According to Deadline, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham becomes the first Prime Minister to appear on Channel 4's Celebrity Gogglebox, appearing from 10 Downing Street for Stand Up To Cancer alongside Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram. The pair react to the week's television this Friday at 9.05 p.m. GMT, and the tease shows Burnham offering Rotheram crisps and a beer.
The sofa used to be reserved for families who made bad television choices. Now it seats Hollywood A-listers, and the head of the government. Kieran Culkin and Josh Hartnett got the couch last year; this week the man who signs the legislation sits next to a mayor with a bowl of crisps. The Gogglebox sofa has become the new ballroom, and the invitation list is a charity night and a beer.
The phrase doing the heavy lifting in the release is "seen as something of an everyman." That is the entire machine: the prime minister on a sofa passing crisps is a normalcy photo opportunity you cannot get from a podium. No speech can deliver "he is one of us" the way a man with a beer in his hand can.
And the format is perfect PR, because the show is not about the guest. It is about what the guest thinks of everyone else's television. A prime minister does not appear, he reacts. The most powerful man in the country is not there to govern, he is there to judge reality TV with a council mayor. Stanley Johnson got a turn two years ago, Corbyn got one a decade ago, and now the actual officeholder gets the full treatment. The sofa is the new throne room, and the throne is beige.
YOUR TURN: Prime minister holding a beer on national TV: relatable, or has the sofa officially outranked the podium?
PAPER TRAIL
- The announcement: Deadline
- The cause: Stand Up To Cancer
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