Thoughts on my new shows!

So shortly I have a couple of new shows out, ‘The Joy of Teenage Sex’ channel 4, and ‘Hot Like Us’ BBC 3.

Whenever I am about to be in a series, I take some time to reflect on my resilience and self esteem, because when the critics get hold you need to be made of stern stuff!

So the Joy of Teenage Sex, well let me first of all say that in an ideal world, young people would wait until they were absolutely ready to have sex; in the real world we know this is not the case.

I thought long and hard about taking this show, I am very much old fashioned in many of my views, I truly believe that young people often feel pressured to make life changing decisions, and I believe there is so much media portraying sexualised images to young people and equating these with success, that undeniably young people will make some less than appropriate choices. I am also a huge advocate of keeping childhood innocent and children young for as long as possible.

In spite of these views, after much debate and an agreement to let me stick to the emotional side of sex, I agreed! I saw the almost finished show last week, yes there were moments that I wanted to hide behind my hands but all in all….yeah, it’s a show which covers medical, physical, sexual and emotional themes relating to young people; explores some scary teenage traits and all in all is viewer friendly.

I know that there will be people who disagree with me doing therapy on TV, and those who feel teen sex should be kept behind closed doors, and genuinely I can see reasons why people have those responses.

The main decision to do the show involved the opportunity to do therapy on TV. I absolutely believe that there is nothing wrong with talking about our ‘stories’ the events and experiences that formed us, the fears that lie with us and the concerns we have over our actions. This is what excites me in life, the stories we all have to tell. I listen day in and day out to people talking about their journeys, I spend many hours contemplating the benefit of how essential and healthy just being real is! I think everyone should feel ok about their ‘stuff’; it’s the fact that we are told to feel ashamed that makes many of my clients so unhappy in the first place. I want to show the young people who braved the sex advice shop and the viewers at home that talking about our ‘stuff’ is very often the remedy to our fears.

I guess that’s what I want to get out there, a sense that no matter how difficult your journeys have been, the reality is you can build resilience and find better ways to cope with conflict, challenge and criticism.

For my part, I accept that being on TV invites opinion and some of those opinions are pretty nasty…but that’s all they are; opinions, not fact!

Hot like us was a bit of fun for me; a show which involved models in relationships attempting to become ‘Britain’s Hottest Couple’. My job in this series was to do some relationship tests and to try to enforce that perfect looks mean nothing without substance and personality. I really did have fun on this shoot; I didn’t need to be serious and I spent most of my time laughing. I hope those of you who catch it get my sense of humour and don’t take me seriously!