I found myself trawling through some old photos from a lovely end of series party the other day. Don't ask why, it's even sadder than you'd think, but it got me thinking about the 'joy' of media parties. I've been to loads of them, from tiny intimate affairs to humungous happenings with thousands of attendees. Here's a lazy awards' ceremony spoof of some of them:-
BIGGEST BASH
An Xmas party with the theme 'white' in a warehouse on London's trendy-now-but-still-shitty-really Brick Lane. Me and my little band of five staff turned up to this enormous venue, past the ice sculpter and a man painting a collage of the event on one of the walls, drinking sponsored ice vodka and eating tiny dollops of food that was white. That'll be eggs on bread then.
Upstairs, in the special VIP room, proper ministers of the realm were in attendance, as well as big name celebs off of the telly and everything. I got taken up there by my immediate boss, and sat in awe as breakfast TV presenters chatted to channel controllers, with a smattering of very pretty men and women gliding around with trays of drinks.
MOST BORING BASH
See above. My immediate boss was a very clever and astute man, and good company. Until he proceeded, as he did at any venue serving booze, to get well twatted and have to be steered away from people he didn't like. That was everyone else in the building, and he'd snarl and point and slur at them as he stumbled around. Luckily he made no sense. He eventually went to sleep, I escaped the VIP area and ended up in a nasty little boozer down the street with a mate who lived down the road. And a few staff who'd just left the company so weren't invited - we had a reet good time.
MOST DRUNKEN BASH
You know, I can't even recall what it was for - we went to a tapas bar locally for lunch and drank lots of beer then wine. My other immediate boss then went back to the office. We all stayed and drank tequila. And flaming sambucas. And more wine. Staff drifted back to work, most of whom fell asleep on their keyboards. I stayed until 6pm, surprised it was still light when I exited the bar and proceeded to fall flat on my face. Commuters stepped over me, tutting at my drunkitude. I giggled and somehow managed to get home in one piece.
MOST DRUNKEN BASH II
A party for a company I'd left years back, me being invited due to some clerical error. I went dreading it, going with someone I used to work with but really REALLY didn't like. He bored me shitless on the way there. When I got there the only people I knew were the accountant (dullest man ever), the senior management (on full schmooze-with-everyone mode and not at all interested in me) and - oddly - a commissioning editor from Sky who'd been in charge of a very troublesome show I'd produced.
The venue was the Polish Embassy (no idea why) and topless male models were offering vodka continuously. Oh dear. I drank lots and lots of it. I mean gallons of the stuff. I danced with said com.ed., telling her of all the people I'd worked with she was by far the best (a lie). I told my old boss she was the loveliest person I'd ever worked for (another lie). I got stuck in a corner with the accountant and the guy I came with and managed to leave them deep in conversation with each other, keeping them out of my way all night.
Old friends then turned up and I had a ball. I think. It got even blurrier. I snogged a lady. I tried to snog a topless male model. I then wandered home and fell asleep on the Circle line and went around several times. Someone then tried to mug me - well, went through my pockets whilst I dozed, so I had no money.
I then fell asleep again and had to be picked up from central London at 3am as I was totally lost, disorientated and skint.
Top night!
BASH WITH NASTIEST ATMOSPHERE
The end of series party for my one and only foray into ITV, it was in the upstairs room of a fairly ordinary pub in Covent Garden. The bitter rivalries and simmering tension on this show had been a nightmare throughout, especially as it was the first big thing I'd been in charge of. Even if the show was actually run by the lovely exec producer and his old Irish director mate.
The researchers hated me, and each other. The celeb booker hated everyone. The cast hated the writer. The writer... well, he wasn't bothered really, just glad to have free booze. The technicians hated all the producers as they thought we'd ruined their show. My big boss hated everyone except me as she thought they'd ruined her show.
So there was quite an, erm, atmosphere.
Booze flowed and it all went much more smoothly that I'd expected... until, of all people, exec prod and director bloke had a blazing row and off stomped the director. At least this shocked everyone into behaving well for a bit. I stayed sober for once and had a miserable time. Even more so when I found out I was expected to pay for the entire thing - it was a 'proper' telly tradition that the producer pays personally for an end-of-series thing. I pointed out my researchers earned more than me, and lovely exec producer footed the bill in the end. He was paid six times my salary so could afford to.
--
So the next time you think you'd love to go to a glam media party, think again. That's the shocking err-I-can't-write-any-more-on-this conclusion to this collection of blogbits.
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Adventures in journalism p II
After the 'triumph' of filming the inside of my bag for an hour (see last blog entry), I got one more chance at undercover reporting. This time was better as I didn't have to film anything, there was a cameraman and everything.
It was in the late nineties and there was a lot of fuss about people hacking into mobile phone calls. I'd done it myself - well, not quite true - my mate had done it when we were both pissed, and there was nothing on the telly. We'd howl at the genuine Cockerneee folks screaming and shouting at each other on the airwaves of East London.
But the networks were changing to digital, something they claimed was "100% crackproof". One in particular emphasized their security aspects, having a retired major bloke (complete with shouty posh voice, shiny bald heed and little 'tache, I later found out) as their security supremo.
We were piloting a show explaining technology to an adult audience. The show started very grandly with a virtual presenter, incredibly heavy graphics and lots of aspirations to be trendy yet accessible, informative but funny. It ended up on air with our usual games presenter outside in the streets doing leaden links, hand-held camerawork and the thin one off Birds of a Feather explaining how to work a mouse. Sigh.
Anyway, my idea was to hack into digital mobiles. I did some digging amongst the, er, more dubious people I knew, and found a hacker blokey. Another stereotype - heavy metal T-shirt, lank long hair, odour of stale pizza. But he knew his stuff - he had hacked his electricity meter so had never paid a bill, had copies of the latest 'uncrackable' games and showed me how to listen into digital calls using a scanner and a piece of software on a laptop. The fact it was the Head of Finance (a very large woman so fat that if you threw a beachball her way it would orbit her like a moon) talking saucily with her equally rotund bf slightly put us off but there you go.
So off we went to the only service station on the M25 to film the feature. We filmed people on their phones, and filmed Hackerboy listening in. It did seem to work, even if all the calls were from some poor salesman telling his office he was halfway to Slough or something.
Then we went to the phone company, just for a chat about their fab security I'd said, Hackerboy sitting in the corner with a clipboard as if he was a researcher. I was the interviewer, but said to Major Security-Breach (or whatever his double-barrelled name was) that I'd be cut out. He was to put the question in the answer, as we're all trained to do in MakingSoundBiteTV courses.
I asked lots of nice easy "So why is digital better than analogue" type questions, and then Major Soon-Exploding made a bit of a boo-boo. He said no-one could break his systems. I asked how he knew. He said that he'd employ anyone who cracked the systems to work on improving them, quite a liberal answer as hacking was (and still is) illegal.
I said that he'd better give the researcher guy a job then as we have footage of him cracking their security. This started to play on our monitor.
Major Losing-Control watched for a minute or two, then glared at me, picked up his very shiny small phone (as the camera zoomed in) and dialled 999.
Gulp.
I said that we informed those we'd listened in on what had happened, that no personal information or compromising details had been retained, and we'd come straight to the company to inform them their claims were incorrect. That they were lying to their customers. Surely exposing such injustice was more important than making a point.
Major Snarling-Crackpot leant forward and almost spat into my face "GET OUT OF HERE NOW", and then stomped off. We packed in silence and left.
Awaiting me the next day were legal summonses, tens of messages from various legal and phone company bods and one from Hackerboy saying he thought he was followed home so he stayed at a mate's place that night and slipped out at 2am.
The boss was delighted, toasting me with champagne and saying we'd got a massive result. She even loved the final feature, with the back of my head featuring prominently as I courageously stated our case, the slight tremble in my voice sounding more indignant than terrified, even though the latter was the truth.
And the BBC loved it, fab, the pilot got a series commissioned. Yay all round.
Well, er, no. The feature was never broadcast as the phone company actually did improve their security and make the calls crack-proof (well, until PCs got faster and more powerful anyway). Hackerboy seemed to have 'borrowed' things from where we filmed, and from our office. And the back of my head and dodgy accent was deemed too "untelevisual".
Hey ho.
It was in the late nineties and there was a lot of fuss about people hacking into mobile phone calls. I'd done it myself - well, not quite true - my mate had done it when we were both pissed, and there was nothing on the telly. We'd howl at the genuine Cockerneee folks screaming and shouting at each other on the airwaves of East London.
But the networks were changing to digital, something they claimed was "100% crackproof". One in particular emphasized their security aspects, having a retired major bloke (complete with shouty posh voice, shiny bald heed and little 'tache, I later found out) as their security supremo.
We were piloting a show explaining technology to an adult audience. The show started very grandly with a virtual presenter, incredibly heavy graphics and lots of aspirations to be trendy yet accessible, informative but funny. It ended up on air with our usual games presenter outside in the streets doing leaden links, hand-held camerawork and the thin one off Birds of a Feather explaining how to work a mouse. Sigh.
Anyway, my idea was to hack into digital mobiles. I did some digging amongst the, er, more dubious people I knew, and found a hacker blokey. Another stereotype - heavy metal T-shirt, lank long hair, odour of stale pizza. But he knew his stuff - he had hacked his electricity meter so had never paid a bill, had copies of the latest 'uncrackable' games and showed me how to listen into digital calls using a scanner and a piece of software on a laptop. The fact it was the Head of Finance (a very large woman so fat that if you threw a beachball her way it would orbit her like a moon) talking saucily with her equally rotund bf slightly put us off but there you go.
So off we went to the only service station on the M25 to film the feature. We filmed people on their phones, and filmed Hackerboy listening in. It did seem to work, even if all the calls were from some poor salesman telling his office he was halfway to Slough or something.
Then we went to the phone company, just for a chat about their fab security I'd said, Hackerboy sitting in the corner with a clipboard as if he was a researcher. I was the interviewer, but said to Major Security-Breach (or whatever his double-barrelled name was) that I'd be cut out. He was to put the question in the answer, as we're all trained to do in MakingSoundBiteTV courses.
I asked lots of nice easy "So why is digital better than analogue" type questions, and then Major Soon-Exploding made a bit of a boo-boo. He said no-one could break his systems. I asked how he knew. He said that he'd employ anyone who cracked the systems to work on improving them, quite a liberal answer as hacking was (and still is) illegal.
I said that he'd better give the researcher guy a job then as we have footage of him cracking their security. This started to play on our monitor.
Major Losing-Control watched for a minute or two, then glared at me, picked up his very shiny small phone (as the camera zoomed in) and dialled 999.
Gulp.
I said that we informed those we'd listened in on what had happened, that no personal information or compromising details had been retained, and we'd come straight to the company to inform them their claims were incorrect. That they were lying to their customers. Surely exposing such injustice was more important than making a point.
Major Snarling-Crackpot leant forward and almost spat into my face "GET OUT OF HERE NOW", and then stomped off. We packed in silence and left.
Awaiting me the next day were legal summonses, tens of messages from various legal and phone company bods and one from Hackerboy saying he thought he was followed home so he stayed at a mate's place that night and slipped out at 2am.
The boss was delighted, toasting me with champagne and saying we'd got a massive result. She even loved the final feature, with the back of my head featuring prominently as I courageously stated our case, the slight tremble in my voice sounding more indignant than terrified, even though the latter was the truth.
And the BBC loved it, fab, the pilot got a series commissioned. Yay all round.
Well, er, no. The feature was never broadcast as the phone company actually did improve their security and make the calls crack-proof (well, until PCs got faster and more powerful anyway). Hackerboy seemed to have 'borrowed' things from where we filmed, and from our office. And the back of my head and dodgy accent was deemed too "untelevisual".
Hey ho.
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Me as a tv journalist
In the long list of TIHDIT (Things I Have Done In Television), being an undercover tv journalist has to be the most unlikely. Consider the facts:-
- I have no training in anything even remotely journalistic;
- I'm a great big scaredy cat;
- I've worked on many shows that had a factual side but to say they had a lot of sound journalistic content would be pushing things
I went undercover a couple of times. Once, inbetween series of the video game show, my boss kept me on over the summer. A few of the other researchers and producers remained, to 'develop' the next series. This involved lots of trips to the pub, a few meetings and ideas being generated, some more journeys to the pub, playing Championship Manager and going out to meet our video game contacts. In the pub.
But occasionally we had to do some work, and mine was to find out about pirated games. The boss was astonished that her son had bought pirated games from a market. I was astonished too. Why the fuck did he actually buy a game? His mum owned a company making shows about games. We got 'em for free. And then there was the fact that his mum was also loaded. Why was he at a market when he could send the butler down to Harrods to pick some up?
Anyhow, the boss's wheeze involved a trip up North to see my family. I'd mentioned I used to see my own games on sale in pirated form at markets, back when I writ games for a living. She said I must've been furious. I said I was, but the massive no-teeth-dog-on-string-tattooed stall holders probably wouldn't have given a hoot if I'd said anything.
But, no, I was to be a Journalist. I bought a crappy boxy shoulder bag, cut a hole in it for our little camcorder and gaffer-taped it in there. A bit of dark-coloured translucent plastic on the hole, and voila a sort-of hidden camera. The remote I worked in one hand, the wire up one arm and down the other, and stuck it under my watchstrap. The other wrist had a tiny mike taped to it, with wires running to the camera. It kinda worked if I waved my arm in the general direction of the person talking. I practised in the office much to my mates' hilarity. I practised down the pub, much to my mates' concern - what if the boss saw it?
Off I went up North (at least the company was paying my bus ticket... yes, bus ticket, we weren't made of money*). I went out to the blowy dodgy market in Seaton Sluice (lovely name), next to Whitley Bay. And there were rip-off copies of games. And, yes, there were big hard men with big hard dogs. Ulp.
I put on the bag, clicked record and went to it. "Why's this Nintendo game only a fiver?" I asked, in fearless journalistic stylee, pointing my arm at a squat twitching skinhead with many more tattoos than teeth. I could see why. I hope the camera could too. The box was a VHS sleeve with a photocopy of the actual game box on it. No, that was untrue. It was a photocopy of an ad for the game. Inside it was a ROM-board, not even a proper cartridge.
"Eh?", said the market trader, another tooth falling out. Probably.
"This isn't even a proper cartridge!", I stated indignantly, holding it oddly in front of my bag, "It's pirated!". Roger Cook had nowt on me.
"Yeh... and?", said the small businessman, scratching his pants.
"Um.. erm.. well, that's not, er, legal", I stammered.
"Uh-huh?"
"Sell lots of these?"
"Yeah."
"Right."
"Wannit hinny then?"
I then made my excuses and left, as The News of the Screws would say. I walked around and filmed many people doing this, including one stall that had games way before their release. The camera battery eventually failed and I had an hour's worth of material.
Back I went to London, not so much in triumph as folded up in a tiny seat next to a sweating fat lady.
But there were two problems. Firstly, the camera had fallen over in my shabbily-made camera bag. So there was a tiny semi-circle of picture at the top of the lens. It was enough to see some things, but not much. The microphone worked a bit, every other word was made out, but I was incredibly loud and the hardly-saying-much enormous brutes I was confronting were quiet and faint. It made me sound dictatorial and them sound effeminate, not exactly a crusading journalist, more a shouting lunatic.
And the stall with the pre-realised games? Well, they looked a lot like the ones we got sent at the show. As in exactly like them - I didn't realise but my mates did. Turned out one of the researchers who had left at the end of the series had been floggin' them off. We couldn't show this at all, we'd be in trouble with the games companies.
I put my camera bag in the bin and went back to working out what we'd call the new researchers-dressed-up-like-Gladiators-but-for-video-games for our thrice-weekly game show. My mate and me came up with a female character called Victoria Station, No Relation. Made no sense but made us larf.
*OK, they gave me the £75 for a rail ticket but I spent £25 on a bus one and spent the rest on a big shop at Kwiksave to stock my bare food cupboards. I was poor then.
Friday, 15 February 2008
My sitcom writing career part II
THE STORY SO FAR....
As a Junior Junior Researcher, I wrote a sitcom treatment and left it in my top drawer hoping my boss would find it when she was hunting for sweeties late at night. She did, loved it and dragged me to her office...
--
My boss, bless, was actually frothing with excitement for my odd idea mixing cartoons and reality (and this was many years ago, so it was dead original and that). She said she wanted to talk to writers, get them involved, I'd need to sign a deal, it could be a huge hit, I'd get an advance on sales as soon as I signed, Channel 4 would love it... my head was in a whirl as I ate an Executive Biscuit off the posh plates.
This was it, I was going to work in comedy. She wanted me to have a go at a script, just story ideas and constructs to start with. I said that I couldn't wait to get started... well, I'd have to, as I was editing tomorrow and then had to film a feature on Thurs and-
At that point, the boss leapt up (and as a six-foot-plus woman who was about four inches wide that wasn't an easy thing to do) and ran to the door of her glass-fronted office. She opened it, clapped her hands, looked at me then announced loudly
"Just to let you know, this man here has written a fucking GENIUS comedy idea and is to develop it for me and not do ANYTHING on your show for the foreseeable future, yes?"
And then folded her arms, smiled and told me to get to work on comedy.
I was in quite a good mood, as you can imagine. Sat at my desk and did some notes, thought a bit, looked like a GENIUS for a while. I hardly noticed my producer going in to see the boss.
Next day there was an envelope on my desk. It had a contract for the sitcom and a short note saying that due to the fact I was a "hard-working, dedicated and integral member of the team" I couldn't be spared from the show I worked on. However, I could have an afternoon a week to write comedy. Other writers would be found to work with me, as I "wasn't experienced in the scripting arena". I remember the last phrase particularly well. A scripting arena. Is that like the arena off of Gladiators, except with nerdy writers cracking one-liners to lions who pause and say as deadpan as possible "that's so funny...."
Anyhoo, I did some writing and the boss liked it. No other writers joined. The afternoon a week got eaten up with worky things, especially as I got promoted and started to write comedy links for the actual show on actual television I worked on.
It wasn't quite the end - six months in, the boss asked the gangly young presenter of the show I did to do some development work. Including on my sitcom. He went off and came back with many, many pages of neat, hand-written notes on the characters and scenarios. They were, in the main, really funny and clever, packed with visual gags. He hadn't actually written any script though, the point of his work, and then he got a new agent who was horrified he was writing a script for a sitcom for almost no money. He went off to do stand-up stuff, came back a few months later for series 2 of our silly games show, and my sitcom sat on the shelf, unfinished and unwanted.
I got the rights back after a year and have tried to sell it, or variations of it, for ten years, never succeeding (although getting meetings and great feedback about the idea). It's probably the right time to try again.
Oh, and that presenter? Regular readers will guess it was David Walliams. Bless. I have his scribblings in a box somewhere, must dig 'em out...
As a Junior Junior Researcher, I wrote a sitcom treatment and left it in my top drawer hoping my boss would find it when she was hunting for sweeties late at night. She did, loved it and dragged me to her office...
--
My boss, bless, was actually frothing with excitement for my odd idea mixing cartoons and reality (and this was many years ago, so it was dead original and that). She said she wanted to talk to writers, get them involved, I'd need to sign a deal, it could be a huge hit, I'd get an advance on sales as soon as I signed, Channel 4 would love it... my head was in a whirl as I ate an Executive Biscuit off the posh plates.
This was it, I was going to work in comedy. She wanted me to have a go at a script, just story ideas and constructs to start with. I said that I couldn't wait to get started... well, I'd have to, as I was editing tomorrow and then had to film a feature on Thurs and-
At that point, the boss leapt up (and as a six-foot-plus woman who was about four inches wide that wasn't an easy thing to do) and ran to the door of her glass-fronted office. She opened it, clapped her hands, looked at me then announced loudly
"Just to let you know, this man here has written a fucking GENIUS comedy idea and is to develop it for me and not do ANYTHING on your show for the foreseeable future, yes?"
And then folded her arms, smiled and told me to get to work on comedy.
I was in quite a good mood, as you can imagine. Sat at my desk and did some notes, thought a bit, looked like a GENIUS for a while. I hardly noticed my producer going in to see the boss.
Next day there was an envelope on my desk. It had a contract for the sitcom and a short note saying that due to the fact I was a "hard-working, dedicated and integral member of the team" I couldn't be spared from the show I worked on. However, I could have an afternoon a week to write comedy. Other writers would be found to work with me, as I "wasn't experienced in the scripting arena". I remember the last phrase particularly well. A scripting arena. Is that like the arena off of Gladiators, except with nerdy writers cracking one-liners to lions who pause and say as deadpan as possible "that's so funny...."
Anyhoo, I did some writing and the boss liked it. No other writers joined. The afternoon a week got eaten up with worky things, especially as I got promoted and started to write comedy links for the actual show on actual television I worked on.
It wasn't quite the end - six months in, the boss asked the gangly young presenter of the show I did to do some development work. Including on my sitcom. He went off and came back with many, many pages of neat, hand-written notes on the characters and scenarios. They were, in the main, really funny and clever, packed with visual gags. He hadn't actually written any script though, the point of his work, and then he got a new agent who was horrified he was writing a script for a sitcom for almost no money. He went off to do stand-up stuff, came back a few months later for series 2 of our silly games show, and my sitcom sat on the shelf, unfinished and unwanted.
I got the rights back after a year and have tried to sell it, or variations of it, for ten years, never succeeding (although getting meetings and great feedback about the idea). It's probably the right time to try again.
Oh, and that presenter? Regular readers will guess it was David Walliams. Bless. I have his scribblings in a box somewhere, must dig 'em out...
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
My "career" as a sitcom writer
So when I worked making shows about video games I yearned to work on shows NOT about video games. Hey, I like dem games and that, especially back then when buckets of red wine and aeons of age hadn't addled my reactions, but I wanted to work on something proper.
I got it into my head to write a sitcom. Genius idea, eh?
Well, no it's not. It's The Stupidest Idea Ever. Sitcoms are not only hard to get right, they're damn near impossible. And there was me, a year or so into a tv career, thinking "Hey, I'll do the next Fawlty Towers. I can do that, me. Oh yes."
I wrote up an idea. It was - and still is - a good idea, and I wrote it up... well, in an OK style, this was well before I'd churned out a gabillion programme proposals so it was a bit rough. Although I did do stickman sketches of all the characters. Which was nice.
I put this idea, stickmen and all, in the one place my boss would find it. No, not her intray, her desk or as a free pullout in that day's Sun but in my top drawer. That's where I kept the chocolates and sweeties she would raid at 10pm in the evening when bashing out programme proposals.
I know, I've mentioned this before, but she'd leave 12p for a bit of Galaxy, or a pound and take the whole drawer away. She was a I-always-pay-my-way style lady. On the wages she paid me that was just as well.
She didn't hit the chocos for a couple of days; each morning I'd get to work and my sitcom idea was there. It got to Friday and I noticed a few chocolate buttons had gone and 10p was there, but the idea remained undisturbed. I reckon she'd looked at it and laughed at me. Not in a good oh-this-is-comedy-genius way, but in a it's-so-bad-he's-had-to-draw-stick-men stylee.
I went into the weekend with a heavy heart, and came into work on Saturday morning to pick up some games for filming first thing Monday, to avoid a 5am start.
And the shitcom scribblings were gone! Gulp! I was sooooo excited all weekend. The filming lasted all day Monday but I turned up to work early on Tuesday. My friend Hester said the boss had been pacing around, reading some document and hooting with laughter continuously, asking where I was and saying the phrase "He's a genius. A fucking comedy genius!" over and over again.
Me? A genius? I almost wet myself. I went to my desk and started the glamorous process of ringing up video game companies and begging for those deadly dull press-button-A-X-Y-B to skip a level cheats that made up a lot of my job.
And then she burst in. The boss. She came over and grabbed my shoulder.
"Come with me, young man, no more games' cheats for you, you're a fucking comedy genius", she bellowed, as everyone else looked on with their mouths hanging open.
And I went into her office, as she said to the PA to get us a pot of tea and some biscuits. I heard a small gasp from the office at the request for biscuits. They only ever came out when Channel 4 turned up. They were for celebrities or tv bigwigs, not the likes of a lowly Researcher Boy like me.
I could sense my career in telly was on the way up.
And... well, come back soon for the thrilling conclusion. I've got to write up this thing about a dog. Then this thing about a bird that's a doctor. That's a feathery bird not a sexist term for a ladywoman. And then this thing about- ok, ok, I'll go now.
I got it into my head to write a sitcom. Genius idea, eh?
Well, no it's not. It's The Stupidest Idea Ever. Sitcoms are not only hard to get right, they're damn near impossible. And there was me, a year or so into a tv career, thinking "Hey, I'll do the next Fawlty Towers. I can do that, me. Oh yes."
I wrote up an idea. It was - and still is - a good idea, and I wrote it up... well, in an OK style, this was well before I'd churned out a gabillion programme proposals so it was a bit rough. Although I did do stickman sketches of all the characters. Which was nice.
I put this idea, stickmen and all, in the one place my boss would find it. No, not her intray, her desk or as a free pullout in that day's Sun but in my top drawer. That's where I kept the chocolates and sweeties she would raid at 10pm in the evening when bashing out programme proposals.
I know, I've mentioned this before, but she'd leave 12p for a bit of Galaxy, or a pound and take the whole drawer away. She was a I-always-pay-my-way style lady. On the wages she paid me that was just as well.
She didn't hit the chocos for a couple of days; each morning I'd get to work and my sitcom idea was there. It got to Friday and I noticed a few chocolate buttons had gone and 10p was there, but the idea remained undisturbed. I reckon she'd looked at it and laughed at me. Not in a good oh-this-is-comedy-genius way, but in a it's-so-bad-he's-had-to-draw-stick-men stylee.
I went into the weekend with a heavy heart, and came into work on Saturday morning to pick up some games for filming first thing Monday, to avoid a 5am start.
And the shitcom scribblings were gone! Gulp! I was sooooo excited all weekend. The filming lasted all day Monday but I turned up to work early on Tuesday. My friend Hester said the boss had been pacing around, reading some document and hooting with laughter continuously, asking where I was and saying the phrase "He's a genius. A fucking comedy genius!" over and over again.
Me? A genius? I almost wet myself. I went to my desk and started the glamorous process of ringing up video game companies and begging for those deadly dull press-button-A-X-Y-B to skip a level cheats that made up a lot of my job.
And then she burst in. The boss. She came over and grabbed my shoulder.
"Come with me, young man, no more games' cheats for you, you're a fucking comedy genius", she bellowed, as everyone else looked on with their mouths hanging open.
And I went into her office, as she said to the PA to get us a pot of tea and some biscuits. I heard a small gasp from the office at the request for biscuits. They only ever came out when Channel 4 turned up. They were for celebrities or tv bigwigs, not the likes of a lowly Researcher Boy like me.
I could sense my career in telly was on the way up.
And... well, come back soon for the thrilling conclusion. I've got to write up this thing about a dog. Then this thing about a bird that's a doctor. That's a feathery bird not a sexist term for a ladywoman. And then this thing about- ok, ok, I'll go now.
Monday, 4 February 2008
Being on tv again
People have asked me what it takes to be 'good on the box'. Here's a random list of six things you'll need to Get Ahead On Television:-
1 A LARGE HEAD AND A SMALL BODY
To look good on tv you need to be a bit of a Thunderbird puppet, over generous in the noggin area and small of shoulder and limb. It sounds weird but it's true, and it holds for movies as well as telly. Tom Cruise, in the normal world, looks incredibly odd, about five feet tall and with a GINORMOUS bonce. But in movies he looks well proportioned. I met Keanu Reeves once and he looks like that square-headed robot off of Red Dwarf in reality, and a hunktastic dreamship on the screen.
No idea why but there you are.
2 THE ABILITY TO STARE
Into a camera, at another person, into the distance whilst the music wells up, at an autocue without moving your eyes - you have to be able to look at things you really shouldn't look at for extended periods of time. Without a single flinch or glance sideways. One false move and you'll look edgy and untrustworthy.
This is for all tv jobs, from newsreader (staring at a blue wall that has someone's face dubbed on it only for the viewers) to actor (staring into the middle distance when another actor is blethering behind them so they're both facing camera, where every sinew in your body is shouting "turn around and look at him - he's talking to you!") to presenter (staring into camera as people talk on the phone - all you can see is a lens. A bloody lens. It's round and clear. It's not that person. But they think you are looking at them. It's just odd.)
3 A SLOW. TALKING. VOICE.
A normal person tends to gabble on camera. They're nervous, unprepared, excited. A tv person talks very slowly. It sounds good. Calm. Smooth. Short sentences. If you gabble in your everyday life, you'll be constantly fighting that urge on telly. It's possible to train yourself but not easy.
4 AN APPROPRIATE ACCENT
Brummies tend not to read the national news. Scousers tend not to be cast in soaps as high-flying executives. Geordies tend to play nice characters ("aw, such a friendly voice!"), an Edinburgh accent is perfect for a newscaster, but a Glaswegian one isn't. And yer Irish just sound warm and classless. On account of being from a country with no major class divisions. The Irish Irish, not the Northern Irish. They sound knowledgeable and stern.
It's all a load of old ballcocks but it's how you're perceived. Telly is the same as call centres - there's loads in nice accented parts of the North-East and Scotland, and not many in the Midlands. Hey, don't blame me, blame the viewers.
5 YOU NEED A SLOW METABOLISM
An odd thing to say, you may think, but undoubtedly true. I've got a very fast metabolism. I eat and drink more calories than average yet have always been trim. I go to the gym, yes, and don't eat wads of transfat-stuffed fast foods, but I've always burned up my food quickly. This means I usually feel warmer than most people.
Sadly this also means I sweat when I get hot (ie when it's slightly above freezing and I've got more than one layer of clothes on). So I appear shifty and shiny on telly, not a good look at all. The combination of bright lights and warm studios is a killer. If you're David Letterman - he's a Person of Increased Temperature too - you can crank the aircon in the studio to the max to stay cool looking. But if you're second-presenter-on-the-left on Rotherham Tonight, you can't. And if you start to sweat you'll look like you're melting. See Broadcast News, that seminal tv film, for a perfect example.
6 HAVE SOMEONE SHOUTING IN YOUR EAR WHILST YOU TALK IS FINE
This is for live presenters only, the dreaded earpiece, where the producer can yell "right, we've lost Michael Portillo next, we're doing the paragliding puppy instead. In five...", all while you're asking Westlife about their latest dirge. Not easy at all - even hardened veterans can be seen to flinch occasionally.
If you can tick all those six boxes you might be ok on tv. Might.
1 A LARGE HEAD AND A SMALL BODY
To look good on tv you need to be a bit of a Thunderbird puppet, over generous in the noggin area and small of shoulder and limb. It sounds weird but it's true, and it holds for movies as well as telly. Tom Cruise, in the normal world, looks incredibly odd, about five feet tall and with a GINORMOUS bonce. But in movies he looks well proportioned. I met Keanu Reeves once and he looks like that square-headed robot off of Red Dwarf in reality, and a hunktastic dreamship on the screen.
No idea why but there you are.
2 THE ABILITY TO STARE
Into a camera, at another person, into the distance whilst the music wells up, at an autocue without moving your eyes - you have to be able to look at things you really shouldn't look at for extended periods of time. Without a single flinch or glance sideways. One false move and you'll look edgy and untrustworthy.
This is for all tv jobs, from newsreader (staring at a blue wall that has someone's face dubbed on it only for the viewers) to actor (staring into the middle distance when another actor is blethering behind them so they're both facing camera, where every sinew in your body is shouting "turn around and look at him - he's talking to you!") to presenter (staring into camera as people talk on the phone - all you can see is a lens. A bloody lens. It's round and clear. It's not that person. But they think you are looking at them. It's just odd.)
3 A SLOW. TALKING. VOICE.
A normal person tends to gabble on camera. They're nervous, unprepared, excited. A tv person talks very slowly. It sounds good. Calm. Smooth. Short sentences. If you gabble in your everyday life, you'll be constantly fighting that urge on telly. It's possible to train yourself but not easy.
4 AN APPROPRIATE ACCENT
Brummies tend not to read the national news. Scousers tend not to be cast in soaps as high-flying executives. Geordies tend to play nice characters ("aw, such a friendly voice!"), an Edinburgh accent is perfect for a newscaster, but a Glaswegian one isn't. And yer Irish just sound warm and classless. On account of being from a country with no major class divisions. The Irish Irish, not the Northern Irish. They sound knowledgeable and stern.
It's all a load of old ballcocks but it's how you're perceived. Telly is the same as call centres - there's loads in nice accented parts of the North-East and Scotland, and not many in the Midlands. Hey, don't blame me, blame the viewers.
5 YOU NEED A SLOW METABOLISM
An odd thing to say, you may think, but undoubtedly true. I've got a very fast metabolism. I eat and drink more calories than average yet have always been trim. I go to the gym, yes, and don't eat wads of transfat-stuffed fast foods, but I've always burned up my food quickly. This means I usually feel warmer than most people.
Sadly this also means I sweat when I get hot (ie when it's slightly above freezing and I've got more than one layer of clothes on). So I appear shifty and shiny on telly, not a good look at all. The combination of bright lights and warm studios is a killer. If you're David Letterman - he's a Person of Increased Temperature too - you can crank the aircon in the studio to the max to stay cool looking. But if you're second-presenter-on-the-left on Rotherham Tonight, you can't. And if you start to sweat you'll look like you're melting. See Broadcast News, that seminal tv film, for a perfect example.
6 HAVE SOMEONE SHOUTING IN YOUR EAR WHILST YOU TALK IS FINE
This is for live presenters only, the dreaded earpiece, where the producer can yell "right, we've lost Michael Portillo next, we're doing the paragliding puppy instead. In five...", all while you're asking Westlife about their latest dirge. Not easy at all - even hardened veterans can be seen to flinch occasionally.
If you can tick all those six boxes you might be ok on tv. Might.
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
When I was an 'actor'...
So, yes, I was a games reviewer in one ep of a show, then I appeared as an extra in a soap almost daily... but my longest in-front-of-camera gig was as a regular recurring character in the comedy-soap-factual show I made for Sky.
I've mentioned it before but I didn't go into the ins and outs of being on tv. My character - I must admit to stifling a giggle as I type that, it sounds too luvvie for words, "ooh yes, dearie, my charact-orrrr had such a complex backstory... it was soooo difficult playing him I had to submerge myself in his every word for hours beforehand to get him just right..."
Arsenuts.
I turned up, put a wig on, a T-shirt with the show's logo on it (that had NEVER been washed, over 26 episodes filmed over 26 weeks - lovely...). I then had a black beard drawn on my face for no apparent reason. Well, there was one. I had a goatee beard for a while, in one of those fashion errors that everyone goes through, before I realised it made me look like an idiot. So I shaved it off during my summer break - sadly, we'd filmed the pilot episode of the show (which went out as episode 4 as we couldn't afford a proper pilot, even though we changed things after it)
The director insisted the beard was drawn back on as it made me look "authorative" - yeah right, more like it made me look even stupider. As the boss, standing there in a hot hippy wig, smelly T-shirt and stupid drawn-on beard, most of my staff laughed at me. But at least I didn't get recognised in the street or anything, a boon if ever there was one.
So I played a researcher for a fictional TV show about games, in the actual show about games I produced and wrote. It was already too post-modern for words, and this was 1994. One of the other researchers played a newsreader (fake tash, no trousers, suit jacket) and got coaching from Sue Cook off of Crimewatch to make him more proper. He was very posh and took it all far too seriously. I simply made him Mr News to his desk with no trousers on in most episodes. It looked stupid and made me laugh.
The two other researchers played, er, researchers. Me and them would appear twice in each show and review games. It was filmed in this chaotic games room in batches of 5-6 episodes, a high camera with me and my researcher researcher standing looking up at it, the other researcher researcher sitting at the back.
Here's the character part. I was called Spike and I moaned a lot. Researcher researcher one was called Freebie and he believed all the PR crap about games - ie was enthusiastic. So enthusiastic he went to work in games' PR when the show ended. And researcher researcher two was called Saddo, wore a woolly hat and gave all the geeky info on games.
I hated doing the reviews. It was filmed live and you had to basically talk in 20-30 second sound bites, all three of us throwing to each other, getting across relevant 'journalistic' points, yet being funny; mentioning anything important and leaving plenty of cut points so we could put footage in or cut the review down if needed.
By the end I was quite skilled at it, looking at camera properly (not that easy, just try it some time), mugging and making faces if people disagreed with me, talking reasonably pithily and that. But eight hours of filming that, especially in summer, was totally exhausting.
We all also appeared in the comedy part of the show, usually at a 'production meeting' at the start, and often in the background of other shots. This was a mixture of boring and stressful, especially if we had to 'act'. As producer I simply cut my lines out so got to do less and less as the series went on, but the occasional one slipped through and my hammy acting, odd accent and sweating form was not something I liked to see.
The best ep I was in I actually got a body double to do me, Jake our props guy. He was a far better Spike than me, even if he had his back to camera all the way through the episode. It was a party ep and Jake/Spike could dance far better than me/Spike ever could.
I was recognised precisely once, in a Chinese takeaway that, oddly, had Sky on in reception. I'd ordered a curry and then up Spike popped on the telly, talking in the same voice. The teenage bloke serving me looked at the screen, then me, then the screen quite puzzled. I said "yeah that's me", in a slightly proud "do you want an autograph?" way.
He looked at the screen, then at me again, then said "nah" and walked off.
I've mentioned it before but I didn't go into the ins and outs of being on tv. My character - I must admit to stifling a giggle as I type that, it sounds too luvvie for words, "ooh yes, dearie, my charact-orrrr had such a complex backstory... it was soooo difficult playing him I had to submerge myself in his every word for hours beforehand to get him just right..."
Arsenuts.
I turned up, put a wig on, a T-shirt with the show's logo on it (that had NEVER been washed, over 26 episodes filmed over 26 weeks - lovely...). I then had a black beard drawn on my face for no apparent reason. Well, there was one. I had a goatee beard for a while, in one of those fashion errors that everyone goes through, before I realised it made me look like an idiot. So I shaved it off during my summer break - sadly, we'd filmed the pilot episode of the show (which went out as episode 4 as we couldn't afford a proper pilot, even though we changed things after it)
The director insisted the beard was drawn back on as it made me look "authorative" - yeah right, more like it made me look even stupider. As the boss, standing there in a hot hippy wig, smelly T-shirt and stupid drawn-on beard, most of my staff laughed at me. But at least I didn't get recognised in the street or anything, a boon if ever there was one.
So I played a researcher for a fictional TV show about games, in the actual show about games I produced and wrote. It was already too post-modern for words, and this was 1994. One of the other researchers played a newsreader (fake tash, no trousers, suit jacket) and got coaching from Sue Cook off of Crimewatch to make him more proper. He was very posh and took it all far too seriously. I simply made him Mr News to his desk with no trousers on in most episodes. It looked stupid and made me laugh.
The two other researchers played, er, researchers. Me and them would appear twice in each show and review games. It was filmed in this chaotic games room in batches of 5-6 episodes, a high camera with me and my researcher researcher standing looking up at it, the other researcher researcher sitting at the back.
Here's the character part. I was called Spike and I moaned a lot. Researcher researcher one was called Freebie and he believed all the PR crap about games - ie was enthusiastic. So enthusiastic he went to work in games' PR when the show ended. And researcher researcher two was called Saddo, wore a woolly hat and gave all the geeky info on games.
I hated doing the reviews. It was filmed live and you had to basically talk in 20-30 second sound bites, all three of us throwing to each other, getting across relevant 'journalistic' points, yet being funny; mentioning anything important and leaving plenty of cut points so we could put footage in or cut the review down if needed.
By the end I was quite skilled at it, looking at camera properly (not that easy, just try it some time), mugging and making faces if people disagreed with me, talking reasonably pithily and that. But eight hours of filming that, especially in summer, was totally exhausting.
We all also appeared in the comedy part of the show, usually at a 'production meeting' at the start, and often in the background of other shots. This was a mixture of boring and stressful, especially if we had to 'act'. As producer I simply cut my lines out so got to do less and less as the series went on, but the occasional one slipped through and my hammy acting, odd accent and sweating form was not something I liked to see.
The best ep I was in I actually got a body double to do me, Jake our props guy. He was a far better Spike than me, even if he had his back to camera all the way through the episode. It was a party ep and Jake/Spike could dance far better than me/Spike ever could.
I was recognised precisely once, in a Chinese takeaway that, oddly, had Sky on in reception. I'd ordered a curry and then up Spike popped on the telly, talking in the same voice. The teenage bloke serving me looked at the screen, then me, then the screen quite puzzled. I said "yeah that's me", in a slightly proud "do you want an autograph?" way.
He looked at the screen, then at me again, then said "nah" and walked off.
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