A couple of weeks ago, a very worthwhile charity asked me to appear on their behalf on this year's programme. This request was a little different than the previous one. The charity approached me directly to ask me to help them out and I felt I owed it to them to seriously contemplate the endeavour. But once again, when it came to the crunch, I just couldn't do it.

Apart from not being able to sing, which is an obvious handicap in what is, essentially, a singing competition, I had my suspicions about the real objective of the show.

What exactly is Charity You're a Star there to do? Is it to raise money for worthwhile causes? Well, it may raise the profile of the charities involved, but the amount of money the show gathered last year was certainly not earth-shattering. The reality is the charity element is a by-product of an entertainment programme created to win high ratings during a traditionally sluggish season for television.

As I had come fairly close to taking part, I am particularly interested in watching this year's series unfold. Previously, I had thought of the contestants as either desperate or mad to want to be on the show. But now I know there is at least a small percentage who were approached by a charity and simply couldn't say no.

So when the first programme began, my empathy levels were raised; by the end of it, I wanted to run to the Helix and drag the acts out of there before any more psychological damage could be done.

This type of show is more than similar to those that run in the UK, but the ITV and BBC versions don't play host to the level of juvenile bullying of contestants that has been played out over the course of the last week on RTE.

Take for example former rugby player Shane Byrne. On the first night he appeared, judge Brendan O'Connor told him he looked like a "lesbian George Hook." I put my head in my hands when the camera panned to his two perplexed toddler daughters who were listening attentively in the audience. Not only was it an unnecessary and pointless comment, what relevance did it have to his performance?

Female contestants have been taken to task over the length of their skirts and been subjected to pretty base sexual comments, while others have been told they must have been practising for years in front of the mirror with a hairbrush. At one stage, the audience was advised, in the case of model Vivienne Connolly, not to "discriminate against the candy."

On top of the ritual ridiculing, the judges challenge each other to say on camera what they really thought of the performances; in other words, to reveal what I assume were the uncomplimentary comments they had made about the acts backstage and off camera.

I am still left trying to figure out what the show is trying to be. Perhaps it is a lesson in humiliation. Judges humiliate the acts and then humiliate each other. Bullying is good, according to Charity You're a Star. We don't care that you are nervous and that not only are your family and friends in the audience, but thousands are watching at home too . . . we are just going to take you down as far as we can.

Undoubtedly, there are some people who signed up to the competition to further their careers, but I can't help but feel sympathy for the people who got involved because they genuinely felt they were helping out a good cause. Some of them must now realise they have been thrown to the lions.

And as I sit and watch and cringe, I think there but for the grace of common sense and a modicum of cowardice go I.

Claire Byrne co-presents 'The Breakfast Show' on Newstalk 106 with Ger Gilroy