Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition
In Competition No. 2617 you were invited, in the wake of Big Brother’s demise, to submit a proposal for a new TV reality show guaranteed to pull in the punters.
This assignment was an invitation to plumb the depths of bad taste. And plumb them you did. I winced as I waded through a postbag that incorporated all the hallmarks of reality TV: cruelty, banality, inanity, exploitation, voyeurism and abject humiliation. W.J. Webster’s entry, the epitome of awfulness, was couched in language that managed to combine cliché, political correctness and bogus compassion in a truly toxic brew. He was spot-on, too, in his observation, which surely explains the genre’s irresistible appeal to telly-makers, that one of its major selling points is that it generates ratings-winning TV at minimal cost (unless you count the human one, that is). Commendations, too, to Gillian Ewing, Shirley Curran, Mark Ambrose and Adrian Fry. I step off my soapbox only to announce that this week’s bonus fiver belongs to D.A. Prince; the other winners, printed below, receive £30 each.
Waiting Rooms: in real time, a selection of NHS patients drawn from the local community wait to see their GP. Their conversation may cover any or all of the following: illness, operations, decor of waiting room, attitude of receptionist, tests, choice of available magazines, family members (and associated problems), local buses, breakfast TV, MPs, swine flu, parking. Voters at home are able to prioritise the appointments procedure, and vote for who should see the GP first. Candidates with fewer votes have correspondingly longer waits, while those patients unfortunate enough to attract no votes are unable to access medical care. Aims: to focus audience awareness on NHS priorities, and develop personal knowledge of urgent/non-urgent medical conditions; to present an alternative method of accessing GPs, bypassing the expensive (and frequently partisan) receptionist; to provide substitute community gossip for the housebound/isolated, and to remind them of the necessity for lively conversation when their turn comes to visit their GP.
D.A. Prince
Grotesque behaviour is passé. Our new reality show is designed to arouse schadenfreude rather than disgust. Proposal: each week a serving soldier changes places with an MP. The soldier and his family move into the MP’s house and enjoy all the trappings of his luxurious lifestyle. Vicarious gloating is the desired effect. At the same time the MP lives in a barracks in Afghanistan and uses the same MoD-issued kit as the man he has replaced, while his family live in run-down service accommodation and attempt to live on a serviceman’s pay. We follow the MP as he becomes angry at the lack of facilities and frightened by the gunfire; the greater his humiliation, the better the viewing figures will be. (We suggest starting with Alan Duncan — watch his face as he learns what it’s really like to exist on rations!). Possible Title: Flipping Houses – Flipping Heck!
Virginia Price Evans
Hi C.J., visualise this: new series title — Keep Your Cool! — a dozen or so cantankerous old codgers (guaranteed to amuse younger viewers) confined in a mock-up residential home with various irritations: loose doorknobs, toilets that won’t flush, television and radio reception unavailable, interminable piped music (ultramodern), uncomfortable furniture, highly polished slippery floors, bunk beds (with bottom bunks removed), small-print books published in Balinese, cramped kitchen equipped with impossibly complicated gadgetry, intricately sealed food packaging and compulsory daily challenges which entail solving unsolvable cryptic crosswords. Contact with outside world only available via a permanently engaged telephone. And here’s the twist: contestants who keep their cool the longest (rather than losing it) will be the ones to be evicted and the shortest-tempered winner will gain an automatic place in the next series. Ideas for future scenarios, currently on the back burner, will soon be in the pipeline.
Alan Millard
Freakout will scale new highs in the ratings because it’s truly on the edge and in a dark place yet basically it has a molten core of heart-warming compassion. Plus it will generate massive income at bare-bones expense. The format is to invite a line-up of naturally cosmetically challenged people to compete for the title of Unlookiest Person on the Planet. At ‘peek hour’ each week the contestants are shown one by one in individual ‘booths’ where they show their biological blooper (interactive viewers may of course focus on individuals). Then there is a viewers’ vote to exclude one candidate for being ‘Just Too Normal’ — such a positive accolade that it’s seen as almost a prize in itself. The eventual winner will get the opportunity to have free corrective surgery performed by the cosmetic clinic who sponsor the show. But, hey, everyone wins really.
W.J. Webster
The public enjoys the trials and tribulations of ten heroin addicts going cold turkey in the newly revamped ‘Big Rehab’ house. It won’t be just lying around all day drinking chicken soup, though: participants will win doses of Methadone depending on their success at different activities. Early ideas include roller-skating, Twister, Marco Polo and sardines. A few wild fancy-dress parties are sure to keep the public riveted and the contestants on their toes; a Halloween theme would go down a treat. Every TV reality show is made by the contestants: we plan on having the lovable teenage prostitute Cindy, the charming but incomprehensible quadriplegic Scotsman Doyle, ‘Terrible Timothy’, the posh guy who just injected a few times at Oxford, as well as countless other colourful characters. This is surely just as morally acceptable as ridiculing mentally ill people on X Factor — and it serves as a public health warning.
Henry Mostyn
No. 2620: Veg wars
You are invited to submit an argument, in verse, for the superiority of one vegetable over another (16 lines maximum). Entries to Competition 2620 by midday on 28 October or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. Email is preferable in view of current postal disruption.
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