RUNWAY VS CATWALK

I have been watching both the US and UK versions of Project Runway/Catwalk – which is basically like the Apprentice but for highly strung fashion designers. Each week the designers have to do a task – mainly involving making a garment to certain specifications with limited time/budget and the one that is judged to be worse gets the boot. The major difference to Apprentice is that most of the tasks are individual, so there is much less scope for back biting/fear and loathing/amusing arguments etc.

The UK version was presented by Liz Hurley who was absolutely rubbish – the most stilted and awkward presenter I have seen for a long time. She would basically show up in a variety of glamorous outfits and read the description of the task off the autocue. Then she would disappear for the rest of the program, get changed, come back at the end and say that “fashion has no mercy!” and that someone was fired. Watching this show made me realise that Liz Hurley is basically Joan Collins for the New Millennium, only she hasn’t actually been in anything memorably bad like “The Stud” or whatever or anything epoch defining and kitsch like “Dynasty”. Poor Liz Hurley.

The US version is presented by ice madchen super model Heidi Klum, who is actually less stilted and wooden than Liz (who calls herself an actress). Heidi is ace because makes lots of evil faces and sounds like she actively despises the contestants half the time. The only thing that lets her down is that she does not have a quality catch phrase like Liz. Sort it out, Heidi!

The US contestants are also much more entertaining than the UK ones, who were mostly pretty wet and never slagged each other off even when the judges demanded they did. The US version has a couple of hilariously OTT queens, one of whom looks like a fat trucker wearing Bjork’s cast offs and the other who kind of looks like a male version of Grace Kelly and has gigantic hair. There is also this annoying bitchy/whiny woman with stripy hair whom I hate with the intensity of a thousand suns and an annoying bloke who keeps comparing women to sports cars, but I’ll let him off as he is the only vaguely good looking one. Whenever they do work in teams, the contestants don’t waste any time before they start slagging each other off and even when they don’t work together they accuse each other of stealing their scissors or knitting patterns or whatever and still manage to make each other cry. Next time they do it in the UK they def need to get some contestants who have actually watched reality TV and know how to carry on!

Most of the fun in the UK version came from the judges and mentors etc, especially evil orange dwarf Julian Macdonald who actually had the cheek to slag someone off for coming from Liverpool. Dude! You’re Welsh! Shut up! The UK final came down to the scouser girl and a slightly irritating gay boy with nice eyes who needed a haircut. The scouser girl won in the end – up yours Julian MacDonald!! The US version is still in full swing! Go He-Grace Kelly! In the meantime i'm off to make myself a glamorous garment made entirely of office supplies!