My Super Sweet Sixteen

When the Big Brother final was broadcast I had thought that the torture, the agony, the drudgery, of reality television on our screens was over. I have survived weeks of celebrities trapped in the Australian bush, celebrities ballroom dancing (badly) and talentless nobodies attempting to sing and dance.

What else could be left?

It turns out that, on the extra-terrestrial channels, there is a wealth of other “reality” inspired programming. These appear to focus on following around former-glamour models, Greco-Antipodean pop stars or people who live in Essex. I am fairly certain that none of these fit into my reality, but such is life. And the only thing that any of them have in common with each other is a curiously orange glow about the face.

You would be forgiven for thinking that any of those is the subject of this column. In fact, if it is imaginable, I have found something even worse.

You can’t guess what that could possibly be can you?!

My Super Sweet Sixteen is the sort of programme that is beyond the comprehension of anyone who is not an overpriliged pubescent with parentals in possession of more money than IQ points. In preparation for this column, I watched a few episodes of this programme. No, I subjected to episodes of this horrendous assault on my principles for Ebeneditor Scrooge – who doesn’t feel a lot of degulove for me right now as my column is over 24 hours late.

The mind boggles at the idea that anyone would give their teenaged daughter a limitless pot from which to plan a birthday party which, realistically, they won’t remember in ten years time. In one particular episode, for example, the birthday girl hand-delivered all two-hundred and fifty invitations in a hired Bentley and with a hired musician to play a fanfare and an actress dressed as a renaissance maiden to announce the birthday girl’s arrival.

Watching  a sixteen year old break up with her boyfriend whom she loved ‘with all my heart’ – ah, the innocence of youth – at the start of the episode because he refused to sing a song she had told him to write for her as a birthday present, made my blood boil. Actually, it made me so angry that I upturned my sandbath on the drawingroom floor just for something to do. I then picked out each individual green pellet from my dinner bowl to throw at the remotecontrolmabob in the hope that the channel would change. Alas, all to no avail.

It seems an obligatory part of this programme that the spoiled brat in question tries on numerous designer dresses – which, I am reliably informed range in price from £300 to £5,000 – so that the birthday girl can “look epic” because “people are going to, like, remember this for the rest of their lives, you know?” No, I don’t know and I really don’t care. In one particular episode, the birthday bash was fancy-dress, and the princess tried on a reproduction Marie-Antoinette dress amongst others. These were not enough it seemed, and she ended up changing her clothes six times during the Sweet Sixteen party. It was the way her mother calmly handled the tantrum in a Knightsbridge shop when Princess Petulant was told she couldn’t have the £3,000 dress that she wanted. “Why are you trying to ruin my party?” She shouted at her mother. I’d have cancelled her £100,000 party after that one!

There are no words for that. Actually, there are, but they are not publishable.

If I had to draw my conclusions about this programme it would be that My Super Sweet Sixteen is, as a title, only 75% truthful. There is nothing super about this programme or the odious brats that it chronicles the parties of. Certainly I didn’t see a great deal of sweetness about it either, unless the quantity of Haribo consumed is to be brought into the equation somewhere. Some episodes were not even about 16^th birthdays, they were about 18^th birthdays, especially on the nights that it was the British episodes rather than the American ones. That said, the “my” is true to form. After a week of being subjected to this programme, every time that the Birthday Girl of the evening spoke all I heard was a high-pitched whine that sounded like “Me! Me! Me! Me! Meeeeee!”