APRIL Fool’s Day is a television minefield which always involves a scan of the schedule to try to find the tiresome and obvious wind-up show.

No problem, this year, though, I thought.

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There it was, bold as brass, on BBC1, of all places, at 8pm.

Stacey & Joe, a fly-on-the-wall, Kardashians-style yarn that would surely have had the Beeb’s head of factual entertainment put on extended gardening leave if they’d tried to screen it on any other day of the year.

But then, less than two minutes into their humble-bragging intro about letting the plebs see how “we really live”, I spotted “1/6” on the Sky Planner and realised, with a thud, this was no joke.

Our state-funded broadcaster really had devoted six hours and a fair bit of our money to Stacey Solomon, who’s nothing like the Dagenham ditz she sometimes pretends to be.

She’s a smart, likeable, hard-headed, multi-millionaire businesswoman who as well as being a mum of five is also full-time carer to Joe Swash, who — if you’re not familiar with his work — is very much the millennials’ answer to Charlie Drake.

That is to say, he’s a helium-fuelled mega-irritant, from London, who demands constant attention, is late for everything and could no more set the family washing machine to “mixed load” than he could fly the international space station to Proxima Centauri b and back.

Stacey clearly loves the selfish clown, though, so they’ve got their own series which kicked off with an impossibly camp off-screen voice asking: “What can people expect from watching you over the next months?”

Beyond dead butt syndrome and brain atrophy, you mean?

Well, I had a fair idea, but tried to keep an open mind until such time as my worst suspicions were confirmed.

Because, as Kerry Katona, Katie Price and Ferne McCann and lots of other I’m a Celeb veterans have demonstrated time and time again, these low-rent, fly-on-the-wall enterprises follow a very rigid pattern.

Indeed, pretty much every episode involves a “spontaneous” foreign holiday and photoshoot or red carpet event, interspersed with some domestic whimsy to try to draw the viewers’ attention away from the fact Stacey and Joe live in a style so grand, with their mansion and swimming pool, in Essex, that it’s a lifestyle way beyond 99.9 per cent of the population.

To this end, we were treated to: Joe forgetting to buy nappies, Joe turning up five hours late for a meeting, Joe filling the washing machine with bleach and Joe letting the pet ducks, Daisy and Delilah, into the living room where they promptly crapped all over the sofa, in a gesture I’m filing under “fair comment”.

It was while the clean-up operation was in full swing, however, that Stacey suddenly cleared her throat and the show’s real purpose became apparent as she awkwardly declared: “I love making telly, but I love all the other stuff I do as well, so I have partnerships with home brands and clothing wear.”

No sooner had she finished than a bunch of fawning corporate creeps arrived to help launch her new perfume and you remembered that, much like every fly-on-the-wall show that’s gone before, this was just another celebrity advertorial.

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Rich and famous people, flogging us stuff we don’t need, which is themselves, mainly, but also includes all of Stacey Solomon’s commercial interests and even Joe Swash’s ­Instagram feed, in episode two.

A tactic you grudgingly expect from the likes of ITVBe or any ­commercial channel, but this is the BBC pushing its own rules on advertising to the absolute limit and making you wonder about the strategy behind this broadcasting monster which seems to be caught between two pathetic and entirely incompatible extremes.

For on the one hand, it’s an insufferably self-righteous, preachy, middle-class, left wing, woke organisation which disapproves of anything that smacks of capitalism or fun.

While on the other, they’re a bunch of cringing, middle-aged desperadoes who are so desperate to be a down-with-the-kids, ITV2- style network they’ll swallow any principle just to line the pockets of a couple of C-listers.

Neither approach is sustainable or remotely enticing but at least there is an occasional let-up with youth obsession and an obvious exit ­strategy with Stacey and Joe when Swash says: “This is us and you can either like it or lump it.”

Neither, thanks. Click.

BRUCE'S TRIP A TRIUMPH

TELEVISION adventurer Bruce Parry has been bitten by squirrels, monkeys, dogs, snakes and pretty much every other wild creature in South America, except Luis Suarez.

He’s also taken all known hallucinogens, in the name of his art, which means he’s still the perfect man to get off his nut on BBC2’s masterpiece Tribe, which returned this week after an absence of nearly 20 years, with Bruce living alongside the Amazon rainforest’s ancient Waimaha people.

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An experience that began with a Bushtucker Trial of palm weevils and ants, to try and ingratiate himself, followed by the sacred Yage ceremony, which involved more tribal headgear, chanting, drinking and vomiting than I’ve even seen on a Tartan Army trip (Including Milan, 2005).

Over 24 hours later, after the chundering had finally stopped, a thoroughly blissed-out Bruce claimed he now understood the Amazon wasn’t just a place where the Waimaha grew their food, “it’s a relationship you have with this forest”.

And though the tribal elder, Pedro, merely replied in the affirmative, I’m convinced his eyes told a wider story that was as wise, vast and all-encompassing as the great jungle itself and said: “Nah, mate. It’s just a p**s up.”

(Tribe is available on the BBC iPlayer).

• TV name of the week? The executive producer on Discovery’s new series of Naked And Afraid, David Hard Story. Commiserations also to the production assistant, Jack Seamans.

TV gold

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BBC2’s Bruce Parry, who’s back to his chundering best on episode one of Tribe.

Sam Rockwell stealing the show as Rick’s out-of-control friend Frank, on The White Lotus.

James Nelson-Joyce proving to be as brilliant – as Michael Kavanagh – in BBC1’s gangster drama This City Is Ours as he was playing Johnno the prison bully in Time.

And legendary comedian Mick Miller getting proper belly laughs for a perfectly delivered punchline to a routine called “I don’t mind a good funeral”.

A performance which, as you’ve probably already guessed from the words “belly laughs” and “punchline” wasn’t provided by television.

It’s on YouTube. Go there and remind yourself that comedians used to be funny.

Lookalike of the week

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Sent in by Michele M.

• ON EastEnders, everyone continues to handle Phil Mitchell’s nervous breakdown and stay in a psychiatric unit with great sensitivity, except Nigel Bates, who said: “I thought it was going to be like that ward in that film where Jack what’s-his-name got lobotomised.”
  Which, I hope you agree, is no way to talk about Phil or a movie as powerful as Carry On Doctor.
• IMPOSSIBLE contestant Abdul was absolutely right to say, “the singer who claimed ‘We don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time,’ in a 1986 hit,” couldn’t possibly have been option C) Jermaine Jenas, “because he’s a football pundit,” and very much would’ve suggested taking his clothes off to have a good time.
• THE Finish Line, Roman Kemp: “John, what creature is a sombre tit?” Keir Starm . . . “A bird.” “Correct.”
  Oh well, you live and learn.