The forthcoming televised debates with the leaders of the three main political parties is a first for the UK. But I can’t help expecting to hear John Sachs screaming ‘Gladiators ready?’, Our Graham with a quick reminder of their policies, or Dale Winton shouting ‘Bring on The Wall!’  With the relentless policy-free docu-profiles and chat-show fêting of candidates for the UK’s next Prime Minister, the realpolitik of the 19th Century has finally been usurped by the reality TV politics of the 21st.

The Piers Morgan interview with Gordon Brown was bad enough (go on, Piers: make him CRY!), yet bracketing the Prime Minister in such esteemed company as Gok Wan and Kym Marsh was nothing compared to Sunday’s prematurely scheduled ‘Winner’s Story’ hosted by Dermot O’Leary wannabe Sir Trevor Macdonald.

If you thought the post-Kelly, post-Ross-Brand BBC was a cowering, kow-towing State broadcaster, ITV1 made North Korean TV look as robust as Newsnight. In a reverential hour-long politics-free party political broadcast worthy of the media wing of a Brezhnev-era Politbureau, Sir Trev asked the man who would be PM such probing questions as: ‘Just how brilliant are you, Dave?’ Or so it seemed. ITV have clearly decided who they think the next Dear Leader will be.

What did we learn? That Dave likes cooking but makes a terrible mess? That he likes to watch Godfather films again and again and again? Leadership metaphors aside, this was as enlightening as his shock revelation to Alan Titchmarsh last week that he watches Neighbours. Not so much Frost-Nixon as Willoughby-Jedward. Will we get to see Brown’s best bits if he’s voted out of the live final in May?

Friends, family and supporters were brought on to praise Contestant Cameron like a video diary message from home as a special treat. SamCam complained that he doesn’t wash up as he goes – something we all look for in a Prime Minister. This is simultaneously too much information, and not enough. Show us yer policies, boys, and put away the pornographic parade of Leaders’ Wives.

It is all a massive distraction. By focusing our attention on the washing up as Cameron’s Worst Fault, we suddenly forget his other lesser, more trivial faults – such as voting for Section 28, supporting the war, or giving his wealthy friends tax cuts.

Why do we need the political WAGs singing their version of Mariah Carey’s ‘Hero’ in the media anyway? To court the crucial female vote? The good-wife-and-mother discourse is as 1970s as Tory policy, and competing for the title of Most Surrendered Wife off-putting and out of step. Perhaps it is instead to reassure male voters that our incipient PM – whoever he might be – is a red-blooded man with a good woman behind him? A normal blokey bloke like the rest of us chaps. Equally patronising, equally dated. And if I hear ‘hard-working families’ just one more time… Or is it to humanize the clunking Brown and Odo-alike Cameron with some tedious domesticity?

But if the gender politics is locked in the past, the celebrities are coming out of the Saturday Kitchen. Blair’s Cool Britannia courting of celebrity by association worked. Mainstream media have given up holding politicians to account, and instead gawp in awestruck wonder like they’ve just won a golden ticket to the Westminster Village. Even when politicians let us down we like them to have cartoonish, monstrous, one-dimensional vices: Bully Brown, Sir Peter Duckhouse, Lord Cashcroft. Personality trumps policy. And more fool the politicians and their spin doctors for allowing it. Can you imagine Thatcher going on the Wogan show in the 1980s for some light-hearted banter about joining the mile high club, intercut with footage of Dennis complaining about her hoovering? It reduces our leaders to the level of gossip about Kerry Catona in the pages of Heat Magazine.

Voter apathy may be at an all-time high, but there has to be a better way to engage people than reducing politics to light entertainment. It suggests there is no difference between the parties except personality. There is. But how can voters know that without communicating policies? Are voters really too dim to understand such grown-up conversation? Yes, put politicians on daytime TV. But maybe use it as an opportunity to tell voters what you would do if elected, apart from washing up and watching Neighbours? Don’t you have a country to run?

Perhaps the electorate just want to see them suffer, like some sort of ‘I’m a Politician, Get Me Out of Here!’ Channel 4 already did that, of course, with ‘Tower Block of Commons’, sending MPs somewhere far scarier than the Australian jungle: their own constituencies.

And where is Nick Clegg in all this? Sensibly keeping a low profile? Busy with some actual policy announcements at the Lib Dem Spring Conference? Or preparing for his in-depth interview with Ant and Dec, or the bear from Bo’Selecta?

Simon Cowell’s idea for a political reality TV show sounded like a bad joke – but it doesn’t seem so unlikely. Well, so be it. Why not go the whole Douglas Hogg, and make them run around a moat jumping over foam obstacles? Or bring back Stuart Hall. No, not the cultural commentator: the one from It’s a Knockout. Dress the leaders as penguins and make them beat the crap out of each other on a revolving platform while the lovely Miss Witney, Miss Kirkcaldy and Miss Sheffield keep score. This is what they want!

It might not solve the problems of our country being mired in economic collapse and an Orwellian state of permanent war. But, hey. It’s very entertaining.

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