With its lively mix of fascinating lifestyle features, handy hacks, heartwarming real life stories and A-to-Z-list celebrity guests, it’s easy to see why the daytime juggernaut This Morning is a multi-award winning show that has helped us improve our humdrum lives.
But at a time when mental health is taken very seriously, I find it astonishing that the feel-good show continues to roll out attention-seeking ‘eccentrics’ in order to give their viewers a cheap laugh.
‘Unique’ guests This Morning has featured recently
Over the years producers have served us up a right bunch of said ‘eccentrics’.
They have no qualms about talking openly about their unconventional physical appearance or their oddball lifestyles.
I mean, who could forget the out of-this-world-looking Anastasia Pokreshchuk.
She spent thousands on cosmetic procedures to look like an alien?
Or Kirstie Wright, the jaw-dropping multi-tasker with a talent for lifting tins of beans with her foo-foo.
And then there was Amethyst Realm, an innocent-looking woman who appeared on the show several times to update us on her topsy-turvy relationship with her spectral lover.
The tanned young man on This Morning
Recently, ITV’s most popular daytime show excelled itself by introducing us to a couple more individuals with stories designed to get us gassing.
One was a very bronzed looking chap called Jimmy Featherstone, who joined Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary on the couch to boast about how he was so obsessed with being super tanned that he happily spent £1000 a month on looking as dark as a mahogany table.
That’s £1000 on unregulated daily tanning injections off the net, sun bed sessions and so much fake tan so he is able to slather himself with five layers of the gooey stuff every morning.
The following day, a raven-fringed woman called Brocade took an age to share her unbelievable story about falling in love with a ghost who used to be a Victorian soldier called Eduardo.
Are ‘weird’ guests being taken advantage of by This Morning?
Yes, we all ‘oohed’ and ‘aaahed’ as the pair and all those others before recounted their tales.
But how long was it before we suddenly started to feel a little uncomfortable about what we’d just seen and the uneasy – yes, I’ll admit it – amusement we’d got from it?
After all, Jimmy says he can’t leave the house until he is the colour of a Mars bar.
And is intergalatic-looking Anastasia genuinely happy in her stretched skin?
And what about our ghost ladies?
Are they are really letting a spook put the willies up them?
Or are they simply pulling our legs for attention?
Sure, these people have happily agreed to go on the telly to chat at length about their personal ‘quirk’.
ITV is of course very cautious, responsible and meticulous about ensuring that guests are mentally strong enough to appear on screen.
But are they actually balanced enough to take the flak they’ll inevitably get on Twitter afterwards?
Isn’t parading these potentially damaged people for our amusement akin to the ghoulish freak shows of yesteryear?
They may have experts on hand to offer a sensible balanced view, but it is clear by the headlines they use that the sole intention is to give viewers something to yak about at the school gates or over the garden fence.
Why do the guests put themselves through it?
Well, notoriety is just as valid to some as talent.
Just look at the Z-list stars who have pretended to have suffered with all manner of life problems or carved up their face just to get some telly time.
It was telling that during his own chat, chesnut-coloured Jimmy flashed a smirk of pride when he told Alison and Dermot that he was known by people in his area as a ‘Ken Doll’.
Most people would be appalled but, for some reason, Jimmy wore the nickname as a badge of honour.
Does this mean he doesn’t have a body dysmorphic condition but will literally do anything to be famous?
That explains the guests who washed their dirty washing on Jeremy Kyle’s ghastly morning horror show.
Who knows? But one thing is for sure, we shouldn’t be entertaining these fragile or attention-seeking individuals on the box anymore.
Whatever motive drives them, do we want to be complicit? Not in 2021.
Read more: This Morning today: Man who spends £1k a month on tanning products sparks concern
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