Being lecherous can be funny but if the letch is a winner it can come off as, well, perverse. This is where 2 Facebook 3 presenter Jools Constant finds himself. His anecdotes about how he pulled a 20 year old Australian blonde-bombshell off the back of finding out he was to be a Grandfather sets the tone for his routine: lots of tragic stories about him succeeding with girls beyond his reach. For a show so dependent on the audience’s trust in him, Constant completely fails to establish a positive relationship.
The main premise of the show is that the audience are invited to Facebook Constant and he promises to work off whatever he is sent. He describes this as “cutting-edge”, but 2 Facebook 3 is far, far from cutting-edge. Social-media, whilst certainly a generation-defining phenomenon, is not new in 2012; politicians use it, big corporations use it, my Grandpa uses it - it’s not exactly an underground movement. Furthermore, he doesn’t work off it; he simply reads out what has been posted on his wall and then returns to his triumphant tale about how he once slept with a girl half his age.
When he finally does try and interact with his audience it is little more than ‘Have we got anyone in from America?’ There were; he made a comment about Americans being fat and it felt like we had inadvertently fallen through a worm-hole and landed in Butlins circa 1962.
This could be a better show, deserving of a better rating. If Constant quit the lechery and made a valid attempt to find comedy in what he was being sent there could be some superb spontaneity to his show. He doesn’t. There isn’t.
