Horror behind the Mr Personality mask

By MICHELE HEWITSON

If there are no second acts in American lives, there are ample opportunities for further humiliation.

You have to hope that Monica Lewinsky is getting paid an awful lot of money for her part in Mr Personality (TV3, 7.30pm).

Mr Personality is the show in which nobody appears to have a personality. It lifts the game played on The Bachelorette. The men are masked but the premise is the same. Perky babe gets to hang out in a hideous mansion with a bunch of guys. Each week she gets to send some home - but not before they are unmasked.

Mr Personality is "what happens when one extraordinary woman, who has only dated men the ordinary way, must pick the love of her life without ever seeing his face".

I'm not quite sure what's extraordinary about Hayley. Unless it is that she's extraordinarily ghastly.

When Stan was unmasked she said: "It was a case where the personality definitely matched the looks."

I'm not quite sure what only dating men "the ordinary way" means either. In Hayley's case it seems to mean that the bloke has to spend the night playing "look at moi, look at moi" with Hayley.

When a Luau night was held at the mansion, complete with chickies in bikini tops and grass skirts, she got badly miffed when some of the guys showed an interest elsewhere.

"I was surprised at how much these guys wanted to give the other girls some attention."

Pete gave one girl a little too much of something that looked very much like attention.

Well, she was giving him a lap dance. Hayley hauled him over coals.

Pete: "The way I look at it there was no exchanging of any kind of bodily fluids."

Until that point it was difficult to figure out just what Monica's part in Mr Personality is supposed to be. Monica seems to spend as much time as possible staying out of shot.

Perhaps she has realised that being on this show is far, far more embarrassing than sharing a cigar with a President.

That's the snigger factor, of course.

She does get to tick off Brian. He went upstairs with a Luau girl and declared her to be much more fun than Hayley.

Then he was rude enough to unmask himself before Hayley could do it for him.

"Okay," said Monica, "anyone who does that again is a real wimp. Take it like a man."

It's hardly "you are the weakest link" stuff.

Monica looks as though she'd rather be having dinner with Linda Tripp than hanging out with this lot. And who can blame her?

The guys are either bores or weirdos. You have to be to volunteer to spend weeks behind luridly coloured latex masks, in a bad-taste mansion with an uptight madam who has had a personality bypass.

(And, incidentally, why, in such a huge mansion, do the boys have to share bedrooms?)

Chris seems to think he's going to be the one. He passes the time reading How To manuals on hypnotism and is about to be accused by the other boys of exerting mind power techniques on Hayley.

Chill out, lads, there's nothing up there to manipulate.

But somebody's been hypnotised. Probably poor deluded Monica by the size of the cheque.