Josie Gibson – 30-second slim

Let’s get one thing straight. This workout does not last 30 seconds. Good news if you are looking to get value for money from your Celebrity Workout DVD purchases. Bad news if you were looking for a workout you could do during an ad break in Come Dine With Me.

The justification for the name presumably comes from the fact that this workout uses interval training and consists of 30-second blocks of high impact training interspersed with periods of “Active Rest”.

(“Active Rest” by the way is a grossly misleading term. It’s up there with “Public School” or “Friendly Fire”.)

Pictured: Friendly Fire

It’s a fucking liberty. A workout where bits of it last for 30 seconds isn’t a “30-second Workout” any more than Lord of the Rings is a “3 page book” just because sections of it are three pages long.

Not that I’m laying any of the blame for this at Josie Gibson’s feet. She seems like a perfectly nice girl who’s just trying to keep her media career alive after her departure from the Big Brother house in 2010.

Now here's a workout DVD double act we'd like to see

“Big Brother’s Josie Gibson is more a little sister now!” says the DVD box. Because she’s gone from being big to being little, do you see? Much like she’s gone from being a boy to being a girl. No wait, she hasn’t done that. I’m not really sure that comparison was really thought through.

Josie took part in Series 11 of Big Brother which was the last series of Big Brother to be broadcast on Channel 4. I had completely lost interest in Big Brother by this time and it seems I wasn’t the only one as Channel 4 were so desperately trying to ‘freshen up’ the format that it became a bit of an embarrassment.  For example, they had one of the housemates dress up in a mole suit live in a Mole Hole. They also instigated a Tree of Temptation which prompted contestants to do such hideously antisocial things like throw housemates' vegetables, fruit and bread into the pool and destroy someone's cigarettes. It’s like they actually wanted the housemates to kill one another.

It was - apparently - an actual tree

The format seems a confusing mess by this point – 81 hopefuls turn up on day 1 with one of the contestants being chosen by random draw and a bunch of new contestants being flown in by spaceship of day 31? What gibbering madness is this?

Still gibbering madness or not (and it was. Clearly.), Jodie must have been doing something right as she not only won the competition but did so with the highest percentage of the public vote ever. 

This DVD was released in January of this year which makes it a startlingly up-to-date review for CLCW. We’d better watch ourselves. We’re in danger of becoming cutting edge, here.

There are three workouts covering three different difficulty levels as well as a “Josie’s Story” extra which purports to give us a behind the scenes look at Josie’s incredible weight loss. Mostly it includes footage of Josie exercising at the beginning of her fitness regime when she was still plus-size. She has been squeezed into a pair of exercise shorts three sizes to small which causes her belly to overhang the waistband uncomfortably. Presumably to provide a contrast with the way she looks now.  And to provide an incentive to the rest of us.

It doesn’t have to be like this Josie. They make shorts in all different sizes.

The voiceover tell us it was “cruel” pictures taken of Josie on holiday that made her want to lose weight. Well, if they were so very cruel, voiceover lady, why are you showing them, huh?

And why am I showing them now? It’s like we’re ALL monsters.

She certainly looks like a new woman by the end of it. And she deserves to if she’s doing these exercises on a regular basis. They are unbelievably hard work. This may actually be the toughest (as opposed to just incomprehensibly convoluted) workout we've had here. You don’t expect it when you've got a celeb who was formerly actually overweight rather than merely photographed by the paparazzi at an unflattering angle. 30 second workouts can be pretty exhausting when you stick a load of them one after the other.

Suffer as I do!

Difficulty Level

As I mentioned, this is really hard work. Trainer James Stark isn't content just to make us do press ups. It’s more like: do a press up then touch your toes and a do a star jump and a squat thrust all within 2 seconds. And Repeat! Lots!

We've barely even started, people!

Would I do this Workout Again?

You know I am going to have to. Basically, you’re expected to master Level 1 before you move on to Level 2 then get the hang of that one before moving up to Level 3. I feel like a bit of a fraud even playing the later sections. Like I wasn’t really authorised to do so.  I will be back and  I will earn those Level 1 stripes godammit.  

Best Bit

Josie’s accent is just delightful. I honestly didn’t know that Bristolians spoke like that. I am clearly not spending enough time there. Who doesn’t want to spend time with someone who looks like Barbie and sounds like the Wurzels?

I got a brand new combine harvester and I’ll give you the key

Worst Bit

The workout appears to have been recorded in a school gym. There are wall bars and a old-fashioned vaulting horse. It took me right back to PE lessons at school. I’ve just about stopped screaming now.

The horror.