[alli55]

As their families continue to talk their way through the adverts, the five girls begin dealing with the avalanche of messages arriving on their phones. Judging by the chorus of pings, warbles, whistles and assorted other noises, they are going to have their hands full! The sound of the theme music starting again interrupts their efforts, and Lissie, Rayna, Luisa, and Elora immediately discard their phones; Rosie and Keira continue to tap away, whilst half-watching the TV at the same time. Maybe they’re not quite as dedicated Britain’s Most Daring fans as the other four!

“Welcome back,” says Trixie, “as the number of clothes available to our daredevils continues to decrease!”

“Yes,” adds Joe, “each day is going to be more of a challenge, so let’s get back and join wor clothes inspectors once more!”

The screen goes black again, and the words ‘Tuesday: Day 3’ appear in yellow, staying onscreen for a couple of seconds.

Javid is standing in a courtyard, in front of what looks like a small barn. It is pouring with rain, and he is wearing a rain jacket and holding an umbrella. “This,” he says, indicating to the building behind him, “is Tommy’s workshop, and at least it’s going to be dry in there! So, let’s go in!”

Inside the workshop, Tommy is working on a semi-circular piece of stone, carefully chipping small pieces off with a mallet and chisel. When he hears Javid and the camera crew enter, he stops working and looks up.

“What are you working on?” Javid asks him.

“It’s the headpiece of a monument I’ve been commissioned to make,” Tommy explains.

“Right!” says Javid. “Can I have a go?”

“Definitely not!” he is told, in no uncertain manner. “I don’t want to be picking fingers up off the floor!”

“Fair enough!” Javid acknowledges. “So, let’s get down to business!” The counter appears in the corner of the screen once more.

“Okay,” Tommy grins, “ready?”

“Ready!”

“So, we’ve got sweatshirt and jeans, that’s two; me kecks, three,” Tommy says, showing us the waistband of his underpants, “plus the socks makes five.”

“That’s only four, mate!” Javid informs him.

“No, five!” Tommy corrects him. “Sweatshirt, jeans, kecks, and two socks.”

“The socks only count as one thing!” Javid reminds him.

“You’re joking! They don’t, do they?”

“Yeah, pairs of things count as one item.”

“Oh, ’eck! That’s me screwed, then! I’ve right messed this up, ha’n’t I?! What a muppet!”

The counter remains on 4, and a red cross appears, as we hear a deep buzz, which is obviously the noise for a failed inspection.

The weather is no better in the West Country, where a waterproofs-wearing Olly has taken shelter in a large greenhouse. “I’m back to check up on Bradley again,” he tells us, “and the GPS tracker has pinpointed him to somewhere in here!” He begins to wander further into the greenhouse.

When Olly finds him, Bradley is extremely surprised to see him again so soon. “What’s this?” he asks. “Am I being picked on?”

“No,” Olly assures him, “not by me, at any rate! Now, let’s see what you’ve got on!”

The counter ticks over as Bradley goes through his items of clothing again: “shirt, vest, trousers, pants, socks, and gloves.” He lifts his shirt to reveal his vest, pulls the waistband of his pants up from under his trousers, and waves his hands at the camera to show he’s wearing gardening gloves. The counter reaches 6, but there is no tick and ping yet.

“Have you had those gloves on all day?” Olly asks, suspiciously.

“No, I put them on when I took off the raincoat over there!” Bradley says, triumphantly. He points to a raincoat left on the top of a trestle table nearby. Now we get the tick and ping.

Lorna is in the entrance to a rather run-down tenement building on a rain-lashed street. Under her umbrella she is just about staying dry, which is fortunate because she has decided not to bother with a raincoat, sticking with a white blouse and dark skirt combination that screams “office worker” at you. She is pressing one of a number of doorbells on the wall.

“Hello?” comes a voice over the intercom.

“Ayla, hi, it’s me, Lorna!” she says into the intercom. “Can you let me in, please?” There is a buzz, and Lorna pushes the door open.

Another door opens, and Ayla welcomes us into her flat.

“So, how’s your dare going,” Lorna asks her.

“It’s fine,” Ayla replies, “it’s better now that I’ve shed a couple of layers!”

“Let’s have a count up, then, shall we?” Lorna suggests, as the counter re-appears.

“Okay, from the bottom: socks, leggings, skirt, knickers, blouse, bra, cardigan.” She is quite coy about how she shows her undergarments, but Lorna confirms that it is all present and correct. With the counter showing 7, the tick appears and the ping sounds.

The screen then fades to black once more, and, in a pastel pink, this time, the next caption appears: ‘Wednesday: Day 4’. After a couple of seconds that disappears.

Richie, in tatty jacket and jeans, what else, is outside a branch of Boots the chemist. “Okay,” he says, “I’ve been sent to check up on Jaz again. But, seeing as she’s at work, in there,” he nods towards the shop behind him, “this could be a bit awkward!”

Inside the shop, he approaches the perfume counter, where we can see Jaz and another young woman talking. Both are wearing Boots uniforms, and both look up as Richie approaches. Jaz grins, whilst the other woman’s eyes narrow, as she regards Richie and the camera crew with some suspicion.

“Hi, Richie,” Jaz greets our arrival, “fancy seeing you here! What fragrance are you after?” She laughs as her colleague watches on.

“I think my fragrance days are well behind me!” he chuckles, then gets straight to the point. “Where d’you want to do this?”

“We can go to the ladies’ cloakroom,” she tells him, “follow me!”

In a small room, next to rows of lockers, Jaz goes through the usual routine. The counter, as always, appears in a corner of the screen.

“So, my Boots tunic top, and trousers, obviously,” Jaz begins, and adds, “I’ve got no socks again today.” She proves this by pulling her trouser legs up enough for us to see her bare ankles. “Then, because I’ve got to have a white blouse under the tunic, I’ve had to go braless today, so it’s just my pants.” She opens the tunic for us to see the blouse, then rummages about and finds some of the waistband of her pants and shows us that. She pauses, before turning her back to us and removing her tunic; then she lifts the back of her blouse up far enough for us to see that she isn’t wearing a bra. As we get the usual ‘tick and ping’ confirmation of a passed inspection, Jaz re-dresses and then turns to face us again, her cheeks displaying a rosy blush. “I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, and, even worse, Friday. I might have to call in sick!” she confides.

Lorna is out in the rain, again, in sweatshirt and jeans this time. She is walking towards a large 1960s-style, concrete-and-glass building, holding an umbrella to keep the rain off.

“That’s the science lab where Eilidh works,” she informs us. “Let’s go and find her, and see if she’ll let me play with any of the chemicals!”

Eilidh, wearing a white lab coat, looks every inch the scientist. She greets Lorna with a “hi!” and a smile, and then, in response to Lorna’s question, says, “Absolutely no way, I’m no letting you touch anything!”

“Oh, spoilsport!” teases Lorna. She asks where the best place to hold the inspection might be, and Eilidh tells her they can do it right there, since the lab isn’t going to be used today.

With the onscreen counter in place, Eilidh reveals all. “I’ve got the lab coat, which has caused me a problem, actually,” she tells us, “and my trousers. That’s when the problem comes, because I’ve only then got my bra and panties underneath.” She unbuttons the lab coat and pulls it open, in the way we imagine a flasher does with his ‘dirty old man’ mac. We can clearly see that she does, indeed, have only her bra on under the lab coat. Before re-fastening the coat, she shows us the top of her panties. The counter hits 4, the green tick appears, and a ping sounds. As she buttons herself back up, Eilidh confides, “I cannae believe I just did that!”, and giggles girlishly.

“I’ve had a tip-off!” Lowri tells us, with a knowing look. “I’ve been told that we’re in for a bit of a surprise when we find Dylan!” She steps closer to the camera, and looking right at us from very close up, whispers, “Have I ever told you how much I love surprises?!”

Pushing open a plain white door, Lowri takes a look inside, and beckons us to follow, grinning. When we do, we come face to face with Bob the Builder; or rather, Dylan, dressed as Bob. He’s wearing denim dungarees over a red-and-orange checked shirt, with a hard hat to complete the look.

Lowri looks at him for a moment, and then asks, “Can you fix it?”

“I most certainly can!” Dylan replies.

“I bet you can!” she flirts. “Well, I can see three items, where’s the fourth?”

The counter appears and rapidly clicks up to 3.

“That’ll be my boxers,” Dylan tells her.

“Let’s take a look then,” she says, reaching her hand towards the bottom of Dylan’s shirt.

He backs away and lifts the side of his shirt out from under the dungarees, and shows a piece of light blue material. “There you are, that’s all you’re seeing!” he informs her.

It’s enough, as the counter clicks one more, displaying the number 4. A ping and a tick follow.

“I’ll come back again,” Lowri promises, “when you’ve got less on!”

“There’s no need!” he assures her.

“Oh, there is,” she replies, embarrassing him as much as she can, “there definitely is!”

The other Britain’s Most Daring flirt, Aleksandra, is on the prowl in a Vodafone shop. She’s with a young male member of staff, who, she’s discovered, she can easily embarrass.

“I need a phone that can’t be hacked,” she tells him, “because I have some pictures that are not for public viewing. I think you know what sort of pictures I mean!”

He turns a deeper shade of red than he was when she began, and tries to tell her about security options.

“On my last phone,” she continues, “there was a video of me and my boyfriend. But someone hacked it and we ended up on a naughty internet site!” The poor assistant’s eyes widen, and his mouth gapes open. “Maybe you saw it? It was very sexy! I bet you liked it!” He is trying desperately not to let her catch his eye, as he fumbles with a phone in the display next to him.
The poor young lad looks as if he wants the ground to open up and swallow him, but, fortunately, his manager comes to the rescue.

“Oh, it’s you!” the store manager, Keenan, says, when he sees Aleksandra. “Can you stop harassing my staff, please?!”

“He was just helping me with my security issues,” Aleksandra pleads her innocence, as the young assistant flees the scene.

“I think you need to come into my office!” Keenan tells her.

“Oo-ooh!” she teases, “Naughty!”

In the manager’s office, Aleksandra asks Keenan, “So, is your dare still going okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine!”

“Good! So, now it is time for your inspection!”

Keenan reels off his items of clothing, as the counter clocks them up: “jacket and trousers, shirt, socks, boxers.” He reveals only as much as he needs to prove this. With 5 showing, we get the latest tick and ping.

“Thank you!” Aleksandra says. As an afterthought, she asks, “You didn’t watch my naughty video, did you?”

“Get out! Go on, get out!” he orders, and the screen goes black.

Back in the studio, Trixie and Joe look slightly taken aback by the tone of the last two inspections.

“I think we’re going to have to have a word with those two!” Trixie exclaims.

“Rather you than me!” replies Joe.

“Hmmm!” she murmurs.

“So, we’re over halfway through the week, and wor daredevils are starting to feel the pressure!” Joe says.

“And things are only going to get tougher for them,” Trixie adds, “so come back after the break, when all will be revealed on Britain’s Most Daring! … Well, almost all!”

This is what I thought might happen with the nature of this week’s dare. Things are already getting quite risqué, and, with fewer and fewer items of clothing left, the scope for more skin to be shown is obvious; plus it won't be long before we cross the 9 o’clock watershed! Had the show been on BBC or ITV, I’d be confident that it would all be done tastefully, but, of course, this is Channel 4, and they have a reputation when it comes to pushing the boundaries. Maddie is old enough for it not to be a problem, and I’m not worried about Lissie, either. But I don’t know how the parents of the other youngsters feel, especially the Greek family. I have visions of the next half-an-hour being quite awkward!