Confessions

Well, just as I thought, the papers are full of stories about how dishonest tv is. Let's not look at the newpapers' own record when it comes to honesty, let's stick with the tellybox.

I, too, have some skeletons in my cupboard.

Oh blog, I confess that in 1996 I was 'a caller' on a phone-in show when I wasn't a bona fide member of the public, I was a bloke who worked for the channel sitting around the corner. I am SO sorry.

In my defence:-

• The station was L!VE TV, the world's oddest channel ever;
• The phone-in show, being on L!VE TV, had hardly any callers, as the channel's usual audience was 2,000 viewers an hour;
• The calls weren't premium rate or owt;
• It was a psychic show, with some woman reading 'the vibrations' in your voice. She was therefore talking shite;
• I can't remember her name - we called her Nina Biscuits for some reason, and they'd record 5 half-hour shows as live and she'd blether on talking shite about people's families, bad backs, relatives called John and the like;
• I tried to do a Northern Irish accent and failed;
• Nina Biscuits said I "had a lot of unresolved aspects" in my life. Yeah, like trying to do a Northern Irish accent and failing.

L!VE TV, despite a reputation for rubbishness, was actually quite a moral place to work. The boss fired the man who made the comedy show (half an hour a night, live, with a budget of £250) because he took backhanders from comedians to appear on it. No-one would see them AND they could put "as seen on TV!" on their posters. And when the weather lady was found out to be a prostitute, they got rid of her sharpish.

I'm struggling to think of any other tv dishonesty I've been involved in, as I watch some man on Sky talk about tv dishonesty. He's obviously sitting in front of a green screen, known as chromakey, and they're dubbing on a background of Westminster. There's tv dishonesty for you. He's probably *NOT EVEN AT WESTMINSTER* shock.

Sigh.