Fed up of humdrum programming about sensible, reasonable subjects? Then our weekly Odd Programme of the Week feature is for you!

Last week we took a look at To Catch A Predator and this week, I’ve spied another programme that’s most definitely odd, thanks in part to it’s rather insulting title!

My choice this week is Animal planet’s offering called, Even My Pet’s A Porker, 20th September, 8pm. Now, I was intrigued to see this title; I would’ve breezed past if it had said ‘My Pet’s A Porker’ but it was the ‘Even My’ bit that pulled me in.

And as I feared/hoped, it is indeed what I imagined. Someone at Animal Planet has commissioned or bought this show in which overweight owners have to have overweight pets in order to be on the show. Splendid stuff I’m sure you’ll agree, so in this episode, we meet Ruby from New Zealand who weighs over 200kgs. Ruby is a pig. Now you may be thinking, ‘well she must be to weigh that much’ but no, Ruby is an actual pig of the actual porcine variety. And the last time I checked, I thought it was the raison d’être of pigs to be large? I’ve certainly never seen any documentaries about anorexic pigs but who knows… watch this space!

Anyway, back to Ruby and her owner – and despite researching, I can’t find this lady’s name – are apparently seriously overweight and the owner has dangerously high cholesterol. Ruby’s cholesterol level isn’t reported. This lady also has a dog that is morbidly obese and consequently diabetic aw well as four children. In the programme blurb, there’s no actual mention of whether the children are overweight or not but I’m going to guess that they are.

Enter Nutritionist Lani Lopez and ‘The Pet Doctor’ Seton Butler, who between them teach the family – and presumably the pets – about healthy eating. The family is shown how to shop for healthy food, both human and pet, and the specialists teach the whole family, pets included, how to exercise. I have visions of Ruby the pig in leg warmers, the dog in a spandex all-in-one and the all the humans dancing around to Jane Fonda’s video in the living room…

The programme info says, ‘Sometimes shocking, emotive and informative, Even My Pet’s A Porker gets to grips with both the pet and their owner’s tandem weight problem and what can be done to help.’

Now what I want to know is, who’s going to deal with the psychological trauma that this programme’s title is surely going to cause the obviously already troubled pet owner?? By implication, the programme is calling the pet owner a porker; not very PC is it?

It is quite amazing at what programme makers come up with. I mean, who sat in an office somewhere and said, “I’ve got it! You know you wanted a programme that’s never been done before about weight loss…?” And that someone then pitched the idea of finding not only overweight people, but overweight people who’ve also caused their pets to become fat… what a great concept! I can’t wait to see this one.