Review: Ghosthunting with The Only Way is Essex

So, it appears that the Alan Partridge school of pitching TV programmes has struck again ("Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank", "Monkey Tennis") and this is actually a thing.

Not only that, but there's also Ghosthunting with The Saturdays, Girls Aloud and McFly, which goes to show that paranormal inquiry in the hands of minor celebrities appears to be a genuine discipline.

However, one is suspicious of the scientific rigour involved in this production when one notices that they cannot even spell "Arg" correctly on the DVD case. If they insist on calling him "Arge" with an e, what other cut corners will we find inside? This being the case, I haggled the charity shop down from £1.50 to 50p, and they seemed well pleased with the deal.

Mercifully short at 51 minutes, Ghosthunting with The Only Way is Essex left me with only just enough brain cells to write this review, but the sum of human knowledge is clearly worse off with its existence. To quote one review of this production: "DVD arrived in good time and undamaged", and you can't get fairer than that.

And so it begins:

"We're taking six people to a place that they will never forget for the rest of their lives," says host Yvette Fielding. Alas, she doesn't take them to do a day of work, so instead we get six pillocks with orange skin screaming and talking bollocks around Coalhouse Fort in the Thames Estuary.

Within five minutes, with all the TOWIE regulars (Arg, Joey, Spiggy, Spudulika, Rectum and the other one) talking and screaming at once in a language only vaguely related to English, I feel my brains oozing out of my ears.

Now, I spent my early years holidaying in Essex and am pretty up to speed on Estuary English, innit, but even I draw the line at using the word "reem" in public, and somehow they have shoehorned in the word "reem" in among the screeching.

Of course they were going to see ghosts. Dense people plus frequent suggestion of paranormal activity plus darkened room full of loads of people equals mass screaming panic, and that's exactly what you get with Ghosthunting with TOWIE.

And NOT, I should point out, members of the production team pranking the TOWIE idiots something rotten, because that would be the kind of fakery that gives Blue Peter presenters a bad name.

"I don't know if there's scientific explanation to this," says Yvette strapping Arg to a seat in the laundry room like some low-IQ offering to the dead, "But people run out of here screaming."

In fact, the scientific explanation is this: There aren't any ghosts. Just idiots. And production crew shoving things around in the dark and flinging things at easily-excited alleged celebrities.

Yvette, now our nation's leading paranormal expert: "Poltergeist activity only happens when you turn your back."

How very handy, as furniture is flung around off camera, like a no-budget episode of Beadle's About.

And so it finished with a crescendo of shrieking and a blind sprint back to the limo, like an episode of Most Haunted without the laughs and populated entirely by twats. Marks out of ten: No ghosts out of ten ghosts.

Arg is still strapped to a seat in the laundry room. His tan is starting to fade.

Something something "oxygen of publicity" something

 Taking the concept one step further, one is pretty sure that a "…with The Only Way Is Essex" series could go far deeper than the important subject of the paranormal. This band of experts could lend their knowledge and diplomatic skills to such important productions as:

• Solving the Arab/Israeli conflict with The Only Way Is Essex
• Defeating ISIS with The Only Way Is Essex
• Solving Fermat's Last Theorem with The Only Way Is Essex
• Turning the NHS into a fully-patient oriented public service with The Only Way Is Essex
• Monkey Tennis with The Only Way Is Essex

Alternatively, we could all set fire to our televisions, and never speak of this thing again.

For sale: One DVD copy of Ghosthunting With The Only Way Is Essex