My Supermodel Baby, Tuesday 10.35pm, BBC One

My Supermodel Baby © BBC

The Daily Mail's forever foaming at the mouth about feral 15-year-old girls churning out babies to claim benefits, but if My Supermodel Baby is anything to go by, all those pregnant teens are missing an altogether more lucrative trick.

Talented toddlers can take around £60 an hour if they land a top modelling job with one of those Mother and Baby mags you see clogging up the shelves at the supermarket. While their career span may be seriously short, there’s more than enough time to pay mum back for those piles and piles of Pampers.

This engaging BBC documentary follows three sets of doting parents as they attempt to land lucrative modelling contracts for their tots – and it has to be said, they’re all completely and utterly bonkers. Wide-eyed North London mum Esther is particularly good value as she darts across the capital’s casting cots with her cute son Hadley Jack, while her rivals Jamie and Kelly reel off a list of celebrities their boy Frankie looks like (Marlon Brando, Elvis) with poker-straight faces.

Meanwhile, there are hints that the latter couple had something of a head start in the modelling world. Both being women, they had to rely on a sperm donor to be Frankie’s “dad”, and they freely admit to putting in a request for a batch which came from an athletic supermodel with a great sense of humour. Well, that or Marlon Brando, presumably.

We won’t spoil the fun by revealing who ends up being the toddler’s answer to Christie Turlington, and who ends up on the supermodel scrapheap before they’ve even reached their first birthday. We won’t mention which of the beautiful bouncing babies ends up having his double chin removed, and his eyes made bluer, by the reliable magic of Photoshop either…

by Stewart Turner, Monday 19 October 2009

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