I’ve seen some pointless programmes in my time, but Home for Life (BBC Two, Wednesday, 15 July, 8pm) may take some beating. In a time when everyone is flat-broke or worried about the future, it seems rather strange for the BBC to decide to show a programme that wills us on to spend money we just don’t have. Still, with a show like Kirstie’s Homemade Home, we got tips on how to tart up salvaged tables and all that, which makes sense. Love your home. You have to live in it. However, in this crappy runt of a programme, it simply stood by and watched people prove that money can’t buy taste.

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Last night, while watching Kirstie’s Homemade Home (Channel 4, Thursday, 23 April, 8pm) I once again got complete and utter Lifestyle Envy. The green eyed monster in me briefly overtook common sense and I started to holler, mentally, that this was the most crass show on the box. Economic Meltdown around my ears, and there’s Kirstie bloody Allsopp, having a gay old time tarting up an old house… probably not her only home… just for kicks! I mean, the sheer bloody nerve of it! And then, thankfully, that fleeting notion passed and I got lost in Kirstie’s world like it was an episode of Rosemary and Thyme.

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Kirstie Allsopp’s TV transformation has been quite staggering. If you’ve flicked over to More4 recently and caught the early shows of Location Location Location Relocation Location, you will have seen just how uptight and awkward she was on camera. Now, she’s bullish, ebullient and posho-fun. These are the reasons that she’s been given her own show, which started last night. Kirstie’s Homemade Home (Channel 4, Thursday, 16 April, 8pm) saw our property lovey considering our credit crunch needs. She showed us all how to mend and make stuff and celebrate local glass-blowers and potters. In fact, she’d made the home equivalent of Hugh’s Chicken Run. Lovely, idealistic living… although not necessarily completely practical.

Related: Relocation Relocation | Kirstie Allsopp Goes Crafty on New Show

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Thursday nights are rubbish for telly. There’s hardly a thing on worth watching*. That was why I ended up sat in front of 10 Years Younger: The Challenge (Channel 4, Thursday, 19 March, 8pm). Predictably, it was still awful. You see, despite the new cuddly wuddly presenter in Myleene Klass, it’s still as nasty and spiteful as ever. In fact, it’s even nastier because of the veneer of amiability that presides the whole thing. So, like a grinning killer, the show grabbed Dawn Palmer and Sheila Mortimer by the scrag on their stomachs and flung them into fashion hell.

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What is it with Supersize vs Superskinny (Channel 4, Tuesday, 3 March, 8pm)? I mean, I’ve no idea what it’s trying to tell us. Of course, I recognise that it’s doing a good thing by saying ‘Look, we’ve all been banging on about fatties for ages, but really skinny people aren’t cool either, y’know?‘… but honestly, I’m not sure I learn a damn thing when I watch the show. The clue hangs on the word ‘too’. Too fat? Bad. Too skinny. Also bad. So how do they manage to drag it out for an hour?

Related: Another review of the show | Cook Yourself Thin

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I watched, and pretty much enjoyed, the original series of It’s Not Easy Being Green (BBC Two, Wednesday, 11 February, 8) which featured Dick Strawbridge and his family building The Greenest House There Ever Was. I enjoyed the ingenuity of the whole thing… turning your own shite into fertiliser and building a waterwheel. It was a bit like Grand Designs, only without the Apple Mac and Zero 7 soundtrack. So, when I saw it in the listings again, I completely ignored it. I thought it was a repeat or worse still, a catch-up show. Last night I tuned and found that the show itself has undergone something of a make-over.

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Now that the arse has fallen out of the housing market, Relocation Relocation (Channel 4, Wednesday, 7 January, 8pm) was in danger of becoming a completely irrelevant show. I mean, you don’t want to be offered advice on something that currently feels like an unattainable dream. However, all is not lost. Relocation Relocation has gone for the TV angle as opposed to the ‘helpful advice’ schtick. Basically, the show has remembered that it works best when you get complete morons in on the act. Last night’s show featured a woman monumentally stupid and gobsmackingly spoiled. So horrendous was she that I immediately knew that we were in for a treat. I like it when my TV has Kirstie and Phil getting angry at idiots on it.

Related Related: Relocation Relocation Review | New craft show with Kirstie Allsop

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Gok Wan is a rare and strange creature. Made entirely of angles, Gok is akin to a saucy woman trapped inside the body of a repressed gay man with the attitudes of a bricklayer. How many people can you say that about? Gok is so unusual that I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s actually a robot that has been fitted with a functioning human heart… and if that’s the case, I can’t to see Gok Wan meet Gok’s Two, Three and Four. Of course, Gok isn’t really the star of How To Look Good Naked (Channel 4, Tuesday, 2 December, 8pm). Nope, the real star of the show is women in various states of undress.

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There’s been a lot of brouhaha about property shows of late. People have been saying “HOW DARE THESE PEOPLE TALK ABOUT HOUSES?!? THE GREAT LUMPEN GRIEF MONGERS!” I’ve poked fun at the whole thing too… but by and large, the reaction to TV property shows has been a little hysterical. I mean, it’s not like TV property peeps have been going around setting fire to dogs and laughing at poor people is it? So with that, I tuned into Location, Location, Location (Channel 4, Monday, 17 November, 9pm) to see what a post credit crunch property show looked like… and it was really weird.

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