TV review: Alesha Dixon: Who's Your Daddy? | Robson Green's Wild Swimming Adventure

Published on Tuesday 8 December 2009 19:52

THERE are many ways you could describe Alesha Dixon – lovely, graceful, with eyes like an anime cartoon and a laugh like a donkey – but her current tabloid designation as "the controversial Alesha Dixon" (due to her role in the saga of this year's hopelessly mishandled Strictly Come Dancing series) is a laughable by-product of an attempt to make an inoffensive light entertainment show into actual news. Controversial she is not, as Bruce Forsyth might say.

Someone at the BBC, though, is clearly grooming the former Mis-teeq singer into an all-round TV presenter, and the latest move in that campaign was Who's Your Daddy?, a BBC3 documentary about absent fathers. It was a decent idea for a show, inspired by Dixon's experiences growing up in a single-parent family (not that we heard much about her background), and aimed at teenagers grappling with their identities.

As a presenter, she was sympathetic and enthusiastic – too enthusiastic at times, such as when she concluded a serious classroom debate with school kids by executing a Tommy Steele-style side-kick step as she made her way out through the corridor.

She had an odd fixation, too, with the idea of genetic attraction and the possibility that children growing up without knowing their half-siblings could accidentally meet and sleep with them. Apparently more than half of the reunions between separated offspring do involve these "strong feelings of attraction" but it's hardly the uppermost thing in most people's minds, surely.

The crux of the programme, though, was Dixon's meeting with Amy, 23, who was desperate to find the father she'd never met. Amy's mental picture of him was, she explained with some embarrassment, "Cain Dingle out of Emmerdale," which Alesha found hilarious (and surely, if you were projecting a fantasy, you'd choose someone else – anyone else?).

Thanks to an investigator hired by the programme, Amy tearfully uncovered news of cousins, half-siblings and, eventually, her father, leading to an emotional reunion. While the cameras only watched from a distance, he didn't seem to look anything like Cain Dingle.

This was a messy documentary, with random elements – like Alesha's visit to her old friends – which didn't really add much. But it was certainly entertaining to watch her cheery, non-controversial exterior crack when she was confronted with a man dubbed the Sunderland Shagger, who at 24 neither sees nor supports any of the eight children he has by eight different women. Faced with his gormless "explanation" that he "done a mistake" because he "just don't like condoms," Dixon seemed to be an inch away from lamping him one.

Still, she was practically Jeremy Paxman compared with actor Robson Green's similarly celebrity-led show about his Wild Swimming Adventure. If there are people out there whose idea of a good time is to watch an hour of Robson Green wearing swimming trunks, then this certainly delivered, as he was indeed nearly naked throughout (even down to tight red Speedos). The vague excuse was that he was practising in various outdoor lidos, tidal pools and coastal waters before attempting a swim from the mainland of Northumberland to Holy Island, which was somehow in tribute to his late father.

But really, this was just about Green's jovial personality and nicely photographed water. As he swam in a gorgeous Cornwall pool, or under a full moon, it was pleasant, undemanding viewing. And for those who don't like Green, there was the chance to see him almost collapse after swimming in Britain's coldest lake.