Next Wednesday, the BBC will treat us to one of those surreal moments it does so well. The occasion is the new series of MasterChef, hosted by John Torode and Gregg Wallace.

Yes, the same John Torode and Gregg Wallace who were binned recently. Yet here they are again. Ta-da!

The series was filmed last year, before the scandal broke. The BBC says it is only fair to contestants to show it. They, after all, did nothing wrong. It will be weird, though. At first, viewers will not quite believe what they are seeing.

I had a similar experience with a new homegrown BBC product, Situationships. It’s a podcast hosted by author and nurse Sophie Gravia and author and television personality Christine McGuinness. Made at BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay HQ, each new half-hour episode is available on BBC Sounds and “fully visualised” on the [[BBC Scotland]] channel and BBC iPlayer.

Gravia and McGuinness are agony aunts, advising viewers on everything from flirty text messages to friendships gone stale. And I do mean everything. I refer those interested to the story about the first date and the poppered body suit.

The opening titles are done in the soft focus style of those adverts for adult stations you’d see in the early days of multi-channel television. It’s all in keeping with the show’s up-for-a-laugh attitude as the duo help viewers navigate “the toughest, most outrageous and downright weird scenarios that life can serve up”.

Now at this point I could say something snarky involving the phrase “Reithian values”, but let’s be grown-ups here. Situationships could have been precision-engineered to have the likes of me collapsing on the fainting couch we keep in the front parlour for such occasions. As........

© Herald Scotland