If I wanted to spend 60 minutes of my life watching an upper-middle class girl talk down to a group of women about weddings and love, with the added frustration of her going on about weight loss despite being the size of a free IKEA pencil, I would go to a lunch with a bunch of London PR girls. I would not sit through the hell which was ‘Cherry gets Married’ (BBC Three, next on 8pm today) but I did (stupidly) to try to see who the bloody hell this ‘Cherry’ was.
The idea of the show is that Cherry is getting married (yay!) to the father of her baby, she whinges about her weight (oh no I’m thin! I must be thinner!), and then randomly travels the country to talk to a variety of people who are getting married so she has enough material to make a programme, adds some sneery comments about how they shouldn’t really get married because they are too young or stupid and then talks about herself more, has her wedding and then ends on a schmaltzy note. Great.
Cherry has the same manner of Sarah Beeny when she gets really annoyed at the couple who won’t take her advice (minus the pint-sized charm): condescending, bemused and frustrated that no one can be as perfect as her. She says wistfully ”it’s so sad” when a girl has an arranged marriage, and she looks at a working class lass’ pink dress with utter surprise/disgust.
I tried to do a bit of research on Cherry Healey (full surname Chadwyck-Healey) to see if she had any credibility as a presenter, perhaps a journo turned investigative presenter? Was she the female Louis Theroux? Mysteriously her website has no biography, her agents don’t have a proper page on her, all I know is that she likes making documentaries about babies, marriage and boozing. I did find a mention of her in an old guardian article about a then 26 year old Television Researcher Cherry talking about her Christian faith, and her hopes of marrying her ‘Roly’. She does mention in the programme that she had a baby with Roly before they got married, but doesn’t mention her Christian faith which was a bit disappointing as it may have given a bit more of an interesting angle to ‘her’ show.
I am always eager to see more programmes about the female perspective but my issue with this programme is that it is all too personal, too ‘Cherry’ and not enough ‘us’. I have read on many blogs that people seem to like her manner (why oh why) but have absolutely no idea who she is. I don’t want to know everything (believe you me!), but knowing she is a credible journalist would help. As one person said ’without any information about how she came to lecture us on such areas as marriage and babies it would be good to know that she has some credibility as a journalist. Most presenters at least have some information on Wikipedia.’ I hope she isn’t actually one of those girls who got picked out of obscurity by a family friend who works in TV. Or even a PR girl who was spotted by a TV producer at lunch…
Telly Cat’s Verdict:
Middles class Britain recoils in horror at the thought that poor and ugly people deign to besmirch their fairytale of the “perfect” wedding day by being poor and ugly, and worst of all doing it because they love each other. Canapes from Iceland? How dare you! Size 14 and getting married? An affront to all who pay higher rate taxes. Thank god Cherry is there to guide us through, to let us know that we’re not alone in our pity for these poor unfortunate poor people. Fortunately the show ended on wonderful high note – a proper wedding, Cherry looked glorious in her dress, every detail looked absolutely perfect from the flowers to venue to the table decorations. Hopefully should any of the poorer viewers of “Cherry gets Married” win on a scratch card they will sensibly invest it in a wonderful proper wedding (like Cherry’s) that they will remember for the rest of their lives. Hats off to Cherry for showing us the unsightly underbelly of love and marriage, and showing the unsightly underbelly how it should be done. I heartily look forward to Cherry’s next expose – on those claiming benefits!
I watched the Cherry Goes Dating programme and was struck by how patronising / stuck-up she came across. Surely there are thousands of girls who could front a programme about what it’s like to be a 30-something single girl. Why did it have to be her when she has it all already? How can she empathise in any way?