Singer/songwriter Jade Thirlwall (once of pop group Little Mix) sits nervously among a group of around 15 interviewers.
One of them stands up. “You”re part Egyptian yeah? There”s something I want to ask you and maybe I shouldn’t but I’m going to anyway.” Thirlwall’s nervousness ratchets up a notch, as does the tension in the room.
“OK,”she replies hesitantly.
“So,” the questioner continues, “did aliens build the pyramids?”
Welcome to The Assembly, a new TV show where a “collective of autistic, neurodiverse and learning-disabled interviewers” ask questions of an invited celebrity.
There are three rules. No subject is out of bounds, no question is off the table and anything might happen.
The format originated in France, where president Emmanuel Macron was famously asked if he thought it was good role model behaviour to marry his teacher.
The BBC ran a pilot but, inexplicably, passed up on the chance to turn it into a series, and it has been snapped up by ITV.
In the first three episodes, as well as Thirlwall, actors Danny Dyer and David Tennant appear.
In a fine moment, Dyer was asked why he had called former British prime minister David Cameron a “tw*t”.
This referred to a legendary moment live on Good Evening Britain in 2018 when Dyer accused “that tw*t Cameron” of scuttling off for a holiday in Europe after causing the Brexit mess, and “sitting in Nice with his trotters up”.
Dyer gave an equally sweary reply to justify his original sweariness. “Why do you swear so much?” asks a woman sitting next to him.
Dyer mumbled something about having been brought up by strong sweary women. “I don’t swear,” she tells him.
The questions are magnificently eclectic. Tennant is asked if he believes in God, how it felt to be rejected from Taggart 16 times, and what his skincare regime is.
Thirlwall is probed over “selling her soul” after being on The X Factor, her teenage eating disorder and whether she has trapped wind.
Dyer is asked how working class it was to send his son to private school, and whether he and his wife still have a joint bank account following his ejection from the family home some years ago (they are since reconciled) over his drug and drink addictions. One interviewer asks if he fancies a fight.
It is this unpredictable shower of questions that disarms the victims and draws replies they would probably not give to any other interviewer or in any other format.
This gives the show its power and its ability to be both very funny and deadly serious, humorously casual and deeply probing.
Tennant said that he had been asked questions that he would have walked out on in a conventional set-up, but felt compelled to answer here. Is there a problem with this?
Why would Tennant feel he has to answer questions from neurodivergent and learning-disabled people that he wouldn”t answer from anyone else? Does he not want to upset them?
Are there some uncomfortable echoes of the historical idea of the wise fool, who could whisper things in the ear of a king that no one else would be allowed to say?
Such caveats and questions have to be considered, but they don’t seem to bother the interviewers, who relish their chance to be up close and dissect the personalities of their chosen celebs.
The interviewees seem to enjoy the honesty and kindness with which they are picked apart.
“This is my favourite interview I’ve ever done,” says Thirlwall.
“This show is going to be f*cking massive,” says Dyer – with an apologetic glance to the woman next to him.
