I’ve been thinking about this all day and I’m still not sure (a) what it was trying to do and (b) whether I enjoyed it or not. That is to say, I enjoyed (most of) it while I was watching it, but then when I started really thinking about it afterwards I started to get a bit annoyed and defensive on behalf of my gay mates. I mean, imagine how you’d feel if you were living in a house share with a couple of your mates and a gay guy came to live with you to “see if he could turn himself straight.” And worse, proceeded to do this by masturbating for an hour a day with your supply of straight porn. It doesn’t work that way round, does it? So why should it be any different when the tables are turned?

But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. The premise basically was that Dawn had once kissed a girl, and another time had enjoyed a threesome. Hats off to her for sharing all this with the viewing public. I don’t know many blokes who’d be prepared to admit the equivalent (assuming the threesome was with another couple) on national TV. OK, I don’t know any blokes who would admit it. So anyway, having had those experiences, she wondered whether she might be hiding the truth about herself from herself. Was she really a lesbian after all? Had all those years of straight shagging, and all the many partners she admitted to, been a lie, rather than just a lie-IN? There was only one way to find out.

Apparently that way is for Dawn to completely and unreservedly throw herself into lesbian life for a whole month. To vow not to do any flirting, or indeed have any contact whatsoever (except where absolutely necessary for the programme) with men. She’s going to live with lesbians, speak to lesbians, party with lesbians and work with lesbians. And any professional people, while they might not be lesbians, will be women wherever possible.

Nervous and giggly, Dawn packs for her month away. She’s amused by the fact that somehow, subconsciously, she’s picked up a pair of leather trousers. And those stilettos look a bit dom.

She arrives, and is greeted by three attractive women. None of them are partners, they just live together. Within seconds of her arrival Dawn is squealing “I can’t believe you’re all lesbians!” Umm…why? Because they’re not all wearing braces fergawdsake?

To celebrate her arrival they all go off to a lesbian club. Dawn spends the night being almost totally ignored by the entire clientele. Their gaydar clearly operating at maximum efficiency, Dawn doesn’t pull and finds this hard to understand.

The next day Dawn sets off to visit a female sexual psychologist to ask whether all women are gay underneath. There’s lots of talk of “fluid sexuality” and stuff, and the woman does indeed believe that women, more than men, are open to a variety of sexual experience. Isn’t this just another stereotype, I find myself thinking? Just because there’s a lot of girl-on-girl action available if you go looking for it, does that automatically imply all women would be up for it if pushed?

One of Dawn’s lesbian housemates seems to think so. “I asked a woman in a pub once if I could go down on her and she said OK, so we went off to the toilet.” How romantic! So women do cottaging too! Who knew?

Dawn and her new mates take a test that gives you a score between 0 (completely straight) and 7 (100% gay). The other three score 6.3, 6.7 and 6.3. Dawn’s score was 2-point-something. Err, almost completely straight then. What a surprise. Because actually, and you’d think Dawn didn’t know this the way she was carrying on, gay is not a frame of mind or a life choice. She seems to think you can make yourself gay if you’re only prepared to try hard enough. No dear, it’s who you are. Or is it? Later in the programme Dawn visits another expert, who reckons that she could “reprogramme her sexuality” if she masturbated to lesbian porn (hence the references to masturbation and porn above, in case you were wondering). Amazingly, so committed is Dawn to her journey that she does just this, for an hour a day, and surprises herself by eventually having a dream about – yes you guessed it – a lesbian encounter.

But before that revelation, Dawn had visited a cunnilingus class in central London. Attended exclusively by women (all the men, presumably, already know how to do cunnilingus. Ahem. Oh, no, it was a LESBIAN cunnilingus class. Right) Dawn is more than a little uncomfortable when one of her classmates starts coming on to her. Huh? Hang on a minute – she’s living with lesbians for a month to prove to herself that she could be a lesbian, she attends a lesbian cunnilingus class and is approached by an attractive lesbian who’s clearly interested in her, and what does she do? “I’m awfully sorry, but I ought to be getting home.”

Yeah, right. You’ve got to go and iron your leather trousers. Doh! She doesn’t fare any better with a lesbian Internet date. Her friend for the evening susses her out in…20 minutes. Dawn feels let down. It was never this hard with blokes.

Maybe the problem is that she’s too submissive? She tries dressing up as a man, binding her boobs and donning a flat cap and combat trousers like some kind of weird Northern stereotype, and sets off for the nearest bar where once again she spends the evening totally alone and looking lost. Her image is not helped by the fact that she’s still holding her bottled beer in a really girlie way. Eventually she decides to take matters into her own hands and approach someone.

She strides over to an attractive girl by the bar.
“Do you want to dance?” she yells.
“Why?” the girl replies.

Why?? Excellent! She’s even worse at pulling than I am! Then the girl rubs it in by asking “are you usually femme?” Sussed, big time. But the poor girl has no idea exactly HOW femme. Or does she?

I’m sure you get the picture by now. There’s a bit more of the same, but I won’t bore you with it. I will say that the last five minutes of the programme were perhaps the most revealing of all. Dawn and the housemate she’d been closest to – Catherine I think – had a long heart-to-heart. The others had, in fact, assumed they’d be “at it” from the first night, but it had taken them this long to get close. They had just moved in for a kiss when the other girls returned, spoiling the moment. They did end up spending the night together, although Dawn strenuously pointed out that…”we had our pyjamas on the whole time and *nothing* happened!”

Which, for someone who purported to being trying to bring out their lesbian side, was a strange thing to say I thought. Unless she was faking it all along.