“4 Strangers, 4
Dinner Parties, 1 Winner,” the opening
titles proclaim, and when the second season of Come Dine With Me South Africa turns
on the heat, things certainly couldn’t get any stranger.
Popping the cork at the start of the second season of the
very popular Come Dine With Me South Africa, the producers make a very deliberate
play for attention in the season premiere by introducing us to an eccentric
round of contestants. There is quirky Financial
Manager, Jo-Anne, who believes in fairies and glorious insincerity; and the pack
rat with a heart of gold, teacher Anne Marie. But whilst the two ladies might have been the talk of any other episode, this
time around they pale in comparison to fellow competitor and eccentric self
styled “competitive princess”, Simphiwe
Mtetwa.
During the introductory flashes, dear Simphiwe seems to have
been cast as the stereotypical gay man: gaunt,
effeminate, extravagant and opinionated, swanning around antique stores in a
scarf (that he probably refers to as a pashmina), and harshly dismissing
anything and anyone not perceived to be of the highest standard with an uncoordinated flap of
the wrist. But the longer the camera
lingers, the more we start suspecting that this is in fact much riper cheese
that is being served up for our viewing delight.
Whilst mockery of the remarkable delusions of the average Joe
is the staple of reality television and the line between delusion and full blown
mental disease is arguably a thin one at times, it would seem that in search of
ratings gold, Come Dine With Me South Africa may well have ended up digging through
to the wrong side of the fence. See, Simphiwe
is not just slightly delusional: Simphiwe
deftly rejects reality entirely. And
substitutes it with his own.
Obsessed with the term androgynous - which is apparently synonymous
with fabulous in his alternate universe – and anything French, Simphiwe considers
himself sophisticated and everyone else low class. The camera shamelessly plays along: showing
Simphiwe fishing a bottle of Moët out a pool, following him sauntering around shopping
for antiques and filming all his comments to the backdrop of stylish decor
shops.
In reality, of course, he is anything but sophisticated. Ignorant to the
point of seeming illiterate, Simphiwe astounds his fellow contestants with
baseless criticisms that eventually descend to the completely ridiculous when he
refuses to accept that a lamb is a baby sheep.
Whilst fast talking contestants and culinary crooks are a dime a dozen
on this show, Simphiwe’s shenanigans reminds us more of a child pretending to
be Princess Diana, and for a grown man, this is extremely disturbing.
But what is even more disturbing is the care that Come Dine
With Me puts into exploiting his shortcomings.
After carefully – and dishonestly – passing him off as a cut above with
expensive champagne and stylish backdrops, as the last contestant to host his
dinner party, Simphiwe’s all too plain reality is unveiled with glee as the climax of
the episode when the camera descends on his sad little face brick house with the
dead lawn.
More adept at tipping back champagne than cracking an egg,
Simphiwe stumbles around the pokey kitchen, whipped into such a manic froth by the attention
that he floats even further away from reality. After casually throwing away his failed
attempts at making a basic dessert four times, he eventually gives up and just
freezes the mixed raw ingredients. The remainder of the meal is undercooked chicken livers and pools of blood that gush from soggy stuffed peppers.
With any moments of lucidity no doubt swiftly edited out, the result is embarrassing
and painful to watch, from the mortified expressions of the fellow contestants
to Simphiwe blaming the lack of alcohol on the butler and childishly decorating
the plates for the starters and mains with spastic squiggles of chocolate sauce.
By the time the end titles run to the tune of “I want to be
a Star”, social media explodes, slating Simphiwe as the worst contestant ever,
much to the delight of BBC Entertainment.
But whilst they gloat over how many tweets they received, we can’t help
but wonder: have they given any thought to the clearly troubled soul that was set
up and exploited so shamelessly? The likes
of Big Brother Africa has shown that not all people are cut out for reality
television. Do we have to see even more
than on air violence before the producers of reality shows start screening
their contestants properly?
New episodes of Come Dine With Me South Africa air on BBC Entertainment on Monday nights at 20h00
