TV VIEW:IT WAS, perhaps, the moment Leeanne Druse swallowed a fly while watching her boyfriend, Armagh Gaelic footballer Ronan Clarke, playing for Keady that we wondered if BBC Northern Ireland would struggle to keep their promise that new series NI Wags would be nothing but glitz and glamour over its six-week duration.

The narrator had guaranteed us "plenty of pampering, partying, proposals and pooches" as these "seven glamorous ladies invite us in to their homes, hearts and handbags". But as Leeanne gagged while her fretting friends feared she'd failed to free the fly, you were suspicious the channel was making promises they could never keep.

Leeanne's friends, Lana and Lisa, whose loved ones also play for Keady, had their own problems at the game, Lana complaining that it was "too cold to clap, my fingers are going to fall off", while Lisa noted, somewhat ruefully, that GAA club matches weren't the place for stilettos, just "tracksuits and wellies".

"These wives and girlfriends of Northern Ireland's top sportsmen have a lifestyle that is the envy of women up and down the country," BBC NI had told us. "Their glamorous lifestyle just never stops!"

In Keady that day, to be really honest about it, it looked like it never began for Leeanne, Lisa and Lana.

Then there was Zara Shaw. Zara is the girlfriend of footballer Chris Kingsberry, who was with Bohemians when the programme was made, but was later released, joining Lisburn Distillery.

We can't be sure how Zara, a taxidermist (kidding - a model), felt about Chris leaving Bohs, but one thing's for sure, she won't miss Dalymount.

Sometimes, she said, she wore "skinny jeans or short skirts" to Dalyer, but, quadruple pneumonia being the curse that it is, she often donned "tracksuit bottoms". You could feel her shame.

"Whenever we come down we normally, like, just sit amongst the fans - there's, like, a wee players' lounge beside the dressing-rooms, but basically it's, like, nothing, it's more of, like, a shack than anything, it's nothing special," she sighed.

Zara, no more than ourselves, was bitterly struggling to find the glamorous lifestyle that just never stops.

Back then Chris, Zara told us, lived with "Murph and Deano" in "an absolute stinker of a house".

She helped clean it with Murph's girlfriend, but drew the line at washing Chris's training kit which "always comes home minging". Even mentioning Chris's training kit almost made Zara gag, like she'd swallowed a Keady-born fly.

Was there any Victoria Beckham-esque (Zara's "style icon") upside to her life with Chris?

"Whenever they win the cup final or, like, the league, they get, like, a bonus on their pay packet, so hopefully he might buy me a nice wee Gucci bag or a Prada bag or something," she said.

The cost of a nice wee Gucci bag, you fear, would amount to more than Lisburn Distillery's annual transfer budget, but if you're brave enough to tell Zara, off with you.

Next, Lauren Hood, a hair extensions entrepreneur and girlfriend of Ulster's Stephen Ferris. Somewhat indignantly Lauren told us that rugby wives and girlfriends aren't called Wags, "we're called Scrummies".

We wondered, therefore, if the WAGs of mixed martial arts (MMA) lads were called "Healies", but we were never told.

Julie Moore is the wife of MMA champion Rod Moore. According to the BBC NI website, she's a "three-year-old air hostess".

Maybe it's the stress of watching Rod partake in something that looks a whole lot more like an inebriated street brawl than a sport which has aged her, but - and we mean no offence - we thought Julie looked older than three.

Rod and Julie live in Portadown and when we dropped in on their home they introduced us to their guinea pigs, Dumb and Dumber.

That was nice.

But Rod's mind wasn't on the guinea pigs, that night he was fighting Mark "Manslaughter" O'Toole in Portadown, so he was busy packing his lunch (a bunch of bananas) as he set off to prepare for combat.

Julie, meanwhile, was preparing for a pre-fight meal with the WAGs of Norn Iron's many other MMA fighters. Several of them, to be truthful, looked a whole lot more menacing than Manslaughter O'Toole.

Rod, Julie told us, watches MMA DVDs while she's sleeping, but figured, despite her best efforts, the sport's rules - and there aren't many - were seeping in.

"I remember one time when Rod was fighting and the whole crowd went totally quiet and I went 'HEAL HIM'! It just came out! I didn't even know if that was a rule, but it just came out," she said.

Later that night Rod won his bout by healing Manslaughter and Julie was over the moon, the pair returning home to tell Dumb and Dumber the good news. Rod, Julie, Dumb and Dumber - their glamorous lifestyle just never stops!