Now you’d probably never guess but I’m not really a TOWIE watcher, although I have totes picked up on some of the lingo over the years by osmosis, but my Mum is a big fan and it’s clearly with that 50+ female demographic in mind ITV2 have decided to relaunch the hysterically awful Non-Celebrity Celebrity Love Island last night, the show nobody wanted ten years ago and still seemingly the show nobody wanted going by last night’s viewing figures.

It started with Caroline Flack getting on the phone to apparently all her sexy singleton mates in a VT that’s either deliberately cheesey or just a hilariously rubbish idea in the first place. Then we met the guys! And they all look practically identical, and all their names  start with the fashionable letter J (there’s Josh, Jordan, Jonathan, Jeremiah, Jeffrey and Lee who’s the thick funny one). After some top lad banter we get to meet the women in a sort of reversal of Take Me Out. To be fair the females seem to be a bit deeper than the men, or at least you can tell them apart.

And then there was no full frontal nudity or graphic sex making the whole 90 minutes basically a waste of time for everybody, then they threw in two Italian guys with Northern accents who, amazingly, not only look like the other six guys but are actually identical twins.

Anyway it was basically rubbish but I did end up watching it all so there’s that. In six week’s time one of the couples will win £50,000 and you can vote for free for everything with the official app. Meanwhile we’re working on a format that mixes Love Island, First Dates and The Undateables called Awkward Archipelago – if any TV types are reading call me.

In other news a friend of mine saw Keep It In The Family being recorded in Elstree yesterday. He had a great time and suggested the end game had been tweaked a bit – there are only four gifts, and Bradley’s got his own box (it’s Wheel of Fortune all over again). I don’t know the specific details but I’m sure the excitement will be palpable when it returns to ITV soon.

OK, a lot to fit in today. Don’t forget that from Saturday afternoon 5pm UK time the fourth annual 24 Hour Gameshow Marathon in the US fronted by Cory Anotado, Christian Carrion, Bob Hagh and special guests will be streaming live online at the Gameshow Marathon website, we also encourage you to donate if you enjoy it (or even if you don’t), all proceeds go to Child’s Play ($25 is around £17.50 for reference although you can donate less or indeed more). A mixture of US and UK games will be played, one an hour in theory. This has been good fun in the past. The site is here, and their Twitter is here.

Secondly, our chums at Znak and Jones are after SMART contestants for a runthrough:

Znak & Jones are on the look-out for smart quizzers for an office run through of a brand new daily quiz show, taking place on Monday 22nd June.

Location: Central London
Time: Midday to 6pm
Expenses?: Travel expenses and lunch

Ideally, you will have very good general knowledge, but also be strong on at least one particular subject of your choosing (Movies, TV, Sport etc).

The run through will not be filmed, but if you impress us, there is always a very good chance that you will be considered for a regular role in the series proper (should this be of interest to you).

If you are free on Monday 22nd June, please email us on: hello@znakjones.com, putting “Quiz” in the subject line and mentioning where you saw the contestant call.  Many thanks.

Go for it, Punters.

Probably Saturday 20th or 27th. Edit: It’s the 13th. Anyway here’s a trailer:

And you may remember I saw an episode being recorded back in February, and this is what it was like. Set looks pretty good from the camera angle on telly it does have to be said.

It’s going to look a bit strange in the broadcast though – they filmed the show in real time but it’s been in the can for months, so when you see the surviving adventurer get on the plane to go back to the adventure it’s dark out, where of course it’ll be light out now, which rather betrays its lack of up-to-the-minute-ness. Still though.

Edit: If you hadn’t gathered The Cube starts again on Wednesday night. It’s almost certainly a demotion, but at the same time light entertainment tends to do quite well on Wednesdays, and it hasn’t been doing the business at the weekend for a while now, so we’ll see.

We will remind people of this next weekend (when it’s actually happening) but in the US Cory Anotado, Bob Hagh and Christian Carrion will be staying up for 24 hours doing gameshows and streaming it all online for the charity Child’s Play. Special guests are also expected. For more details and to donate have a visit to gameshowmarathon.com. This is the fourth year of the event. The previous years had been good fun.

The end of the week is looking WELL ACTION-PACKED:

• Big Brother! Producers are responding to low ratings by effectively rebooting the show on Friday, with four people getting kicked out and four new people going in. All the people not nominated are up for eviction and everybody was nominated is safe, a simple way to get rid of the deadwood, but after effectively penalising the housemates in the shopping task last week for actually doing the task and effectively penalising housemates for not creating enemies you have to wonder what the point of anything is, you might as well keep everyone in for ten weeks then pick a winner at random. Actually that’s a great idea, do that next year Endemol. Also Aaron’s been kicked out for inappropriate behaviour. We might have to revisit our bets over the weekend. The new housemates all seem to be of the stripper and bisexual (that’s what they say at the auditions, they never really are) variety, and one of them will be a “familiar face”.
• It’s the Ninja Warrior UK final this Saturday! Frankly I don’t love the reformatting but it’s still just about  entertaining enough and it’s done good numbers. Who will make it up to the top of Molehill Midoriyama and claim the title of Ninja Warrior?
• Last night a new show called Bullseye started on Fox in the US which basically is made by the people behind Fear Factor and hits all the same beats as Fear Factor but concentrates rather more on the action-stuff – last night had people trying to hit a target whilst swinging underneath a helicopter, trying to grab as many bullseyes as possible suspended underwater by being dunked upside down from a crane and finally knocking bullseyes down around a course driving a buggy. It was fun and entertaining, but the strongest bit for me was the first challenge and it petered off from there, I do wonder how many different variants of closest/most/quickest they can come up with. Worth a watch though.
• It’s the last night of 500 Questions tonight! It’s had a loyal (albeit small) audience but it’s not risen throughout the week (and the point of stripping a show nightly is entirely to promote a “did you see?” attitude which plainly hasn’t happened). Ultimately I think the show was overformatted. Anyway I’ll update the Demographic Dragon with the final numbers tomorrow (it’s a double ep tonight) for reference it was well beaten by the premiere of poverty-porn-dilemma show The Briefcase in pure numbers and the key demo and Bullseye in the demo slightly later last night.

• Benchmark with Paddy McGuinness starts on Channel 4 on Monday afternoon.