TVReview/Hilary Fannin:Women of all shapes and sizes and wildly varying degrees of mental equilibrium were emerging from the chrysalis of World Cuppery this week, some spreading their expensively designer-clad wings all over the television, others dragging across the set in their carpet slippers.
The butterfly set was much in evidence in the first half of a two-part documentary, Charity Queens, examining the fecund, lucrative and competitive world of the charity ball. Following three women on the fundraising ladder - Caroline Downey, Deirdre Kelly and Tara O'Connor - the programme went behind the shiny photographs that proliferate on the pages of Irish social magazines to reveal a glittering industry partying in the teeth of the Tiger. In our pink polo shirts and spaghetti-strap ballgowns (retailing at a couple of grand a toss) we are, apparently, a nation of sartorially intact and fragrant givers.
Downey is the undisputed queen of the fundraising circuit. A hugely competent, savvy, level-headed and well-connected woman, she has, over the last 18 years, raised more than €26 million for a range of charities and would have been an interesting subject for a more robust analysis.
Charity Queens itself, though vaguely entertaining (especially when one lunching lady blithely told the camera that dressing up and spending lots of money with the girls was "good mental therapy"), was an untidy affair with a distinct summer blandness to it. Flitting from Tara O'Connor edgily supervising an appearance at a car launch by the balding heir to a Dubai dynasty (worth an estimated €13 billion, the man could have single-handedly bought out the entire charity lunch circuit by sneezing a portion of the interest on to one of the Four Seasons Hotel's linen napkins) to self-conscious Irish celebrities littering the steps of the Mansion House, the programme never quite got into gear.
What we did learn, however, is that there are now buckets of balls and gillions of galas (up to three or four a week); that those on the guest lists are younger, richer and thinner than ever; and that the organisers have to work harder and harder to keep their event-weary targets amused.
For those of you who fall beyond the inner circle, the typical ball seems to go something like this. Warm Champagne? Chicken or beef? Who did your highlights? How much will you bid for the Graham Knuttel-designed chess set (psst, Colin Farrell has one!) or Bono's black guitar? Say cheese and . . . snap!
Check your bank balance before you attempt to join the ranks of Irish minor celebrity; it looks like an exhausting and expensive business. As commentator Brenda Power rather succinctly pointed out, there are a lot of women in this country with time and money on their hands, and it's a pity so many of them seem to need a pat on the back and a new frock to part with some of it.
A VERY DIFFERENT kind of life fell under intense filial scrutiny in Tarnation, a shocking and emotional autobiographical film by American film-maker Jonathan Caouette, shown as part of the BBC's Storyville strand, which for my money (not that it would stretch to one of Knuttel's pawns) is the best documentary slot on the box.
Caouette's early life reads like a modern American horror story, a gothic tale of domestic tragedy which led to the life of his once stunningly beautiful mother Renée being ruined by lithium and phencyclidine (PCP), a "dissociative drug" which can radically distort perception.
A seemingly happy child, Renée was spotted by a professional photographer who was visiting the Texan town where she lived. His photo-shoots made her well known, and TV commercials followed. One day, however, she fell off the roof of her house while playing, and was paralysed for six months. Her parents began to suspect that her illness was psychological, and a neighbour agreed. So began years of electric shock therapy, lithium dependence and a descent into drug addiction.
Renée was not mentally ill until after her intensive and chronically damaging "therapy" and, tragically, no underlying disorder was ever found.
Along the way were a brief marriage, pregnancy, psychotic episodes, a rape (which Jonathan witnessed), jail, hospitals, and the loss of her young son.
Jonathan, an exceptionally beautiful two-year-old, was fostered for two years, during which time he was abused, tied up and beaten. His grandparents (Renée's parents) eventually managed to get custody and adopt him.
The juxtaposition of the shocking facts of Renée's and Jonathan's lives, combined with Jonathan's dissociative film-making style (in his early teens, he smoked two joints given to him by a friend of his mother's, which, unknown to Jonathan, had been laced with PCP and dipped in formaldehyde - since when he has had serious difficulty concentrating), made watching Tarnation akin to a nauseating but necessary rollercoaster ride. Using clips from home movies which Caouette began making when he was just 11 years old, featuring disconcerting close-ups of his toothless grandmother ("I got TB - tobacco and beer"), along with photographs, telephone messages and clips from 1970s TV, his story unravelled with a grim fluency.
Ultimately, and movingly, the film ended with a degree of redemption - Renée, further brain-damaged by a lithium overdose, living with Caouette and his lover, David, in their New York home.
WELL, BODY-LOATHER OR body-lover? How to Look Good Naked is an all-new makeover programme that does exactly what it says on the thin (sorry, I mean tin).
Stylist to the stars, the androgynous Gok Wan, sleekly lovely with big white spectacles and a recipe for non-surgical gorgeousness, has ditched the celeb clients to rough it with a bunch of regular-shaped women, all around about a size 16 and all, according to Wan, suffering from "horrible knickers and bra" syndrome. Stand these regular and unreconstructed women next to the current batch of Big Brother contestants and one could be forgiven for assuming that they were from a different planet.
Nine out of 10 women in the UK, we were told, are unhappy with their bodies. Many of them resort to cosmetic surgery, while brigades more live beneath tents of baggy fleece and creep into bed under cover of darkness. I dare say we are no different over here.
Now at this point I have to admit to watching this programme with incautious excitement (and I bet I wasn't the only one). Wan, after all, is claiming that with four weeks' training, he could make anyone happy enough with their bodies to dance under Clonakilty's hanging geranium baskets in a G-string (not necessarily everyone's fantasy, but you know what I mean). The trick to looking good naked, apparently, is to keep your underwear on. We were advised that Peller and Rigby, masters of architectural underwear and corsetieres to the queen, make a sturdy pair of knickers.
Beyond that, it all seemed to boil down to a good haircut, a professional make-up job, a seaweed wrap and a touch of cryogenic freezing (burns the calories quicker). Then, if we (and I use the term liberally) want to look lovely in the altogether, all we have to do is moisturise our arms and legs, get professionally waxed and hang around the bedroom in high heels and a pair of earrings - and not a geranium in sight.
ALTERNATIVELY, IF YOU want a really good body workout, you could try winching yourself up the Cliffs of Moher. The Rescuers brought a refreshing glimpse of real life to our drowsy summer screens with a look at the work of the Doolin unit of the Coastguard and Rescue Service. Battling a majestic sea, the volunteer crew, made up of men and women living and working in the Co Clare community, oversee a stretch of the most beautiful, treacherous coastline in the country. They are called upon at a moment's notice to contend with the unexpected, including suicides, climbing accidents due to crumbling rockfaces, or family boating trips that have fallen foul of cheap compasses and inexperience.
Humorous, gentle and quietly uplifting, it was refreshing, in our damp summer, to see realityTV reflect the spirited generosity of real life.