Britain’s Next Big Thing (BBC2, Tuesday) is another reality show in which members of the public risk humiliation for the chance of brief success and even briefer fame.
Britain’s Next Big Thing (BBC2, Tuesday) is another reality show in which members of the public risk humiliation for the chance of brief success and even briefer fame. It’s Masterchef with craftwork. In the first episode, various people tried to pitch their designs to Liberty, the department store in London that resembles a mock-Tudor country-house hotel. The kind where the rooms have names instead of numbers and there are tortuously worded notices telling you not to steal the dressing-gowns.
The chief buyer is Ed Burstell, an American who wears a casually knotted scarf, even indoors. Ed is camp. Very camp. There is Camp coffee, scout camp and there is Ed. Ed adores fabrics decorated with patterns from microscopes, driftwood turned into fruit bowls, even trainer bras (why do teenage girls need to be trained? Can’t they just put the bras on? Boys don’t buy trainer underpants) in vivid colours, though he can’t pick them because nobody would take their 12-year-old daughter to Liberty instead of M&S.
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