‘The thought of being handcuffed to a stranger is hellish’ (Picture: Channel 4/72 Films) It’s the middle of June and London is currently experiencing a record-breaking heatwave.

I’m regularly told I’m ‘ginger-skinned’ and subsequently I don’t bode well with heat or sunshine – so much so that ideally I don’t want to be in the proximity of anyone, actively avoiding crowds at all costs.

Which is why watching 18 strangers become handcuffed to each other for a classic Channel 4 social experiment feels particularly deranged.

Can two people with polarising lifestyles and beliefs stay tethered together for 10 days for a chance to win £50,000 dangling like a carrot for them at the end of the ride? The thought of it alone activates entirely new hells I wasn’t previously aware of — but here we are, in the New Wimbledon Theatre in London on one of the hottest days of one of the hottest years, watching contestants ranging from a gay porn star to a cleaner and an aristocrat turn their lives upside down to see if they can find common ground with a stranger from a completely different walk of life.

Spoiler alert: not all of them can.

In the opening episodes of Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing, we very briefly watch the moment they’re locked in.

It’s a few fleeting seconds on screen, but being there in person, it felt far more loaded than that.

The edit makes it look like they’re being churned out and locked in at a rapid pace.

The reality is slower, more awkward – and far more exposing.

Maybe being handcuffed to a lovely person you’ve never met isn’t too bad? (Picture: Channel 4/72 Films) The set-up looks almost exactly like an episode of Blind Date.

Host Jonathan Ross grills one player, diving into their political beliefs, their lifestyle choices, the characteristics they despise in others, while another is blindfolded with noise-cancelling headphones behind a makeshift partition.

What feels insignificant on screen was much more of a thorough interrogation on the day.

I’m lurking at the back of the new Wimbledon Theatre watching the first time they meet, already cuffed – and it’s clear there are some teams with a much fairer chance than others.

The first couple I watch are traditional homemaker and self-proclaimed ‘prude’ Charley, matched with heterosexual gay porn star Rob – though we’re not told he’s a porn star on the day, and neither is Charley.

Instead, Jonathan only shares that Rob is a former bin man, which feels like a deliberate sleight of hand.

Charley and Rob are interviewed on stage for close to half an hour before they actually meet.

Charley says she’s often described as ‘old-fashioned – but in a nice way’.

Being handcuffed 24/7 genuinely means being handcuffed 24/7 (Picture: Channel 4/72 Films) ‘I should have been born years ago,’ she says.

‘I love doing laundry, I love everything about home.’ The anxious housewife admits she struggles with the modern world, petrified of the confronting sexual imagery that is so easily accessible and the foul-language that has penetrated our everyday vocabulary.

Rob, meanwhile, strides onto the stage like a gentle giant, covered head to toe in tattoos.

At 23 stone and 6ft 8in, his wrists alone ring instant alarm bells for Charley, who is essentially the size of his....