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TV PREVIEWS
John Barrowman: the Making of Me, Thursday 9pm, BBC1 
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How on earth do you make a John Barrowman? Aside from the fact that it's advisable to wear protective goggles in case he opens his mouth to guffaw and reveals the dazzling cavern of enamel beneath, enthusiasm seems to fly from his figure like snot off a sneezer. He's quite the individual.
Like Who Do You Think You Are? with a bigger ego, the remit of new series The Making of Me is to examine one aspect of the presenter-subjects' make-up – in this case, Barrowman's attempts to discover why he's gay.
The programme starts – perhaps a trifle pointlessly – by checking that John is, in fact, homosexual. Much to the Torchwood star's delight, he's placed in a room and shown what the rather prim voiceover refers to as "images of men and woman". Lo and behold, scientists find that their quarry is as gay as banoffee pie.
And so JB's journey begins. A particular highlight is a visit to his Scottish parents, in which he startlingly drops his Yank accent and breaks into broad Scottish dialect – don't panic, apparently he always does this – and reminisces about being dressed up in a bikini as a child and dancing in his garage to ABBA's 'Chiquitita'. Then he takes us upstairs to his old bedroom to check out his expansive doll collection, including a prized Wizard of Oz figurine.
The question here, and the general premise of the programme, is did such a lifestyle help turn John into a friend of Dorothy, or was it simply a manifestation of something he was born with? Nature or nurture, basically – and John is convinced his sexuality is something he was born with.
Although he racks up the air miles, visiting numerous naysayers, yeasayers and gay players, it's not the most convincing of quests: the programme seems to be trying to make us believe that Barrowman is the first person to uncover all this research and bring it together, which seems highly unlikely. Still, there are some interesting revelations, and Barrowman supplies the momentum to carry us through.
by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 23 July 2008
Picture: BBC
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