these extraordinarily detailed tiny worlds, complete with everything from miniature mobile phones to microscopic bumble bees to tiny strawberry-topped pavlovas.
But the more you watched this simple, unpretentious little gem of a show, the more it all made sense. Angela Kelly, showing off her miniature French chateau - complete with gold plated taps and an inhabitant racy Parisian model called Sophie - movingly described her hobby as a precious sanctuary from the stresses of a demanding life as a mother of disabled children.
For Pat Cullen, her meticulous replica of her childhood home in pre-war London, accurate down to the postage-stamp-sized family photographs on the walls - was a way of reconnecting with precious memories of lost loved ones.
Easily the most impressive display was Thomas Murray and Robert Thompson's wonderfully over-the-top Tudor banqueting hall, decked out with 22-carat-gold wallpaper. It's part of an old Victorian estate consisting of almost 100 rooms including stables, servants' chambers and a central courtyard - and it's all in their sitting room. "If I could shrink down to that level just for the day, I'd love to live in there," said Robert, and you could understand exactly why.
IT WAS BACK to reality with a bump with Three 60: Stem Cell Special, a short and comprehensive scoot through the ethical minefield of stem cell research. Millions of people with conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and spinal cord injury hope that stem cell advances have the potential to improve their conditions.
The Catholic church, however, remains firmly opposed to embryonic stem cell research, arguing that it involves the destruction of human life, and scientists caution that, in any case, research is at such a preliminary stage that it will take years before any treatment arrives in the marketplace.
Yet sufferers cling to the hope of a cure, and this programme introduced a few of them, from young Matthew McGrath, a four-year-old tetraplegic, to Helen Prout, a 77-year-old film-maker who has suffered from Parkinson's for 22 years.
It was palpably clear that for these people, the fierce urgency of their need for help dwarfed all the well-marshalled arguments of science and religion. Neck rolling, hands wheeling spasmodically, her face uncontrollably distorted, Helen Prout gasped, "If you were like me, you'd take anything."
Amid the televisual fluff, at last a moment of real authenticity.
Hilary Fannin is on leave
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