Vanessa’s Real Lives: ITV1, 7 December 12.30 p.m.

Whereas some might consider Vanessa Feltz’s new daytime show to be exploitationist, could it actually be a forum for challenging and re-evaluating societal norms?

By providing a platform for some of Britain’s “most controversial personalities”, Vanessa’s Real Lives enables a consideration of taboo subjects and unconventional behaviour. The episode in question considered appropriate age limits for sexual relationships, what society considers a proper expression of maternal love and the untapped potential of alternative health products.

Granted this was done by bringing on Lucy “Miss Lust” Hayward, a former teacher who was jailed for sleeping with a fifteen-year old school-boy; Veronika “bitty”, Robinson, who breast-fed her two kids until the age of seven; and Jim Crawford, a man who’s elixir of youth is a phial of his own urine, but you can’t make an omelette without having a frank discussion with those eggs.

Hayward was first and gave an account of the relationship she’d started at thirty-one with a boy half her age.

Apparently, she’d been in an “oppressive relationship during her twenties” when she wasn’t allowed out much (I dare say the two kids she was supposed to be raising during this time may have limited her nightlife). When she moved to take a new job as an English teacher she starting socialising with younger people in the town who had “similar tastes in music”, and subsequently met the adolescent in question.

According to Hayward, he was a typical “Jack the lad, confident, cocky, a charming young man”, and in Vanessa’s treacly phrase “Cupid’s dart struck very heavily and [she] fell in love”.

Hayward rebutted any cradle-snatching accusations by reminding us that she’d been in an “oppressive relationship during her twenties”. He was “fifteen going on twenty-five”, and seeing as she was thirty-one going on fifteen then in one sense you could say he was older than her. She made him feel like a man and he took her back to the youth she’d ‘lost’.

However, societal disapproval of such relationships led to her being fired from her job, convicted of indecent assault, jailed for two years and placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for eight years. Because of this she now finds it extremely difficult to get work and resents being classified with paedophiles, especially considering the sexual abuse she’d suffered when young. She was the real victim here, and lest we forget she had been in an “oppressive relationship during her twenties”.

Well it would have been a nice story had it been true. However, while Hayward may resented being registered with paedophiles and claimed to be nothing like them, one characteristic they all share is a tendency to minimise their own actions.

What the show failed to mention was that Hayward had been jailed for cannabis possession at the time of the indecent assault conviction, having allowed her home to be used by other teenagers to have ‘pot parties’ at. And while she may have claimed the relationship developed out of “mutual respect and friendship” it ended with the boy running away from home before revealing the details of the tryst to his parents. They claimed his personality changed as a consequence of the affair and he become withdrawn and introverted (maybe he was worn out from using all the sex toys and videos found by the police at Hayward’s flat). Hardly the most responsible actions from someone whose job description entails a significant amount of in loco parentis.

Hayward was also recently exposed by the People newspaper to be working as a dominatrix and caning punters while wearing a mortarboard and gown: I guess this must be payback for that oppressive relationship she had in her twenties.

But her story at least started a discussion on this particular societal norm. Was she the victim in all of this? Had the young man been exploited and harmed by such a relationship? And is Vanessa Feltz really a MILF?

While there was general disapproval amongst the audience, most struggle to articulate exactly how Hayward had transgressed, although to be fair they hadn’t been given all the facts. One woman argues that “he was a young man with his life ahead of him”, as if he’d been killed in a road traffic accident. Another states that “he’s fifteen – not a man. You wouldn’t sleep with your own father and brother”. Hayward, perhaps understandably, retorts that it’s “not really the same thing”, and Feltz agrees that it’s a completely different topic (probably tomorrow’s).

Hayward further tries to excuse her lack of responsibility by claiming to have been “vulnerable” at the time of the affair due to the “oppressive relationship she’d had in her twenties”. Vanessa informs us that she was in her similar situation when her marriage had ended and one of her daughter’s friends informed her she was a “MILF” (‘mother I’d like to fuck‘- the more crude modern-day version of ‘oldie but goodie’), but despite her own “vulnerability” at the time she hadn’t taken advantage of the situation as she “couldn’t have faced his mother afterwards”.

But the MILF topic clearly strikes a chord in one young man of Mediterranean origin who seizes his opportunity to display his support for sexual generation games by kissing Vanessa’s hand, telling her: “You very gorgeous – I like mature women. Can I call you baby?”

Keen to act on his beliefs, the gigolo insists on dancing for Vanessa (“You are gorgeous – can I dance for you?”). While she takes his place in the audience, the young man stands with his arms above his head, gyrating his hips and thrusting his pelvis. He then crouches down and brings his head level with her waist, glides up along her torso and for good measure pokes his nose into her cleavage. As his closer, he lifts his shirt to expose his six-pack and nipples. Unfortunately, this does nothing for Vanessa (“I’m feeling hot – but only with embarrassment”), or Hayward. But then he was probably more than half her age.

Continuing the theme of matronly love was breast-feeding counsellor Veronika Robinson. Breast was most definitely best for her and her two children, who she’d breast-fed until the age of seven, having left the decision of when to wean to them.

The objections from the audience vary, beginning with practical issues (teething and biting). However, Robinson had used this to her advantage as a means to set parenting guidelines: “You put the baby down and you say ‘no!’, and they learn very, very quickly that if they want to breast feed they don’t put those teeth in.”

This lesson had been so well learnt that when one of her daughters was asked to write a list of what she wanted for her ninth birthday at the top she wrote ‘bitty’. Well she probably didn’t phrase it quite that way but ‘birthday bitty’ was what she’d got, and apparently “it made her day and she had a very special memory of it”. No doubt she’ll be recounting it to a psychotherapist in a few years time.

Shifting the issue, Robinson begins to argue that breastfeeding is a taboo in our culture, and one of the reasons people “have a problem is that they don’t see it”. However, as most of the mums in the audience are quick to point out, weaning is more associated with setting age-appropriate behaviour. One comments that you wouldn’t have your children using the potty at seven just because they still wanted to.

Being a breast-feeding counsellor means Robinson is bound to emphasise the nutritional benefits of mother’s milk, but as one woman points out, why not just give it to them in a cup? With the zeal of a convert, Robinson continues to fixate on what she perceives to be a cultural taboo over breastfeeding, coming to the bizarre conclusion that “We live in a culture where it’s fine to have a relationship with inanimate objects, yet we don’t want our kids to have one with human beings”.

Until this point the women were dominating the debate, so it was nice to hear the male perspective. Unfortunately, it came from the MILF-loving Mediterranean, who asks Robinson
“Do you know when you breast feed, do your boobs get bigger?” When this is confirmed he replies “that’s why you want to breast feed, because you want your boobs big, eh?” Rather than seeing breast feeding at such a late age as unnatural he is simply jealous at her actions (“The kid is seven years old – it’s unfair!”).

The final guest was Jim Crawford, keen to explain the health and well-being that can be obtained by drinking your own urine. Jim’s life had changed four years ago when a friend had recommended a book on the potential benefits of drinking your own. Apparently, out of the “hundreds” of people she knew he was one of only six people she considered “open-minded” enough to share the information with. Or maybe she just didn’t like him.

Jim argues that urine is misunderstood and is actually the most medically researched substance in the world, but on that basis blood can’t be too far behind and I’d like to see someone on daytime TV using this argument to defend drinking it. Urine is, according to Crawford, “your own way of making you healthy”, although I was always under the impression it accomplished this by an outward rather than inward flow.

But in case anyone thought Jim was taking the piss (and with the authenticity of guests on a Vanessa Feltz show always open to question), a quick necking of a flute of his own vintage proved beyond doubt that he literally was taking the piss.

If anyone is curious about the flavour then according to the connoisseur it has its own individual taste and changes according to gender. But how did he know this? Jim smirks rather too quickly for comfort in response to Vanessa’s query. It emerges that his girlfriend practices urine therapy on an “ad hoc basis when she fancies it”. It presents a lovely image in my mind, but as a picture tells a thousand words, for the purposes of space I’ll go no further.

Apart from the hitherto disregarded nutritional benefits, there’s also the opportunity to incorporate urine into your beauty regimen. Jim uses it to hydrate his skin, claiming it calms his skin after a shave “like nothing else”. To demonstrate this, and because he’s worth it, Jim smears a couple of droplets around his chin, informing his perturbed audience that “it will go straight through the skin and into it very quickly”.

Although informing him that he “smells like wee”, Vanessa was quick to sing the praises of his complexion. From a distance. And his skin does look relatively smooth and line free. But also unmistakeably yellow (just like his teeth), so I personally won’t be ditching the Clinique three-step system just yet.

As we return to an audience uniformly unimpressed by Jim’s urine therapy, he did have one supporter.

Unfortunately, it was Veronika.

Her mother also takes the piss and recommends it to her grandchildren as a “great hair conditioner”. However, it might have the unfortunate side-effect whereby your female offspring breastfeed for prolonged periods.

Taken together, the show’s deviant trio demonstrate how unexamined social norms sometimes are for some people. While it’s easy to recognise when they’re being contravened, it’s sometimes more difficult to define exactly what the deviance is about the behaviour in question, apart from the jarring unconventionality.

This is well illustrated by the final comment from a member of the audience about Crawford’s urine drinking, with a young woman stating that “I feel like I’m gong to be sick. I just don’t get it! I understand you’re not hurting anyone by doing this, so fair play to you, but personally, I think it’s wrong!”

Societal norm pariahs or pioneers? Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, Mr Crawford and Ms Hayward.

The Russell Brand Show, C4, 24 November, 11.05

With an ego and media profile the size of Brand’s, the eponymously titled C4 chat show was inevitable.

But could The Russell Brand Show fare any better than the debacle that was Davina?

The choice of Dirty Pretty Things’ ‘Deadwood’ as the theme tune would prove to be an apposite summation of the next fifty minutes. After the opening titles segued into the obligatory camera pan round the audience (in case the viewer was curious as to how many people can fit in a television studio), on flounced Brand with trademark “blimeys!” and “‘citing!”, and wearing the same regulation outfit he’s always bedecked in (black open neck shirt and trousers and silver belt).

The line-up for his debut show was at least of a higher calibre than that managed on Davina (e.g. Tess Daly and Vernon Kay), with David Walliams and Matt Lucas (the only people in Britain more ubiquitous than Brand), and Amy Winehouse featuring. The latter was particularly promising after serving up the car-crash TV moment of the year only a few weeks earlier with her inebriated rendition of Beat It on The Charlotte Church Show.

Conforming to chat-show custom, the show opens with a topical monologue. In the news this week was Tom Cruise’s wedding to Katie Holmes, although with the entire routine based on this topic you could be forgiven for thinking it was the only thing that had happened. However, Brand’s nervous delivery results in a stilted and monotonous routine, something you wouldn’t expect to see in someone who does stand-up for a living.

But maybe it was the material that affected Brand’s delivery. Jokes about Cruise’s height (was this the ‘adult’ humour we were warned of at the start?), allegedly wearing platform shoes, and his wedding being “all a bit ‘ollywood” (which is sort of what you’d expect from an ‘ollywood actor’s wedding) were just too obvious. And it’s a bit rich from someone with a persona based on mockneyisms, contrived linguistic archaisms and shag-pile hair to mock another man’s affectations.

Brand’s nervousness was compounded by the appearance of Walliams and Lucas, whose relaxed manner contrasts with his floundering (and flouncing). The interview kicks off with a set piece in which his guests have to bring him a present (Walliams: “that’s a good idea – for you”). Lucas’ present is Douglas Adams’ The Deeper Meaning of Liff, while Walliams’ gift was a top hat, which went so well with Brand’s outfit. Perched on top of his head like a mattress balancing on a bottle of wine he certainly looked, in Jim Royle parlance, like a ‘top hat’.

Brand returned the favour by giving Lucas a model of his (Lucas’s) head made out of chocolate, although it seemed a missed opportunity for no one to quip about Brand giving Lucas head. Maybe they thought it too obvious, sort of like making jokes about Tom Cruise being short. Brand’s gift to Walliams was a chocolate-shaped penis (Walliams: I’ve always wanted you to give me that”) and in case you’re curious, after getting his mouth around the end he did indeed swallow.

As the show progresses it becomes apparent that Brand and the Little Britain pair have inverted the traditional roles of host and guest, occasionally slipping into This is Your Life territory, such as Walliams’ wistful description of his first impressions on meeting Brand (“I hated you when I first met you, when you were on heroin [but] then you’d done yoga and you cleaned yourself up and we became really close friends”).

Intermittently remembering the host's traditional duties, Brand mentions the special Comic Relief Little Britain episode, although this only leads in to another opportunity to talk about himself, such as his very own appearance in the Comic Relief Little Britain episode, dressed up in ladies underwear (maybe the black shirt and trousers were at the dry cleaners that night).

After an unnecessary reference as to exactly why the duo were on the show (“you’re here to do something promotional”), we’re shown a extract from their live DVD, before returning to a sketch idea nicked from another source (Saturday Night Armistice), in which CCTV footage of lookalikes playing Walliams and Lucas are shown in their dressing room before the show. A runner comes in with a cup of tea for them and ‘Wallliams’ and ‘Lucas’ are shown humiliating him in various escalating ways, culminating in him dressed up as the hooded Iraqi Abu Ghraib prisoner (a visual joke that was done better on Arrested Development over two years ago, mainly because it was actually topical then).

The imminent commercial break (“to raise revenue and that”) prompts Brand into the first display of his Ted Rogers-esque 3-2-1 wrist movement, and promises are made that when we come back David and Matt will “reveal exclusive things about their private life”. Which will make a change from hearing about Brand’s.

After the ‘revenue raising’ the show resumes with a sketch featuring, you guessed it, Brand as Tom Cruise and more height jokes (maybe there would have been room for the head joke after all) and innuendo about Cruise’s sexuality. So we can pretty much assume Tom won’t be appearing on the show in the near future.

Back in the studio the host and guests have moved towards a bar area (with Lucas looking particularly uncomfortable while perched on a stool), and Brand continues his attempts to interview the pair. But is it possible to take anyone seriously as an interviewer (or person) who asks Walliams about his cross-Channel swim in the following way:

“Your real chance to shine, David, come when you done that swimming across the sea, what you done.”

After a clip showing Walliams beginning his cross-Channel swim (and falling off a rock at the end), the spotlight is soon back on Brand as he ponders whether “you can find redemption through these charitable acts” (Lucas: “You’d have to swim around the fuckin’ world, mate!”). A skit of Brand pretending to swim the Channel is shown, followed by unnecessary outtakes of him flouncing about in the sea (“Me fuckin’ snout’s gone out!”).

At this point Walliams and Lucas have been on for more than half the show and, as Brand notes, “I don’t know if you’ve told us anything yet that’s really, really intimate”. This is always going to be the critical factor in making a chat show interesting, although Walliams is pretty clear why this hasn’t happened so far (“Well you haven’t asked us anything – you’ve just talked about yourself”).

In the final section, after more revenue raising and wrist reflexes, the host and his guests return to the sofa for more chat, although it’s unfortunate - or depending on your opinion rather apt - that the chocolate penis is constantly in shot whenever the camera switches to Brand as he asks a question. He continues to elicit little of interest from the two with Walliams being slightly touchy over Brand’s questioning on whether he took his mother to the Baftas “to use her in a defence capacity” (Walliams: “No. I just took her because I knew she’d like to go”).

Finally, after 30 minutes of inconsequential chat (mainly about Brand), something vaguely intimate is revealed when we discover Matt and his partner are about to have a civil partnership, although any follow-up on this is lost as Brand worries what he’ll wear at the wedding (my money being on the black shirt, black trousers and silver belt combo).

It’s something of a relief when the show finally moves on from the pair to Winehouse, although it’s disappointing to find she’s not pissed. Well, “not yet” she isn’t. After an introduction by Brand which made me consider whether he’d fallen off the wagon (“Winehouse: do a record, you lunatic, sing it out of ya gob!”) she “does her record”. As the first time I’d heard her sing was on The Charlotte Church Show, it’s evident that alcohol doesn’t do much for her vocal range, although it has to be said she does sound an awful lot like Shirley Bassey done ‘in the club style’.

After ‘doing her record’ Winehouse accepts Brand’s invitation (“Oi! Winehouse! Come over ‘ere!”) to join him on the sofa with David and Matt. However, Winehouse doesn’t have a present for the host, which leads to an unintentionally amusing verbal squabble between the pair, who despite looking like a gothic his and hers tribute to Dusty Springfield sound exactly like Wayne and Waynetta Slob.

Possibly for this reason the show moves to its climax, with Brand relocating everyone in front of a shelf in order to “situate these glorious gifts up here on the mantelpiece”. Brand claims “these will stand here for all time”, although based on his debut show the likelihood is that his hat and book won’t be the only possessions of his shelved in the near future.

The show ends with a bemused-looking Winehouse (perhaps trying to remember where she’d left her drink) and an embarrassed looking Walliams and Lucas trying to stay in shot by the shelves for the closing credits. Lucas’ book falls off the shelf and narrowly misses Brand’s barnet (probably not the first time the deeper meaning has gone over his head), while he continues his demented Ted Rogers impressions as the credits roll.

Whatever the merits (or otherwise) of Brand’s concocted persona, if a chat show host’s interest is more in himself than his guests, there’s little to sustain interest once the host become tiresome. In thirty minutes of chat with the pair all Brand managed to elicit is they have a DVD out in time for Christmas, Lucas is gay and Walliams’ mother is still alive, and you didn’t need to watch the show to find that out.

It’s appropriate that the production company responsible for this 50-minute exercise in egomania is called Vanity Projects, with its corporate logo being of a scruffy-looking man holding onto his genitals.

Who says narcissists don’t do insight?