TV Review Twin Towns

It was a major coup for Sky One’s Twin Towns to get Zedd and Saffire on their show.

You know Zedd and Saffire, right? Based in Edinburgh but away with the fairies most of the time, their singing on Britain’s Got Talent was described by Simon Cowell as “one of the worst things I’ve ever heard”. Zedd’s still making a noise in Lothian’s voodoo-rap scene and the couple host their own podcast, “Fresh Alternative”.

I confess I had to take their word for most of this as I’d no idea who they were, but they talked of being celebrities so often during this house swap show that I began to believe the lie with them.

If the idea of Twin Towns is for crazy Americans to switch lifestyles with some down-to-earth Brits, then this episode turned that premise completely on its head. San Diegan family the Fish-Taylor-Browns were completely normal apart from the fact they had three surnames.

Teenage daughter Julia had her blonde head screwed very tightly on and had been voted as the family’s representative to decapitate any chickens should that be required (being American they were under the impression that Scotland was still mostly clan-based settlements and they’d likely be staying with a “fundamentalist religious group with no electricity”. When I said they were normal that’s in comparison with Zedd and Saffire).

With a dad called Michael Fish, the Californians were wiser about Scotland when it came to climate (there wasn’t a surprise hurricane, thankfully) but having been led to believe they were swapping homes with local celebs, Zedd and Saffire’s flat in Portobello (when forced to visit the real world, Saffire worked in a hospital kitchen and Zedd was a stay-at-home dad) must have been a let-down.

Disappointment wasn’t a word that cropped up in any of Zedd’s freestyle raps as he and Saffire floated around San Diego in a bubble of denial.

“They’re so full of talent,” said one local, which did make me momentarily lose control of my nasal passage as there were about 250 words I thought were applicable to complete that sentence and “talent” wasn’t one of them.

“California is like a different planet,” said Zedd. No wonder he and Saffire felt so at home.