Splash! ITV1, Saturday 5 January 2013

So the new year begins with the usual useless spray of celebrity infected programmes on our TV screens involving ice, a famous camera ridden house and now, erm, diving. I turned on Splash! (sorry yes don't forget the exclamation mark, cause nothing spells out a fun programme more than having one of these at the end of its name!) with some trepidation. Mainly because I was worried what it would do for Tom Daley's career (who since has been warned by British Swimming's Chief Executive about his move into mainstream telly.) He's a young enthusiastic man (great as a mentor on the show, resourceful as well, with Helen Leaderer and the mat-into-the-water trick), so you could almost predict the producers would be sniffing at his door even before he had managed to put his clothes back on after last year's bronze medal performance. 

The show in essence looks like a cross between It's a Knock Out and We are the Champions (for those who remember those glory days) and is filmed in the geographically tropical Luton swimming baths. There is something ever so faintly smelling of the 1970s about it, at the start we had various divers athletically bouncing off the boards into the water and then doing all sorts of moves to some music blocked out mainly by an over enthusiastic crowd and some swimming ear noises. Cue lots of flashing lights and whooping. Then we had the presenters. Let us not introduce any new and fresh presenters for the start of a new year, let us roll out the same two that are on our screens for most things either ITV or sport related, yes Vernon Kay and Gaby Logan. Vernon, resplendent in his deck shorts and boating shoes, looked like something from a cruise ship. Logan and Kay are pretty fearless, with their standing on the edge of the diving board ready to interview the celebrities pre-dive, some of whom look like they are bricking it. 

The judging panel is packed with two British diving experts and erm, Jo Brand. Yes, I know...bit of variety?! Maybe the Hoff was out the day the producers tried to call. Each week, different sets of "celebrities" have to do one dive from heights of their choice, and then they are awarded points and then people phone up and vote again giving ITV lots of money. In this first speedo-tastic espisode, we had the comedienne from Ab Fab (no not any of the famous ones, though Bubble would have been very amusing) the sleeezy guy from ITV comedy Benidorm (who looks as sleezy in real life as his sleezy on screen persona), Jenni Falconer (she who used to present GMTV, well sometimes) Omid Djalilii (who described his diving technique as being like a pig being fired into a trough) and one of the Sugarbabes called Jade (there have been so many variations of the Sugarbabes lineup that they should be renamed). Each of the contestants wore various states of undress, adorned with lots of glitter and bling, I'm not sure whether to detract from their cringeworthy or awkward to watch dives. 

There was some blatant budgie smugglers in the mix and some very tighty gold bikinis for the more daring. Amazingly, each of the female celebrities managed to dive with a full face of slap, thank goodness for waterproof mascara, no-one likes an Alice Cooper look post dive darling. Oh, even before I get to the diving, did I mention that the hoards of (mainly girls) in the audience scream every time Tom Daley appears, it's like One Direction keep on surfacing from the shallow end in their armbands, such is the fervour for this bronzed six-packed 18 year old (sorry, just describing him for those who don't know who he is...)

Essentially, it's a terrible concept, 5 two-second dives making up a 90 minute show, really??? Although Omid Djalili's swan dive from the 10 metre platform was not at all graceful, it was brave, and some of the dives by the two more leaner celebrities were pretty good for amateurs, that is until they turned into banana shapes as they hit the water, ouch! So stuck was the programme with trying to pad out the 90 chlorine-filled minutes that they introduced a bizarre badly choreographed diving/dancing routine with guys dressed as James Bond leaping into the water below, all very strange. Women according to the first programme can't dive, as they were just seen straddling the men while pouting in their clingy Bond girl dresses (see I told you it whiffed of the 70s.) After much thought (well, minimal really) I can conclude that this is going to be one of those programmes that is so utterly rubbish we can't stop watching it. With an average of 5.6 million viewers on it's first night, there must be a lot of crazy folk out there, ultimately just wanting to see celebrities belly flopping, or loosing their trunks...