Michele Hewitson: Mini-me gets off lightly

Brittny and Lisa Gastineau aren't as famous as they feel they should be.

The Gastineau Girls, playing on endless loops on E! TV, is the sort of thing they'll play in Hell. It will be too late by then, of course, to warn you against the dangers of living a life dedicated to shopping and the desire for fame for the sake of fame.

Still, at least those souls who end up in the place where a little guy with a pitchfork prods you in the backside every time you look as though you're about to drift off, will be able to feel a bit smug.

Because nobody could have set out to live a more aimless life than this mother-daughter shopping team. Blonde mom Lisa, one of those American women of indeterminate age whose various bits defy whatever it says on her birth certificate, says of brunette daughter, Brittny: "she's a little mini-me".

It's hard to figure out whether she says this proudly.

Having watched The Gastineau Girls endless times, I still haven't managed to figure out how they got on the telly in the first place.

It's reality telly about two women who lead lives that have no resemblance to reality. They appear to have enough money to buy designer clothes, or perhaps they're now so famous for trying to be famous that they get them sent free, in truckloads.

When they decided to hold a charity auction for Hurricane Katrina victims they kept taking clothes and hiding them because they decided they wanted them back. They raised some paltry sum. This was their agent's fault.

Everything the girls do (that mother's got to be 50 even if her nose, boobs, chin and tummy are much younger) turns out not to make them as famous as they ought to be.

This is always their agent's fault. It was the agent's fault when Brittny became a DJ but couldn't be bothered learning how to become a DJ. Brittny, despite seeming to do nothing every day of her life, gets bored quickly. "I'm really over this," is her refrain when it comes to, say, unpacking one box of clothes.

I really should be over watching the thing, but it's horribly compelling - a bit like watching Rodney sort of dance on Walking About a Dance Floor with the Stars.

There could be a reality show in the lives of the kids of parents who go on telly in tight, spangly lurex outfits. We could see them go to therapy, for one thing.

No doubt a few of the kids on Prime's Sports Kids' Moms and Dads will end up on the couch after the bodies of their pushy parents have been found buried in the garden. My pick for an early untimely end would be Bryce's mum, Kim. Bryce is a figure skater. He's pretty good. She's pretty good at nagging him about how he's not good enough. Mom has never been on skates but she knows the name of every move and how and why Bryce can't perform said move well enough.

Or perhaps it will be Sharon who is found, struck in the head with a cheerleader's baton. Sharon is 8-year-old Sarah's mom. Sharon never made the cheerleading squad; she's determined Sarah is going to be the best cheerleader in America. She's a supportive mom: "If you cry your makeup's going to run".

Sarah also does ballet and takes hip-hop classes and appears in a mom-run singing dancing squad called the Little Wranglers. Sarah's brother Seth is in the Wranglers, too.

They wear blue denim dungarees. "Some of the guys who don't really have a life think it's gay," said Seth. "But it's not gay 'cos we're dressed like real cowboys and dancing with girls."

After watching Sports Kids, you begin to think that Gastineau mom had the right idea. The pursuit of fame by never doing anything has its merits. And by comparison, it's not actual hell to watch.