Swaps: Linda Robson

UK TV channel Five has commissioned Flame TV to produce Celebrity Swap, a new three part series following two different celebrities each week as they undergo the ultimate makeover: one star couple will swap gender, another age and a third class. They then try to fool close friends or family. The series follows the pilot Gender Swap, which saw Carol Smillie and Shaun Williamson transformed.

Actress Linda Robson swaps class with Major James Hewitt: she becomes the aristocratic Arabella Duncan-Hughes. The other two lucky female celebrities are TV presenter Vicki Butler-Henderson (becoming a bald geezer) and model Melinda Messenger (looking well best her sell-by date).

The makeup is in the more than capable hands of Neil Gorton and Vanessa White. Neill claims that: ‘You will see these stars transformed to the point where their own mothers don’t recognise them in close proximity.’ While Linda’s makeup application did not involve as extensive prosthetics as Melinda’s and Vicki’s the transformation was still pretty radical.

A further one-off programme Jordan Gets Even featuring Jordan (Katie Price) has also been filmed and is likely to be shown in early 2005. So far there is no information available on the nature of her transformation (other than Neill Gorton’s claim to have disguised her ‘biggest assets’.