Handcuffed: We just want to see two flabby-bottomed strangers take a really awkward shower together

I feel like I’ve been handcuffed to things I didn’t sign up to be handcuffed to for almost two decades now. Surely spending 24 hours chained wrist-to-wrist with a stranger would be a doddle, wouldn’t it? Especially if there’s £50k each to be won. I mean, think what you could do with £50k. You could afford to go out for a meal at Pizza Express! 

Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing, like Sex Box and Naked Attraction, is purest Channel 4. It’s not a game show, it’s a social experiment. (It’s a game show.) What sets it apart from its equally radical and avant garde predecessors is that they’ve managed to get Jonathan Ross to present it. Not quite sure why he agreed to it, though. Is he bored? Doing a favour for a friend? Paying off a tax bill? Surely they could have got someone cheaper for this, like Gok Wan or Gemma Collins?  

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Never mind though, because the contestants do most of the work anyway. The object of the game, I mean experiment – is simple: People with opposing views and lifestyles are cuffed together for 24 hours. They spend time in each other’s lives, meeting their friends and family, doing their ablutions together, baring their souls – and they’re doing it for the thing our society values the most. Cold, hard cash.

The producers will probably say that the idea is to hold up a mirror to the current ideological divides in Britain, showing how they can be healed with tolerance, patience and compromise. But let’s face it, we really just want to see two flabby-bottomed strangers taking a really awkward shower together and arguing. And the great news is, it doesn’t disappoint. 

First up is Jo, a proud body positive feminist from Manchester who owns a plus-size clothing brand called Topsy Curvy. Jo would be my best pal, because she has a tattoo of a cheesestring on her calf and wears a T-shirt that says FAT BITCH. Surprise, surprise, she’s chained to Reuben from Portsmouth, a child of the manosphere, who uses ‘gym’ as a verb and is oozing insecurity and Creed aftershave out of his slightly-too-tight shirt.  

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Then we have Tilly, a modern-day Eliza Doolittle from London town, who cleans a pub and wears a headscarf that would make Amy Winehouse proud. She thinks it’s them rich people what cause all the problems, so of course, she’s cuffed to Anthony, a pompous millionaire with a collection of vintage Rolls-Royces. Anthony is very dull, but redeems himself slightly after revealing his childhood trauma and the fact that he has a maid who serves Pimm’s in the garden.

I have high hopes for these two. Which is more than I can say for the third couple to be introduced in episode one: Sir Benjamin Slade, a wizened and angry baronet/Nazi apologist with a dog called Nigel Farage, and George, a self-educated ex-prison officer who has been handcuffed to everyone from terrorists to the Italian mafia. But even though George is a graduate of the school of hard knocks, Sir Ben proves to be the biggest challenge of them all, especially when he proudly shows him a watercolour by a little-known German artist called A. Hitler.   

There are more mismatched pairs to come, and depending on your appetite for people screaming at each other in close quarters, you will be either entertained or repulsed. Some critics might say that Handcuffed is simply an opportunistic bear fight for coins. And it very definitely is.

But some of it is quite unexpectedly moving, as you watch people’s carefully constructed social facades start to crumble under even the smallest amount of pressure. The best bit is when they try to go to the toilet, though, obviously.

Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing is on C4 Monday and Tuesday 11pm and streaming

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