The Real Rooneys (Disney Plus)Rating:Rating: One star Dolly Parton used to say it took a lot of money for her to look that cheap. Coleen and Wayne Rooney spend a whole load more on looking a damn sight cheaper. But that’s the cost of authenticity. Faking it this frantically is expensive.The Real Rooneys is an exercise in pretence, a palatial facade covering up – who knows what? The film crew might have some inkling, perhaps, and the army of unseen household staff will have their own notions, but we can only guess at what is hidden.Certainly, no rumours have emerged from their £20million mansion, High Lake Manor, outside Knutsford in Cheshire. The likelihood is that all concerned have been obliged to sign non-disclosure agreements in their own children’s blood, as I had to before being granted access by Disney+ to the first four episodes. The Real Rooneys is an exercise in pretence, a palatial facade covering up – who knows what? The show is almost all repetition and paddingEach one is about 40 minutes long, give or take, but tighter editing could have boiled the lot into an hour, and still left room for Match Of The Day highlights. The show is almost all repetition and padding, filled with shots that are essentially alternative takes of earlier sequences.Every episode starts with snatches of what we’re going to watch. Then we watch it.Then we’re reminded of what we’ve just watched. It’s all spliced together into a cascade of five-second excerpts, to match the length of Wayne’s attention span, with the segues between them accompanied by an audible ‘whoosh’.Despite the breathless speed of the editing, don’t be fooled into thinking this is cobbled together. Every frame has been scrutinised to ensure we never once see the Rooneys in any light they regard as unflattering.Why anyone would want to be portrayed as vacuous, self-obsessed, intellectually numb, absurdly insulated from reality and just spectacularly tacky, is beyond me. But this impression has not been created by accident, so I can only assume that whatever lies beneath this spray-on diamante-and-gold-dust veneer is nastier still.It’s like an endless Instagram loop devised to convince us that life with the Rooneys is all a great boisterous lark, where everyone laughs and frolics until they fall into bed with exhausted happy smiles, excited about what tomorrow will bring – a Scouse version of The Waltons, with a hideous gilded brick barn instead of a wooden house.The extent to which I find this offensive, and the anger of my reaction, surprises even me. It has nothing to do with Wayne’s football career – I couldn’t care less about that.And until now, my impression of Coleen was vaguely sympathetic: she seemed to handle that 2022 ‘Wagatha’ court case against Rebekah Vardy with dignity and a hint of restraint.But I resent being told, loudly and repeatedly, that I’m watching the full, unvarnished truth, when it’s obvious the show is highly staged propaganda. Wayne Rooney’s long history of alcohol abuse, and his many sexual infidelities, are never addressed – to call it The Real Rooneys, is simply deceitfulWayne Rooney’s long history of alcohol abuse, and his many sexual infidelities, are never addressed. If there were oblique allusions and flimsy excuses, that would be understandable – no one expects this series to be a self-lacerating confessional. To call it The Real Rooneys, however, and then make no mention, is simply deceitful.The second episode, for example, includes a ‘romantic weekend break’ for the couple at a Scottish castle. Coleen is peeved because her husband kept her waiting for two hours after a round of golf.’This trip didn’t get off to the best start,’ she harrumphs to the camera. ‘He stayed to hang out with his mates in the clubhouse, so that p****d me off. I would have done the spa day with the girls if I’d known.’That’s the extent of her chagrin. She’s missed the chance of a hot stone massage and a cucumber facial. On the drive to Loch Lomond, he teases and flirts with her till she thaws, and they arrive at the Cameron House hotel like a couple of newlyweds.If the real extent of Wayne’s marital misbehaviour was to spend too long at the golf club, his record would be as close to blameless as it’s possible to be after 18 years of marriage.The fact, completely ignored by this show, is that he has been dogged by allegations of cheating – visiting prostitutes from the age of 16, a notorious threesome while Coleen was pregnant with their first child, photographed unconscious in a hotel room with several women, and being pulled over for drink-driving with a woman he’d just met at a party while Coleen was expecting their fourth child.The drinking is also not discussed. To see him rejecting malt whiskies at a tasting session, or sipping a pint of Tennent’s over dinner as if it’s a rare treat, you might assume he’s practically teetotal.In fact, he admitted in 2023 that he used to drink till he ‘almost’ passed out. And last year he told the BBC that he’d ‘struggled massively’ with alcohol and, without the intervention of his wife, ‘I’d be dead’.This show was the perfect opportunity to lay those difficulties bare, in ways that might be genuinely useful to other couples facing the same problems. Instead, we are force-fed footage of the Rooneys charging around their 40-acre gardens on electric bikes and go-karts, belting a ball on a five-a-side pitch, playing snooker and diving into their two swimming pools (one indoors and one outside, as far as I could see).The longer it goes on, the more the falseness of it all jars. When Wayne is sacked as manager of Plymouth Argyle, Coleen insists: ‘He’s on the first steps of a new exciting journey.’No one mentions that he was in charge for just 25 games and left his team in bottom place of the Championship.’This is going to be the most we’ve ever opened the doors of our home,’ promises Coleen, but I’ve seen showhomes on new-build estates that looked more like people actually lived there.Every room is hung with chandeliers, twee inspirational slogans blaze in neon across walls, and each scatter cushion is arranged with precision on sofas the length of Southend pier.We’re meant to imagine that Coleen manages all this on her own, except on the rare occasions when Wayne cooks ‘spag bol’ or wakes up early enough to take the children to school.It’s obvious that the real ‘Real Rooneys’ have staff, and lots of them. No shame in that, of course. But there is shame in hiding the chefs, the housekeepers and the gardeners from the camera as if they don’t exist.In another variation of the same statement, she repeats, ‘We’re at a stage now where we feel like we can open up a bit more to show people our lives… a side of us we’ve never shown before.’This means extended promotions for the brands Coleen endorses, including Primark and Paddy Power. She is ‘designing’ her own range of clothes, though the chief evidence of her creative input consists of her inspecting fabrics and deciding that she likes blue stripes.The true measure of how completely this couple lack all self-awareness comes on that trip to Scotland, when they pull in to get a McDonald’s takeaway.Making great show of how unchanged and ‘authentic’ she is, Coleen orders nine chicken nuggets with curry sauce and a Dairy Milk McFlurry.As she reaches out for the food, she’s wearing two thick gold chains on her wrist and a pair of diamond earrings the size of a McCheeseburger. Classy.