TV show Naked Attraction has 'raised eyebrows and a fair few heartbeats'

Gemma Dunn.

There are few people that haven’t seen — or at least heard of — Naked Attraction.

Since its launch in 2016, the Channel 4 dating series has not only raised eyebrows — and a fair few heartbeats — by asking its hopefuls to strip off in the quest for true love, but more importantly, it’s opened up a conversation about gender, sexuality, and body confidence.

So much so, in fact, that people now can’t get enough of the discussion, says host Anna Richardson. Even in the most unlikely of places.

“This weekend I was doing some charity work for an orchestra that works with underprivileged kids, and I was attending something with the household cavalry,” she says.

“And somebody within the band came up and said, ‘Oh, we’re not going to be performing naked...’. “I just thought, ‘Oh my God, this is somebody who works for the royal household, and even they’re watching Naked Attraction!’”

“That’s what surprises me,” admits Richardson, who says much of the feedback comes from middle-aged or older viewers. “Everybody secretly watches it. They might make out that they don’t, but everybody has seen it.”

For those who haven’t seen it, each week, one person, ‘the picker’, whittles down a group of six naked potential suitors, one body part at a time, based on what they find least attractive. Only when they’re left with the final two will they bare themselves, and make a final decision.

“We’ve moved it on in terms of the contributors and the picker,” Richardson says of the new series “So, as always, we’ve got people of all shapes, sizes, genders and sexuality, but get this — we’ve also got a non-binary pan-sexual picker round.

In this day and age of everybody being gender and sexually fluid, you’ve got to start getting your head around people not wishing to be labelled.

Confessing nothing shocks her anymore — “I’ve done a lot of shows around sex and relationships; you just become completely inured to the whole thing” — Richardson is the ideal choice for the forward-thinking edit. But she’s more than aware others don’t always share her liberal views — at least not without question.

“We knew that [Naked Attraction] was going to be controversial, but as long as you’re being controversial for the right reasons, I have absolutely no problem with it.

The reason I agreed to do it was because it opens a conversation around sex, sexuality, and identity, and that’s really important.

She adds: “Every single person that has taken part in Naked Attraction has come off set and said, ‘I really enjoyed that. That’s made me feel a million dollars’, because if you can stand naked in front of an entire crew of people and 3m people watching you, then you can rule the world.”

Would Richardson consider baring all in the name of love, too? “I wouldn’t. But do you know what? It just says something about my age, maybe, because I haven’t really been single for any length of time.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to have always been in a relationship and I think back when I was 18 — I mean, we’re talking 1988 — and there just wouldn’t have been this kind of show,” says Richardson, who has been in a relationship with presenter Sue Perkins since 2013.

“So culturally, I can’t conceive of it, whereas I think if I was a millennial now, then maybe I would, yeah.”

Living out her private life in the public eye, meanwhile, can be tricky. “You totally forget that people know who you are — I forget that all the time,” she confides.

How about working with Perkins — is that an option? “I would love to,” says Richardson. “But Sue is a little bit more reticent, just because she’s got more to lose in a way, I suppose.

“I also think she feels that she works with Mel [Giedroyc], so it would be a little bit disingenuous if suddenly she and I were doing something. She’s kind of professionally married to Mel, so I think she feels she’d be cheating if she did something with me.

“But yeah, don’t rule it out. We’ve always said if the right thing came along, then we would definitely consider it.”

Naked Attraction returns to Channel 4 on Friday, August 24.