Michele Hewitson: Witches and wardrobes

Shock. Horror. Or, perhaps, frock horror. No, I can't quite work up much indignation over the fact that on What Not to Wear a sort-of celebrity wife defied Trinny and Susannah. Ingrid Tarrant, who I had never heard of, is married to Chris Tarrant, who I had never heard of but who is a radio and telly sort of-celeb in Britain.

This was the What Not to Wear Christmas special - the screening of which now makes sense only in that there must have been a few goose-bumped cleavages going out in evening frocks at that time of the year.

Goodness how those girls like cleavage. "Wibble wobble," they said to a shy young frump who was married to a managing director but who went to company dinners in her mother's cast-offs. The girls managed to do her over all right. They got her wibble wobble out, it was presented up like a nice piece of pork belly, and sent her off in some strapless number which made her look like mutton dressed as, well, pork belly.

Generally, though, the girls or the "bitches" as Ingrid Tarrant called them, pull off some fairly spectacular make-overs with the help of hair and make-up and a good old getting out of the fatty bits known on this show as boobies.

Ingrid wasn't having any, or much, of it. She knew she dressed like a 50ish slut and she liked it. Trinny and Susannah had her in a classic little black dress for an industry awards dinner. Ingrid had bought her own frock, a young girl's dream of a frock in pink with beads and lace, and she got changed into it in the cab on the way to the do.

So, shock horror. The girls had met their match. You got the feeling early on that there was a change in the dynamic here. I didn't see Susannah slapping sort-of celeb Ingrid very hard on the rump, as she likes to do. I didn't see any of the ripping off of knickers, or ripping up of clothes. Perhaps being really rude only works with dowdy, down-trodden bad dressers.

This was a bit of a shame because now that America's Next Next Next Top Model has finished, I am experiencing the symptoms of bitch withdrawal. There's nothing that so warms the cockles of a heart in winter like watching girls being ghastly to other girls.

It makes you feel very warm and snug, not to mention smug. Aren't girls just horrible? And we'd never behave like that. I'm not at all surprised there hasn't been a New Zealand version of What Not To Wear (or not yet.) In truth it can't be for lack of bitches.

So it must be that no strapping Kiwi lass is going to let themselves be stripped to their bad-fitting underwear on the telly. And if a local Susannah slapped a home grown slapper on the bum she'd be likely to get one right back in the botoxed bits.

In search of something to replace my ANTM fix, I tried to watch something called Laguna Beach. This seems to be about feckless American teens with unlimited money whose wardrobes consist of bikinis.

The costume changes are dreary enough and the girls so interchangeable that I couldn't work out who was bonking who and who had dumped who and who was not speaking to who.

Actually, I couldn't understand a word they said, except for "like" which seemed to be the only word they said.

I'm sure the girls on this thing were all terrible bitches but they were such boring bitches. Unlike on ANTM where the talent, and conversation, is sparkling. As in "did you just call me FAT?!" Which makes Trinny and Susannah look almost like nice girls.