You Might Not Be Beautiful. Gok's Teen's: the Naked Truth

Gok Wan is on a mission.

“I don’t want any teen to go through what I did”. The How To Look Good Naked star reveals how as a 21 stone teenager he endured years of misery and bullying.”

It’s all very Jamie Oliver: a passionate, personal crusade, comprising a bit of raw confessional, some contemporary social critique and taking action for real change.

However, while Jamie’s various series have seen him slogging his guts out dawn to dusk, chasing up recalcitrant truanting teens, arguing with local authorities, managing school canteens, and ultimately winning an audience with then-PM Tony Blair, Gok’s mainly involves looking at pictures of models while going “urrr, she’s too thin!” and getting girls to write on mirrors in lipstick and cry.

The teens in this programme are amazingly docile.

“Why do you think you don’t look good enough?” Gok asks.

“Because I see images… on the internet… celebrities,” says Paige, hesitant but obedient.

They flash up lots of thinspo photographs and slogans. Perhaps they could have chosen instead to show Isabelle Caro, dead at 28, or Katie Chilver, rather than these glamorised, 'triggering' fantasies. But this isn't a programme specialising in conceptual coherence.

Gok takes Paige on a life-changing journey to see a model do a photoshoot. The photo gets retouched. Paige cries.

“I didn’t know it was fake,” sobs Paige, who puts this new knowledge into action when she goes home by, erm, uninstalling the Photoshop software she uses to retouch her own pictures online.

14-year-old Brianna, meanwhile, whose anorexic phase has already long passed, sits quietly while an American dietician shows her some computer-generated images of how she’ll look at 30 if she’s anorexic (weird, haggard, wrinkled and grey) and not anorexic (just weird).

“Gosh, I think I prefer the non-anorexic one,” says Brianna politely. “Thank you.”

“I think I really got through to her,” says the dietician to camera as Brianna leaves.

At some other point, Gok gets a bunch of adolescent girls to look in a mirror in front of their mums and teachers and to say they have fat thighs or flat chests.

“I just look… ordinary,” says an ordinary-looking girl. Mums dab at their eyes with tissues.

Assorted celebrities crop up from time to time. The idea is that they confide their own teenage horrors and reassure today's younger generation that this too will pass. The problem is that (a) they're mostly incredibly irritating and (b) their problems include 'fitting in with everyone so not being really true to myself' (Duncan from Blue).

Despite the odd bit of lip service about ‘confidence’ and ‘self esteem’ , the programme is thoroughly Christina: “You are beautiful, no matter what they say.”

What is never suggested is that maybe you’re not beautiful, and maybe that doesn’t matter; maybe that’s not the worst thing. It’s not because the images are retouched that it’s a bad idea to aspire to have thighs with a big gap between them: so what if they’re real? Perhaps there could be other things to dream of, wilder skies than these.

In the photoshoot, while Paige and her comrades are squealing over the revelation that even the primped and preened model can’t match up to her own photograph, there is another woman in the scene: the photographer. Hair scragged back, in jeans, without make-up, here is a woman doing a technologically savvy, well-paid job, one that doesn't entail being half-eaten away by your own excess gastric acid by the age of 27.

But we don’t hear anything from or about her, and here’s the untold story, the one where looks aren’t everything. The one where Paige's very creditable photomanip skills could be put to better use than making her collarbone stick out.

The stated aim of this programme is laudable but no serious thought has gone into it, as evidenced by the repeated inclusion of pro-ana material as wallpaper. Judging from the teaser trailer for next week’s programme, the flashy stunts (landing in helicopters) and relentless shallowness which characterised ‘How to Look Good Naked’ aren’t on the way out any time soon.

Gok’s Teens: The Naked Truth is on Channel 4, Tuesday evenings, 8pm. And on 4OD here

Angry Happy People: Josie Long at Soho

Josie Long is without question a consummate performer. She’s articulate and intelligent, endearing in a perfectly calibrated awkward-cute way, her timing is brilliant, her voices and characters are mesmeric, her ability to work a room and control an audience is outstanding.

You can tell there’s a ‘but’ coming, right?

Like newspaper columnists, the problem with stand-up comedians is often that they announce their views of the world without having seen very much of it. They might be able to tell jokes or construct pleasing sentences, but that rarely corresponds to having lived not wisely but too well. When someone does have an idiosyncratic perspective or profound experiences to share, it can be an absolute joy.

Long’s material is by far at its strongest when she’s embarking on wild fantasies: the Jedward routine and the one-woman play about the Brontës are both painfully funny and startlingly convincing. She says at one point that she’s seen a lot of sci-fi, and it shows in her grasp of imaginative possibilities that twist reality in odd ways. It also adds a layer of sophistication and humour to her otherwise horrifying account of a car crash which nearly left her for dead last year.

It was this car crash which, along with the coming to power of the coalition, set Long off on her new, political, direction. A disclaimer: in general, I’ve not got much affection for groups of middle-class people applauding self-congratulatorily at political comedy or its academic equivalent. I’m not sure the two things sit very well together, even if there is a collecting tin at the end. Unfortunately, last night did little to change that.

The jarring contrast of Long’s newfound fury at the government with her cheery, whimsical stock-in-trade is made explicit from the beginning – she repeatedly explains, justifies, apologises for this new subject matter, in a defence which is also a plea in mitigation. She knows that, no matter how true or important or deeply felt this stuff is, it’s just not quite as funny. The account of going on ‘This Week’ and accidentally telling Michael Portillo that he’s her favourite Tory (“He’s not even! It’s Bercow. OK, he’s not a real Tory…”) and her passionate defence of the protest movement UKUncut are interesting and witty, but by the end I did feel somewhat hectored without being edified. We all know the Tories are awful, we all hate the cuts and think that the super-rich should pay more tax, and respect to Long for going out and doing something about it. But impotent fury at the powers that be is nothing new, or shouldn't be.

It’s difficult to make these criticisms because Long herself is so overtly and self-consciously aware of the pitfalls of her new political direction. She harangues herself for this, apologises to us if we don’t like it, and seems genuinely torn between her desire to be funny and her need to express her political convictions. At one point she is drawn into an embryonic political debate with an audience member, but then pulls back from it, saying “hang on, this is turning into a political argument, not a comedy gig.” And therein lies the problem.

Even being self-aware to this extent doesn't meld 'happy Josie' and 'angry Josie' into a unified whole. These two personae battle for supremacy as she breaks off to castigate herself and picks up one of the cards strewn about the stage on which she's listed things she likes, her fantasies, her hobbies. The struggle between the two characters is played out in the open and she controls the mood in the room expertly, but it inevitably still jars.

To be fair, I may just be a grumpy old woman. There was lots and lots of heartfelt laughter in the room last night. Josie Long has a wealth of material and an abundance of wit and charisma at her disposal. But it is perhaps better directed at Jedward than Jeremy Paxman.

Josie Long is at Soho Theatre until Saturday 22 October.