Time for Tyra to pull plug on Top Model

From time to time the most casual of acquaintances will phone me up and ask if I have tapes of a show they have forgotten to record. And the most-asked-for programme is, no, not Coronation Street, but America's Next Top Model.

You wouldn't fathom it but all sorts of people are devotees of what is possibly television's most formulaic programme and one that is now into its umpteenth series.

If you watched that awful show on emaciated movie stars who were too rich and stupid to eat, then you'll be a big fan of America's Next Top Model because the girls on this show are so skinny they have to run around in the shower to get wet.

The good news is that Tyra Banks, the so-called last of the great supermodels, (her skeleton will be a candidate for the Creationist Museum), has gradually stacked on the weight so that she now looks quite human in contrast to her underlings, who are strangers to the knife and fork.

Greedy old Tyra really ought to have pulled the plug on the show this season because everybody seems to be in agreement that this year's batch are pretty ordinary, so much so that you could rename this show America's Next Huckery Moll.

Take, for instance, the twins, who survived well past their use-by date, and Melrose, the second-placegetter, who had such a bony face I'd be worried about her around a dog.

As for this season's winner, CariDee, I was absolutely amazed to observe, when she was standing before the judges dressed in a denim mini-skirt and high heels, that her legs were so bandy you could have driven a milk cart clean between them.

I mean, don't the judges notice these things? If you'd seen CariDee stripped down to her rompers at the school I went to, you would have naturally assumed she was captain of the hockey team.

And what about the twins' lack of chests, which were so beyond flat they were actually sunken.

Twiggy, who is now a judge on America's Next Top Model, could relate to the lack of bosom but, coupled with incredibly plain looks, the twins made our Inghams look like Angelina Jolie.

Fortunately, this show isn't all about best-in-looks and personality does come into it, which is why the very likeable CariDee won.

The judges evaluated CariDee's personality as wild and unpredictable, probably because she had the nerve to insult Nigel Barker. He's one of the "takes himself seriously" judges who had a long pole in his hand when CariDee had the unmitigated gall to pipe up and say something like: "Did you remove that from your arse?"

Well, you should have heard the carry-on and the lectures about showing respect to your betters and elders. She deserved to win on that comment alone, for British photographer Nigel really is insufferably up himself and about as vivacious and alive as the still photographs he takes.

I don't know why they keep that terrible old queen J. Alexander on as a judge. He's so tragique – the kind of exhibitionist queen you find lip-synching in down-at-heel gay bars when last drinks have been called and he's wheeled out to encourage the punters to stampede for the exit door.

But he's under divine protection because every supermodel simply must have a breast of adoring gay men to bolster the ego, especially as a woman grows older. Ouch.

Sure, Tyra was wise enough to retire from the Victoria's Secrets catwalk last year, but she made such a song and dance about it, the whole thing was a clever ploy so that her fans would rally and say, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, you have the supermodel body of them all, Tyra."

But I guess she was piling on the beef and what's the point of having all that money if you can't have a decent feed? I bet she's been dying to utter the phrase that has been struck from the model's lexicon – "Yes, please, I'll have fries with that" – for decades.

If there's a next series of this show the judges should be banned from berating the girls with the question, "I want to know how much you want this" and from saying, "I'm still not sure how badly you want this" as the shyer girls refuse to walk across cut glass in response to the imperative.

*****

Speaking of next series, I have been so disappointed by the new batch of Goldstein ads but I adore the latest one, where Goldstein's boss goes to visit a Kiwi farm with a view to buy and is dressed in a red-fringed Brokeback Mountain cowboy shirt and ten-gallon hat.

When the farmer extends his arm and snaps on a rubber glove and tells Goldstein's boss to lend a hand with the probing of an animal's internals, the boss is completely traumatised.

In the final shot, we see Goldstein driving post haste away from the farm with the boss sitting in the passenger seat, looking wild-eyed and speaking in a deep whisper: "Goldstein, we shall never speak of this again."

It was like the good old Goldstein days.