BBC Daytime Telly Show Cons Viewers
IT turns out that to get a job at the BBC you don’t need to have a relative who’s already employed there, to be blonde or rich enough to not need the job, you just need to be willing to pretend to be one of the great unwashed.
You see, that member of the public on Angela Rippon’s auction programme Sun, Sea and Bargain Spotting is the show’s cameraman.
The show is simple: contestants look for tat in an overseas flea markets and
then have a day to sell their purchases at an antiques market. The team that earns the most money wins an antique prize chosen by Angela Rippon, which as we learn about the show might be a genuine Ming vase from Mr Pete’s Ming Vase’s, Tottenham.
At home, a daytime audience of journalists, the drugged and the institutionalised get to mark time.
To Dinan in north-west France. A happy competitor is selling an acrylic panel. And as if by magic a man appears and agrees to buy the tat for £25, which is a loss of £5 on the purchase price.
The buyer is called Craig, Craig Harman. Craig works on the show as a cameramen. He knows good acrylic panels when he sees them and has cunningly got his for a fiver less than he might of.
But his is not on, says the BBC. And the BBC2 daytime series has been eradicated.
Says a BBC spokesman:
“The BBC is extremely disappointed that Reef Television’s production practices have misled the audience and us. We take this matter seriously and have suspended all business with them, with their agreement, while we investigate.”
Reef TV says it has launched its own enquiry.
The enquiry might take the form of: who told? This might well be the first time Reef has erred, but your writer has worked on daytime telly shows and remembers appearing on a Living TV dating game in which I had to be besotted with a woman who worked in the production team.
The audience were too complicit to notice, or too docile to care, and the show went on.
As we say: Reef may have been unlucky…
Posted: 22nd, August 2009 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
