Wife Swap Brit

Do click on the video and listen to the appalling Stephen Fowler sounding off. What a bonanza for the producers. They must have cracked open the champagne when they got this crackpot duo to agree to the show.

Heaven knows why he agreed if he's doing as well as he says.

No doubt, his equally horrendous identikit Stepford wife pushing him towards PR for her life-coach company.

The details of the show don't matter altho' I'd love to have seen a clip or two of her just *asking* for a clip round the lug 'ole from her good ol' boy surrogate 'husband'.

But it's Stephen who's the wally. God, the prig is exactly like me and behaving how I might have except I'm too weak and too fond of my children.

That accent says it all: Estuary meets Michael 'Dirty Scoundrel' Caine meets David Brent meets that oily sneery character actor from the 1980s that cornered the market in Stephen Fowlernuff roles.

His attitude to the hapless offspring - and the son's poignant response to dad's arrogant pushy blindness ... what a wanker.

And she's a piece of work, too, yeh? Perfect Lady Macbeth to his breezy self-referential obtuseness. Exhibit A of the sort of Americaine least capable of carrying off a marriage to a bogus chap like our Simon: feeding off his snootiness and believing herself packaging haut-Anglophilia with whatever qualities she's meant to have.

I was married to an American and she was never infected by one smarmy sliver of trying to be something she wasn't. She hung on to her honesty and directness despite her proximity to and the danger of anything rubbing off from me.

It's not their fault but a tribute to the show's success in producing these hilarious stock characters and setting them up bang to rights for a choicely edited fall.

Of course he was told to overdo the Brit asshole bit, and of course they found a family that would push the opposite buttons. That's showbiz.

But as I say, this Fowler berk is a classic, down to his pretentious T-shirts and selfish use of his son to smooth over the omissions in his own yoof. Fish in a barrel. Great TV. Should've shoved a wig on Fatty Goody for a cameo role as The Nanny.

Another way Stefano resembles me is his living in the US in such a way as to be perfectly positioned to dine off the old Brit la-di-dah superiority aplomb, all the while adopting the cool Americanisms we could never sneak under the BS radar back in Blighty. A soul brother.

What a piece of work, both of us.

CRY BABY: If you can take the grating accent, here's Stephen blubbing about the rules. GREAT television. He totally weaves his own noose.