The first time I reviewed Cook Yourself Thin (Channel 4, Tuesday, 8.30pm) I was less than complimentary. Such was my displeasure, I was compelled to write “Cook Yourself Thin is one of the most backward programmes ever aired.” Not to mention that it’s one of the most patronising things I’ve ever seen. However, that was the first show and the girls who present this ‘Hey girls! You can lose weight AND eat!’ show may well have been showing off. 5 episodes in and has anything changed?

In short, things have changed… they’ve gotten worse. A show that says “calories may vary according to recipe and brand” accompanying every single ‘fact’ given needs to have a good look at itself. I mean, saying things like that surely underlines that the things said by the presenters are, essentially, a crock. No amount of faux-sassy music and wobbly cameras are ever going to cover it up.

Cook Yourself Thin should be remaned. Weeks ago I said it should be called ‘Cook Yourself Happy’, but I’ve changed my mind. It should be called Cook Yourself Dim. Throughout the thirty arduous minutes that I watched, I found many many things to find hateful. I’ve not seen TV this bad in years.

First loathing is the presenters. The thing about Spiffy, Fifi, Woffy Tinky and Fwig (or whatever they’re called) is that they all hang around together, go to the super duper market together and talk about mash (“OOOH!”) and polenta (“COOO”) in the vain hope that we the viewer will believe that they are all pals. It is as plain as the nose on my face that these women actively despise each other. They remind me of seeing boybands on Saturday morning telly all acting wacky in VTs whilst going on some pretend day out… go-karting or learning how to be potters or something.

When one makes a curry (soundtracked by sassy house/plastic-soul music of course) another stands by nodding along to the facts and chipping with words like “indulgent”. Being a good reader of people, her eyes quite obviously say “you’ve let yourself go you lardy bitch”. Girls can be so cruel can’t they? Further proof of this is when they all snigger at the person they’re supposes to be helping. They guffaw (in the way only a bunch of stuck-up public school girls can) when recounting a tale about the participant having to be cut out of her wedding dress. For the record, the featured lady is a Size 16. Instead of saying ‘it’s fine to be a size 16′ they snigger and stand around with their hands on their own ample hips. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that this lot were on coke.

Another hateful thing about this show is how little there is of it. Segments of it are repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until it feels like someone is being very lazy and padding out a very empty vessel indeed (boom tish). We are constantly shown reminders of things that happened seconds before. The credits are very long and are shown at the start of every single show… leaving room for about 10 minutes worth of actual footage. You could replace much of this show with the two frame animations of people dancing in Scooby Doo or characters walking down a hall in any cartoon ever made.

So, aside from the snideness and lack of footage, the girls pull cocky faces when offering the most basic food advice. Sincerely wincing, they snap sassy fingers (a la Ricky Lake participants) and say things like ‘don’t buy ready meals’. Jesus Christ. Okay yaa? That’s not to mention their use of the word “Potado”. I’ll repeat what I shouted at my TV last night; POTATO CONTAINS PRECISELY NO D’S. Do come again. In addition to these shagsack’s faux dieting, the participants are ‘encouraged to eat a balanced diet and exercise’. In essence, the food cooked up in this show doesn’t help you at all because it is food that is … drum roll… PART OF A BALANCED DIET! Ta da!

If people are looking for an easy way to lose weight whilst still eating ‘all their favourite food’. then essentially, the answer is, you can’t. Some people just need to learn how to eat and cook properly. Some people need their jaws wiring. Both bits of this advice apply to all the girls on the show. [Mof Gimmers]