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Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen paints himself into a corner on Celebrity Painting Challenge

Celebrities pick up a brush in the latest Bake-Offification of genteel British pastimes

Remember Watercolour Challenge? Competitive tea-time Channel 4 painting show, lots of British retirees with the cheapest possible haircut holding easels up against unseasonable breezes, judged by a local artist-in-residence and overseen by Hannah Gordon? Tonally quite close to watching cricket, in the combination of burbling, quiet chit-chat and enforced breaks for tea? Wasn’t gripping exactly but your grandad liked to fall asleep to it? Closest thing the late 90s/early 00s really ever had to ASMR? Remember that?

Well, now we have Celebrity Painting Challenge (Thu, 8pm, BBC One). Alongside the likes of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen – still in his difficult detective-who-keeps-getting-foiled-by-Jack-the-Ripper bearded phase, I’m sad to say – there’s Jane Seymour, Phil Tufnell, George Shelley, Josie d’Arby and Amber Le Bon, who is always introduced as “DJ Amber Le Bon” the way you assume Ben Kingsley insists on his “Sir”. These six celebrities are being tasked with the Bake-Offification of yet another hobby, after The Great British Sewing Bee and The Great Pottery Throw Down: painting, in which all the shapes of a Bake Off are assembled in a room rather than a tent and legally everyone is forbidden from giving a distinguished handshake.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2HRncyS
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