Editor-At-Large: Back to reality? Whoever asks, I wouldn't want to go there

What was life like before reality television? Last week Variety magazine, the bible of the entertainment industry, reflected that these compulsively vacuous shows now have a complete stranglehold on American television, with no end in sight. It's the same story on this side of the Atlantic. Just as we learn to live without a daily dose of Jennie Bond and Peter Andre, Channel Five unleashes two new shows in one week! Can you imagine a world without Jade and James Hewitt? A day without Jordan kissing and telling, a week without Lord Brocket thinking he can get a table in the Ivy just because 10 million people watched his twitterings in the jungle?

Last year, during my stage show, I had fun reading out the ludicrous offers I've had to appear on these new reality shows. Some of the ideas are so crazed, audiences have often asked if I was making them up, and so I show them the actual letters on headed notepaper. From Celebrity Detox to Celebrity Wife Swap, I've been fêted by some of the most tawdry experiments in the name of entertainment. But even I didn't think that Gender Swap would make it to the screen, and neither did anyone who read the letter the producers sent me. Who in their right mind would want to "cross the gender divide" and spend a week sprouting fake stubble, wearing Y-fronts and a padded crotch? Now we know the answer - step forward Carol Smillie. Not content with travelling the length and breadth of Britain stencilling cows on pelmets and treating Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen as if he were Daniel Libeskind, Carol has now made a major career move (ie jumped on the bandwagon) by appearing in Five's Gender Swap last Monday. And guess what? We lapped it up. An astonishing 2 million viewers saw her transformation into businessman Jeff - giving Five an 11 per cent audience share, a better rating than the mainstream BBC1 could muster on Wednesday night. Now more Gender Swaps are on the way, and Five has a potential hit on its hands. Perhaps I should relent, stop sneering, and offer my services as Stan the football referee. Hopefully future episodes of Gender Swap will focus more on what it is like to live and work as a member of the opposite sex, and less on the business of speed dating and sticking on rubber willies.

Not so appealing is Five's Back to Reality, a cynical attempt to exploit our addiction to the genre by pitting a collection of "stars" - and I use that word loosely - from other reality shows against each other in a rather ugly purpose-built mansion inside a TV studio. By the second night the audience had dropped to 700,000, and this a hugely expensive undertaking with a billboard advertis- ing campaign photographed by top director David LaChapelle. Sadly, even he can't make James Hewitt look anything other than reptilian. There is something wonderfully grim about his conversations with Jade, who has never let lack of IQ stop her from having an opinion on any subject from quail's eggs to champagne. Nevertheless, among this ragbag of characters, she is undoubtedly the star, and I fully expect her to appear in yet another reality show based in the offices of a 24-hour news channel - reading the nightly bulletins. Or perhaps we could hope for Jade Goody, war correspondent. Is there anything this woman isn't prepared to have a go at? Why not dispense with the professionals altogether and make her a channel controller?

It's a vision thing

Air - not the polluted stuff we breathe, but the strangely addictive French pop group - played in London last week, and the Brixton Academy was packed to the doors. They specialise in a kind of intellectual electro-misery that has made many reviewers despair. On record, they seem so light and catchy; live they offer a dour and dark intellectual approach to showmanship. In other words there's none. Just a ravishing soundtrack to a non-existent movie. Chat is kept to the minimum, and the musicians stand in dim pools of light on a bare stage. I'm not talking John Pawson-minimalist-designer-bare, just a mess of cabling, amps and technical detritus. How many light years from the recent occasion when Madonna graced the same stage in cowgirl gear by Dolce & Gabbana surrounded by body-builders.

Of course, she's all about packaging and Air are about content. But I couldn't help feeling that they desperately need a visionary director to stage the proceedings, get them into clothes that mean something instead of the usual cast-offs, and light them futuristically instead of like an act auditioning for the Southend production of We Will Rock You. The Darkness prove that dressing up isn't just for wimps, and these days I think that when you have paid money to go to a show (as opposed to downloading the CD from the internet and listening to it in the bath), you expect (and deserve) an evening's entertainment that works on a visual, as well as an aural, level. Mind you, the vast majority of the audience was made up of serious-looking males dressed as if they bought their clothes by semaphore, with stylish threads nowhere to be seen. You know, the kind of thirtysomething who works in IT and has already bought his single ticket for the forthcoming one and only UK Kraftwerk gig.

By the time you are reading this I shall be sitting at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas enjoying the new Elton John extrava-ganza, directed by the very same David LaChapelle who managed to make Jade look like a star. He's certainly versatile. This over-the-top revue, which has had excellent reviews, incorporates enormous breasts as part of the staging, and films of Pamela Anderson pole dancing. Now that's what I call a show!

Travelling to Leeds to speak at a lunch for local businesswomen, I couldn't help noticing how GNER has rewritten the on-train commentary so that it constitutes a language quite unlike any other. This is not English as you or I speak it, but an amazing outpouring of jargon designed to annoy travellers as much as possible. I know instinctively that the person within the GNER hierarchy creating this terminology is a man, because there are three words of waffle where one would do - instead of stations we have "calling points" and instead of supervisor or conductor we have Darren who is "the manager of your on-board service team".

We are assaulted with announcements after each "calling point" telling us to keep aisles free, not put baggage on seats, make our way to the restaurant car, use mobile phones in vestibules and smoke only in designated areas. No one has bothered to tell the on-board operating teams that we, the travellers (always referred to as customers in this consultant-speak) have chosen the train because we want to work and would appreciate some peace and quiet from the staff!