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RECRUITS: TV executive Katy Isaacs
RECRUITS: TV executive Katy Isaacs

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The cynical truth behind TV's Wife Swap

BY Carl Palmer and James Ducker
27/ 3/2004

THE cynical truth behind reality TV hit Wife Swap is exposed in an e-mail showing how producers are deliberately lining up a "lazy a****" family from Manchester for the show.

London-based TV executive Katy Isaacs contacted the M.E.N. to say she was looking for the "biggest, proudest couch potatoes in Britain . . . lazy a**** with motor mouths!"

Also, the wannabe family must be Mancunians - because, Katy says, they have "great characters".

Wife Swap producers are desperate to find another Lizzy Bardsley, the Rochdale mother-of-eight whose life exchange with a family in Devon was the main talking point of the last series on Channel 4.

But the attempt to engineer another cultural clash across the north-south divide was criticised today as a patronising stereotype.

Blackley Labour MP Graham Stringer said: "Taking loudmouth, lazy, benefit-dependent people from Manchester and putting them with southerners is going to give a prejudicial view of Manchester.

'Patronising'

"It is not a fair depiction of the north. Those sort of people exist in every part of the country.

"There are more people in London so there must be more lazy people there than anywhere else."

Comedian Bernard Manning said: "People in London think you are lazy if you talk with a Mancunian accent.

"But I'm still working at 73 and have never had a holiday. There are a lot of honest and hard-working people in Manchester."

Michelle Seaborn, from Heywood, who starred in the first series with husband Barry, said: "People from Manchester have a great sense of humour and are bubbly. We're not all lazy slobs like Channel 4 seem to want us to be."

Wife Swap attracted 7.2 million viewers for the last series, making it one of Channel 4's most successful shows. It was made by the independent production company RDF Media, from Kensington, London.

Producer Katy contacted the M.E.N. as part of the drive to recruit families for the next series. She told us: "We're looking for the laziest family in Britain and we would like someone from the Manchester area."

When we asked her if she was simply setting up a Manchester family to conform with a southern stereotype, she said: "I just think you usually get a better character up north.

"People are open and honest. And more than anything I am looking for those great characters. It's a bit of fun really and not meant to be negative at all."

What do you think about Wife Swap targeting Manchester?


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Most recent 2 of 6 user comments

   Everyone stop tuning in to this it would not be on TV. As for the producers of this rubbish, they are stealing a living. Not like the hardworking majority of the North West who I am sure like me find the people featured like the Bardsley family distasteful and vulgar.
steve, manchester
30/03/2004 at 13:06

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   Something like this tells me as a former resident of the Greater Manchester Area that what the rest of the country thinks about the HARDEST working folk in the whole of the country.I sometime wonder if "'Coronation Street"" might have something to do with it.I know lots of Canadians who watch orrie and assume that all of the North West behaves like the characters on that show.
Peter FOY, London Ontario
29/03/2004 at 22:42

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