Sarah has emailed me asking about my experience. Many thanks for dropping by Sarah.
I’ve done pretty much a bit of everything from major entertainment series that sold round the world to the first babe chat channel. An area where I’ve got quite a bit of experience is daytime chat shows. One of the most popular themes we covered was “DNA – the test results.” These programmes were all about finding out who the father was of some poor baby, a baby that would have been far better off being adopted as soon as it was born rather than stay with any of the parties involved. On any subject, the guests had usually fallen out of the ugly tree hitting every branch on the way down and were dressed in various forms of casual wear fashioned from man-made shiny fibres. When they did actually make an attempt not to look like they were on the rob, it was as though Stevie Wonder had dressed them. Another thing they nearly all had in common was a morbid fear of the dentist, it seemed as though they’d grown their teeth in Coca-Cola. It was fair to say that I wasn’t really proud of exploiting these morons for ratings but I needed the money.
Another speciality is medical programmes which is amazing considering I’m incredibly squeamish, a fact never divulged to the various production companies that employed me. The first time I viewed orthopaedic surgery, I threw up in the edit suite rubbish bin. I was haunted for weeks by images of the surgeon using a circular saw on a thigh bone while wearing something akin to a welders mask to stop bits of bone getting embedded in his face. Then there was what looked like a hammer and chisel being used on a hip joint where each bang of the mallet from the surgeon sent judders through the patient’s unconscious body. It was not for the faint-hearted, neither were operations on eyes or testicles but I had to watch them all at length and repeatedly.
Although these programmes were torture for me, I did get some helpful tips while getting paralytic with the doctors and nurses. For example, a consultant cardiologist told me ‘My dear boy, never go into hospital in the months of August and February. August is when all of us consultants bugger off on holiday and leave the juniors to man the pumps. February’s not good either because that’s when we have a fresh intake of newbies and all the other juniors are rotated. Unless you’ve been run over by a bus, avoid those two months like you would a hooker with a cold sore!’ Valuable advice indeed.
Recent Comments