Gok’s Clothes Roadshow: Get The Look For Less

(Channel4)

The pretext of Gok’s Clothes Roadshow: Get The Look For Less was simple. He would visit Brummigem and convert three middle-aged women into stunning catwalk beauties.

Their dowdy frumps-r-us clothes would be replaced with stunning fashions for 27p. In an instant they’d become the most desirable ladies in the nation’s second city. So far, so improbable.

Gok’s challenge – in a nutshell, turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse – was doomed to fail. You can’t turn Primark into Armani by calling it Primarni. Gok’s zany alchemy can’t morph plastic to leather – and no, Gok, calling it pleather doesn’t count. H&M and D&G are too many letters apart. Fashionistas are not so easily fooled.

Gok, however, was undaunted. He showed girls how to dress cheaply and managed to mix and match styles with impressive aplomb. His fashion antennae were finely attuned, his palette as refined as a Michelin-starred chef’s.

But Get The Look For Less was so much smoke and mirrors. Gok didn’t make his trio appear as though they’d visited London’s New Bond Street. They looked like they’d been to Merry Hill and spent £100 quid on a new outfit. A tonne of Made In China plastic jewellery didn’t disguise simple facts. One poor woman looked like Jane McDonald on a Mediterranean cruise.

And when they started boogying on the catwalk, it was time to hide behind the sofa – they’d danced like drunk dads on a stag do.

So Gok turned to his box of tricks. “Let me show you the dark arts of haberdashery,” he enthused, promising to turn a £20 glove into a Dior-esque £300 show-stopper. Except, of course, he didn’t: his gold-studded glove looked like something an uninspired drama student might have knocked up during a coffee break.

Later, he made a tartan bow: it was like watching a primary school arts and crafts teacher.

At times, Gok’s fervour was absurd. It was easy to imagine him with, say, pasta shapes, paper and glue: “Look, I’ve made an amazing new pasta shapes dress, think Paris, think Milan, think New York.” No, think teatime, and throw away the paper and glue. Now, pass the parmesan.

There is much to admire about Gok. He has the same indefatigable enthusiasm as the chef Nancy Lam. It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine them in conversation: “I love food.” “I love fashion.” “I love food more.” “I love fashion the most.” “I triple double love food.” “I max max max love superlicious fashion.” And so on.

Those who invest in clothes know this simple truth: you get what you pay for. Gok took five girls out to buy blazers, dressing them in jackets that cost around £30. And, guess what: they looked like holiday camp entertainers.

If you buy a High Street jacket, you don’t expect that it won’t one day fall apart. The seams will creak, the colours will fade and it’ll look out of date by this time next year. Big name fashion houses don’t simply make profits by charging over-inflated prices – although they do their fair share of that. They also charge more money than, say, New Look, because the fabrics are more expensive, more hours go into making them and the quality is better.

Gok’s three Brummie volunteers looked better when he’d finished with them than when he began.

But did they look as though they’d just stepped out of Prada? Maybe from the overnight cleaner’s shift, but otherwise, no.