Vreau să fiu vedetă

This weekly televisual highlight may just be a poor copy of the X factor, with (frankly) rather boring judges, but it certainly has me spellbound!

Vreau să fiu vedetă works on the premise that children are always good for being exploited, especially if their parents are particularly pushy. Although some are undoubtedly talented, many are just over rehearsed puppets. This video being a good example (although he is very cute!)

The show is not without charm – the kids dancing along next to the stage are quite adorable, especially wwhen they dress up! But otherwise the programme just seems wrong, and on so many levels.

For starters, you can't have failed to have noticed the presenters. The one with the facial hair just seems creepy to me. He gets far too close to the kids, and basically just reminds me of the kind of man your mum told you never to take sweets from.

Far more worrying, I think, is the lap dancer female presenter who is dancing with the kids. This video sees her very tamely dressed. The first time I saw this show, just before Christmas she was trussed up like a turkey, being as she seemed just to be wearing just a small piece of Bacofoil. "Anyone for breast? There's plenty to go around." (Incidentally, the Frog's first words upon seeing the lovely Miss Ionescu were "Quelle Horeur!" so it's not just me being jealous.)

I'm not saying she shouldn't show off her cleavage/legs (if I looked like that I imagine I'd want to dress like her too) but when presenting a programme aimed at, and depicting, children, I am a firm believer in less is more!

(*although it would appear that Roxana is already an adept of this expression from a quick search on YouTube; please only watch this if you are not easily offended .I don't think you'll find any clips like this of Blue Peter presenters*)

Asides from the fact that the show is presented by a pedophile and a porn star, that it lasts a interminably long time, and the judges only give benign praise, the other big problem with the show is its treatment of the guests. The kids are usually accompanied by their parents in the studio who are interviewed on a sofa by old double-D Dora (needless to say that they don't know where to look) and they show a film of the family at home so that grandparents and neighbours can get on the telly as well! The worst example was when a family of very poor farmers took their daughter on the show. The video showed how the family lived in a remote hut without mains water, sewerage or electricity (surprisingly common outside of large towns and the parents were wearing old worn out clothes. They'd obviously sold a few goats to get the kid something nice to wear (a traditional Romanian costume) which the judges all praised her on. They had to really; the unfortunate girl had no real talent to speak of and was clearly the night's token charity case. To add insult to injury, the presenter with the bad face pubes said (and you'll have to excuse my paraphrasing, my Romanian being not the best)

"We see your poor so we bought you some presents", at which point Mlle Il y a du monde sûr le balcon
enters the studio with a wheelbarrow containing farm animals. Unfortunately nobody had thought about how the animals might react to this and they fled from the bright lights and applause as fast as they could, with the poor piglet practically breaking its neck in its bid to clamber out of the ill-thought out means-of-transportation. I don't remember exactly what the other presents were but I seem to remember a basket of yoghurts and raw meat (bet that smelt lovely under the studio lights) and probably some chickens. I'm tempted to say there were cows too but I think I might have made that up. In any case the whole thing was grotesque and the family were speechless (and not through joy). If they really had to be so crass, couldn't they just have given them money and avoided the impending lawsuit from animal rights campaigners (if there are any watching Vreau să fiu vedetă)?

If it gets any worse, I'll let you know.