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TV PREVIEWS

Make My Body Younger, Tuesday 8pm, BBC3

Poor Bianca Gascoigne’s in a bit of a pickle. On the face of it, as Make My Body Younger’s spectacularly miscast presenter George Lamb tells us, she has everything. Just 22 years old, drop-dead gorgeous, a famous footballer for a step-dad, and most importantly of all, a decent relationship with the Daily Star.

But Bianca’s life is spiralling out of control. Every week consists of a constant round of glitzy parties and personal appearances which she finds it impossible to turn up to unless she’s absolutely bladdered. On an average night, she’ll guzzle around 12 vodka mixers, three glasses of champagne and puff her way through a packet of fags or two. She needs help, before she starts looking like Mick Jagger as well as sounding like him.

So it’s time for some home truths, courtesy of a rather swish “living autopsy” routine in which Bianca slips into a plain white swimsuit and has some CGI innards projected onto her body. The tearful glamour girl is then treated to a shocking flurry of statistics as George barks out the biological age of her liver, lungs and skin – and an overall “body age” of 35. “It’s just the shock she needed,” gasps reality TV veteran and mum Cheryl.

Worse still, poor Bianca’s brain age is a worrying 64 years old, so before she starts developing an interest in cribbage and jigsaws, enter Dr James Lambert, the “marathon-running medic”, to mentor our hero for four weeks to see if he can turn her life around. And he’s got his work cut out, since most of Bianca’s evenings start by decanting orange juice into a litre of Smirnoff and downing it in the back of a taxi.

Against all the odds, four weeks later Bianca emerges from a sustained period of sobriety in which she’s managed several public appearances without being snapped falling into the back of a taxi with her crown jewels showing. The downside, which isn’t really touched upon here, is that she hasn’t been in the Daily Star since.

by Stewart Turner, Tuesday 19 May 2009

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