[alli55]

As the time ticks closer to 8 o’clock, we are starting to gather in the living room, ready for our Saturday evening in front of the telly, catching up with Gemma’s latest exploits. Lissie comes down, with Rayna in tow.

“Mam,” she asks, “can Rayna stay and watch Britain’s Most Daring with us, please?”

“Has she asked her Mam if she can?” I enquire, conscious of the fact that it doesn’t finish till half-past nine.

“Yeah,” Lissie answers, “she said she’ll come and pick her up afterwards.”

“Okay, that’s fine!” I tell her. “Would you two like to sit on the sofa?”

“No, you’re okay,” she says, and disappears.

While she’s gone, Rayna thanks us for letting her watch the show with us. “My Mam doesn’t like it, so I have to watch it on my own on the small telly in my bedroom,” she explains.

Lissie’s soon back, with two pillows and her sleeping bag. She unzips it and spreads it out on the floor, and the two of them lay on top, side by side, heads propped up by elbows that are resting on the pillows.

It’s not long before the announcer alerts us to the start of the programme.

“Next on Channel 4, it’s the show that everyone’s talking about, Britain’s Most Daring. See what I mean? Even I’m talking about it!”

The familiar theme music accompanies the opening titles, which have, as always, been revamped to include clips from last week’s show. As they come to an end, and the applause begins, the usual fade-to-black occurs, and the caption, written in white lettering, appears once more: ‘Last week on Britain’s Most Daring …”

This week’s montage isn’t the usual rapid-fire mix of short clips that challenges the eye to keep up. This time we have three longer clips, one from each of last week’s group dares. We see first Keenan and Tariq, then Shanumi and James, encouraging sections of the Wembley crowd to out-chant each other; this is followed by Jaz singing ‘One Moment In Time’, accompanied by Mia on her keyboard, whilst Bradley, Dylan, and Lowri mingle with an enthusiastic crowd at Bristol Harbourside; and then we see last week’s crowning glory, Gemma singing ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ with Eilidh, Ayla, and Tommy backing her, and Matt adding some bluebird whistles. The last of these clips continues right to the emotional end to Gemma’s song, before the screen fades to black once more as a red number 13 appears. Behind the 13 we see a clip of Tariq being kissed on the cheek and patted on the backside by Aleksandra, before turning and exiting the show. As he does so, the 3 changes to a 2, before the screen fades to black again, and the number 12 follows suit.

Another rapturous round of applause accompanies the appearance on our screens of the show’s two main presenters. Joe, we see, has returned to his more familiar combination of slightly-worn skinny jeans and a t-shirt, which, this week, is a vivid purple colour. Trixie has on a lemon-coloured dress, sleeveless, as is usual for her, which billows out from her hips every time she moves, before falling back to rest midway down her thighs.

“Thank-you,” she says as the applause starts to end, “and welcome to Britain’s Most Daring, with me, Trixie Stonehill, …”

“… and me, Joe Denecker,” comes the familiar first line from Joe.

“After last week’s amazing Musical Extravaganza, we have so much to tell you!” Trixie informs us.

“Yes, we do!” confirms Joe. “As you may already know, the CD and download of last week’s performance by the BMD Northern Singers has only gone and made Number 1 on this week’s charts!” There is enthusiastic cheering, whistling and screaming from the audience.

“And,” Trixie continues, “I can exclusively announce that, so far, it has raised over half-a-million pounds for Heads Together!” Another raucous response from the audience greets this news.

“We had such a great time last week!” Joe recalls. “But, sadly, we also had to say goodbye to Tariq. His departure leaves us with a dozen daredevils doing dares … er … delightfully!” he adds, trying to make his alliteration go on as long as possible.

Trixie shakes her head slowly and rolls her eyes. “As always, at the end of tonight’s show we’ll be losing someone else, because, on this show, Joe …”

“… if you flop you’re dropped!”

“Exactly!”

“When we finally persuaded Lowri to stop partying last week,” Joe informs us, “the remaining daredevils were given their next dare. Let’s see what happened!”

We see the 12 daredevils, sat in their seats once more, with the glammed-up Trixie and Joe-in-a-tuxedo standing alongside. Each daredevil is holding an envelope.

“This week,” the glammed-up Trixie reveals, “there are two different dares, ‘A’ and ‘B’. Can you all open your envelopes and reveal which dare you’ve randomly picked!” The envelopes are opened to reveal 6 ‘A’s and 6 ‘B’s.

As always, we look immediately at Gemma to see which letter she’s holding. It’s ‘A’ this time.

“Okay,” says Joe-in-a-tuxedo, “to explain what the two dares are, here’s the woman that can make the telephone directory sound sexy, wor very own Dare Deliverer!”

“Hello again, my little daredevils!” the voice begins. “This week, I want you to meet some more new people, and have the meeting recorded with a nice little picture! If you have Dare ‘A’, you must photobomb as many strangers’ pictures as you can, and please try to be as creative as possible! Those of you who chose Dare ‘B’, I dare you to get as many selfies with strangers as you can, without telling them who you are or why you’re asking! Good luck, and be daring!”

“Photobombing!” exclaims Lissie. “You were right, Maddie!”

“Yep! That tweet made it pretty obvious!” her sister remarks.

Live in the studio, Trixie says, “As always, the daredevils have had all week to get their dares done.”

“So, if you’ve been photobombed by some maniac this week,” Joe warns, “you might well see yourself on TV in the next hour or so!”

“Right,” Trixie says, “let’s see how they got on, shall we?!”

“Just before we do,” Joe interrupts, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to do!”

Trixie watches as Joe heads over to the DAPAs. He stands between them and pulls them closer in to him. Putting an arm around Danielle’s waist, he pulls out his phone and snaps a selfie. His mission accomplished, he returns to Trixie’s side.

“You quite finished now?” she enquires.

“Uh-huh,” he tells her, showing her the picture on his phone.

“What are we going to do with you?” she asks, rhetorically.

We see the DAPAs looking mystified, as Danielle offers a shrug of her shoulders in response to Trixie’s unanswerable question.

“Right,” says Joe, “let’s crack on! Who are we going to see first, Trix?”

“First up,” she tells him, “let’s go over to Richie and find out how Jaz’s dare went!”

Richie, in his standard tatty jacket and jeans, is sat on one end of a see-saw. It is at its lowest point, meaning his knees are almost banging into his chin. The camera pans up and along to the other end of the see-saw, where we see Jaz, her legs dangling in mid-air, looking down at us. As the interview progresses, the camera gradually pans up until, by the end, Jaz fills the bottom half of the screen.

“So, Jaz,” we hear Richie say, “you’ve got to go selfie-hunting. Have you had any thoughts about how you might do that?”

“Yes,” Jaz replies, “I thought I might hit the Bullring and just pester people!”

“Great! Shall we go then?”

Jaz looks alarmed. “Don’t just get off! You’ve got to let me down gently!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” we hear him tell her, “I’ve never been any good at doing that!”

Jaz suddenly disappears off the bottom of the screen, with a squeal.

Richie provides the voiceover for a montage of clips showing Jaz doing just what she told us she would: pestering people for a selfie at the Bullring shopping centre in Birmingham.

“True to her word, Jaz is wandering the Bullring looking for selfies from anyone who happens to be coming the other way!” he tells us. “But she’s not having much luck!”

We see a succession of people either refuse her request or, more frequently, move across to avoid her altogether. A mother, with two children in tow, gives Jaz a rather unfriendly glare, which Jaz ignores; the older girl says something to her mother, who shakes her head and increases her pace, forcing the two kids to half-run half-walk to keep up.

“Eventually, her persistence starts to pay off,” Richie says, as we see Jaz getting selfies from a young woman, a middle-aged man, and a middle-aged woman. “But, her antics attract unwanted attention!”

As Jaz asks another young woman for a selfie, we see two security guards approaching her from behind. One of them grabs her arm and manhandles her away from the other woman.

“What exactly are you doing?” the other asks.

“I was just talking with her,” says Jaz, trying to shake her arm loose from the guard’s grip.

“Don’t come the little innocent with me,” he tells her, “we’ve been watching you on CCTV, and you’re causing a nuisance!”

“Can you let go of my arm, please?” she asks. “You’re hurting me!”

If he loosens his grip, it’s not by much, and he certainly seems to have no intention of letting go, presumably in case she decides to leg it!

“You need to come with us, while we decide what to do with you!” the one doing all the talking informs her.

“I told you,” she repeats, raising her voice, “let go of me!”

A young man, in jacket and trousers, stops, his attention grabbed by the commotion. “What’s going on?” he asks the guards.

“It’s nothing to do with you! Move on, please!” the guard orders.

“They’re hurting me!” Jaz tells him.

“I think you should let go of her!” he calmly suggests. “Two burly blokes like you don’t need to be using that sort of force on a young woman!”

“I told you, it’s nothing to do with you,” the security guard repeats.

The man takes out a pen and finds a scrap of paper in one of his pockets. “I’m making a note of your ID!” he informs the guards. “And I will be making a complaint to your company if you don’t let go of her!” Reluctantly, the guard releases Jaz’s arm. “Thank you! Now, what say I accompany the young lady to her car, and that removes your problem for you, and we say no more about it?”

He turns, allowing us to see the front of him for the first time, and we notice that he is wearing a dog collar. He’s a vicar! No wonder the guards were reluctant to pick an argument with him!

The vicar puts a hand on Jaz’s back and gives her a little push-start, and they walk off, leaving the guards to wander away, muttering to each other.

“Thank you, vicar,” she says to him, after they have walked for a moment.

“Tom,” he tells her.

“Jaz,” she responds.

“Well, Jaz, I don’t know what you did to upset them, but you look like you could do with a coffee! Shall we?!” Jaz agrees, and we see the two of them sitting at a table, chatting as they drink.

“Not one to waste an opportunity,” Richie says, “Jaz manages to grab one last selfie!” The montage ends with a shot of Jaz getting a selfie with Tom the vicar!

Returning to the studio, we find Trixie and Joe have been joined by Jaz.

“So, Jaz,” remarks Trixie, “right from the start that looked like a bit of a struggle!”

“Yeah, it was!” she agrees. “People just don’t want to be interrupted when they’re out shopping! They were all like, ‘leave me alone’, ‘stop bothering me’. I thought I’d get more people than I did! It was quite disappointing, really!”

“And then you had the run-in with the security guards …!” Joe says, leaving a pause for Jaz to fill.

“Yeah, they were really nasty! I don’t know what their problem was! But luckily Tom rescued me!”

“Yes,” Trixie interrupts, “I was going to ask about that! How did you feel when he stepped in?”

“I saw straight away that he was a vicar, so I thought, well, vicars are supposed to be nice, aren’t they?! So, I just kind of let him talk to them. And then he just sort of took control, and, because he was a vicar, I decided I could trust him, so, yeah!”

“And you even got a selfie with him!” Joe remarks.

“Yeah, he was really sweet about that!” Jaz says.

“Well, we saw how tough it was, but let’s find out how wor DAPAs rate your effort!” Joe says. “D ’n’ D, what’s it to be?”

The DAPAs are not terribly impressed, with Dan awarding 5 points and Danielle only 4. Jaz’s total of 9 points means she is at risk of ending up in the Dare-Off.

“Yeah,” she admits, when asked by Joe, “I thought it might be quite a low score. Maybe I’ll be alright if some of the others found it hard as well!”

“And we’ll find out if they did, in part 2,” Trixie informs us. “Join us after the break for more Britain’s Most Daring!”

“What would you do if someone came up to you and asked for a selfie?” Lissie asks Rayna.

“Probably run away!” her friend replies.

“But they wouldn’t ask you,” Maddie points out, “because you’re obviously a child.”

“What d’you mean?” Lissie asks her sister.