The TV Producer

We were interviewing for a researcher and in walked this small, impossibly pretty brunette who wearing a very low cut top that gave us constant glimpses of what seemed like perfect breasts. She was however totally useless for the role and thick as pigshit but still go the job as I really wanted to have sex with her.

This happened about a month after she joined. I then promoted her to assistant producer and the sex got even more intense. The fact that it had to stay a secret (inter-office relationships were banned by the company’s owner) made it more intoxicating.

Far from being a secret, she’d blurted it out to a few colleagues when pissed one night. As such the owners found out and I was given the old Spanish archer. We carried on seeing each other after that but it wasn’t the same and just fizzled out.

All TV, by its very nature, is manipulated in some way or faked by producers. We have to do this otherwise people wouldn’t watch. If we just filmed everything, put it all together and then transmitted it, everyone would want to hang themselves whilst having their teeth drilled.

I have lost count of the times I’ve persuaded people to say or do stuff on camera that they wouldn’t normally have done in a million years. This includes the man who had a fetish for car exhausts and although never actually carrying out his desire to have sex with them (whilst still attached of course), I got him to actually do so on camera. It was tastefully done though, there was no nudity involved and the exhaust went on to make a full recovery.  

I have filmed a guy addicted to (or so he claimed) masturbation who embarked on therapy sessions that involved walking through a market and stopping in alleys to knock one out. I had asked to the therapist to make some treatment up that we could film and this seemed like a good one.

Then there was the girl who was selling her virginity to the highest bidder. I managed to get her to include the need for asphyxiation in her ad even though she had never done it nor in fact wanted to. We then filmed some of the respondents showing exactly how they would do the deed.

All reality stars are there to be exploited and manipulated for the entertainment of viewers. http://thetvproducer.com/archives/97 They will be for as long as reality formats exist and people want to watch them.

Reality tv ‘stars’

Nearly every reality tv ‘star’ I have had the misfortune of working with or met has been the vainest, most self-obsessed pain in the arse imaginable. I’m not talking about the reality talent shows where many participants actually do have talent for example the likes of Leona Lewis, Will Young or that opera singer who grew his teeth in Coca Cola. No, I mean those fame obsessed no-marks who’ll do almost anything to get on the box or in the papers. In pursuit of this nirvana, they live in houses or on farms, carry out laughable tasks, pretend to be ‘motivated’ to reach some pointless goal, humiliate and degrade themselves in any attempt to steal the limelight from their fellow saddos.

Of course, as programme makers, the joy is that there is no end to the queue of people wanting this. No matter what the format, we will always find ways to exploit some fat special needs girl with a penchant for flashing her tits in order to get good ratings. If you ever hear a channel apologising for bullying or a physical confrontation that happened on a reality programme, don’t believe a word of it. In some programmes I made, we actively courted those reactions all to get more viewers. When one got out of hand, the channel publicly slapped our wrists but privately couldn’t have been happier. It doesn’t really what people are saying as long as they are saying it about the programme and thus watching it.

They are all unconscionable idiots before they get their taste of fame but a brief flirtation with celeb status turns them into complete and utter shits. They get agents, drop names, use coke heavily, make demands to make Mariah Carey wince and complain about press intrusion even though that’s the thing they crave above all else. Because they have no discernable talent however, they soon disappear off the radar, stop getting papped and end back in their local town trying to live off their notoriety.

There was one exception to the rule, a big brother contestant who was booted out quite early for being a nasty beeatch and public enemy number one. We were going to use her in a pilot for a new gameshow and she actually turned out to be rather nice, quite charming and very easy to get on with. In fact we got on well enough to have a drink-fuelled porn film sex session. Although we didn’t use her in the end, she was a pretty good presenter and was successful for a while and lasted a little longer than most.

I have given gigs to two girls who slept with me.

The first time, I was looking for the talent to present a new daytime programme on one of the main terrestrial channels. The channel’s first choice was well-known, popular and a shoe-in for the job. That was until they got wind that a Sunday tabloid had pictures of her doing Charlie. The channel couldn’t risk it so asked us to find a newcomer with real star potential.

After two days casting, I had a shortlist, one that didn’t include “P”. She was a sloaney blonde ex-model who had been languishing in the obscure and little-watched satellite channels. Her screentest wasn’t going to set the world alight and I’d seen better during the casting. The following week, P rang wanting to meet for a coffee. She flirted outrageously from the start and kept going on about how much she wanted the job. I knew the flirting wasn’t genuine but didn’t care. We went on to a few bars, then dinner and bed. She got the job and I continued seeing her for a while until the filming ended. Realising my usefulness had ran out, she moved on in her pursuit of greater fame. I have seen her recently in ad for a thrush treatment cream.

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.

While on holiday I missed quite a bit of TV. Apologies if this is old news but it’s been while since I posted so I’m playing catch up.

Big Brother is back – oh joy of joys. New exec producers have been brought in and they have cleared out all the staff that usually return year after year, around 200 of them. They wanted a new start with fresh ideas. The first achievement has been taking the level of mental illness in the contestants to new levels. I won’t go through them all because I’ll throw up on my keyboard but suffice to say, they definitely are the saddest and most killable bunch of no-mark losers we have ever seen in the house. 

Divina’s also back, private jetting in from her mansion on the South of France just to do the sow, at her gurning bad clothes wearing worst. There’s the usual crap attached with the freak show, such as BBLB, where presenters are not much better than the SOBs in the house.

It’s car crash stuff but it still creates a level of fascination that will always keep people watching. I know the BB commissioning editor and I was reliably informed that Channel 4 do not give a rats arse about the so-called low viewer numbers as long as it pulls in 2m viewers – which it does. So love or hate, it’s here to stay for quite a long time.

Have a look at some of my other posts for  more on the reality TV ’stars’.