How To Get On Television – A True Story

I thought for part three (?) (I’ve lost track.  I suspect some of you have lost the will to live) of the story – because I’ve had a happy but busy day, it’s late and I’m too tired to be original – I would post something I wrote ten years ago.  In my defence, I haven’t c+p because I didn’t know how to save documents on a computer back then, so I dug out the original and typed it up in my own fair hand whilst cursing you and wishing for my bed.

How To Get On Television

• Be green or, as some section of the atrociously wicked (facinorous) print media would have it, mean.
  

  Channel 4’s logo is now cut out from a white background, and is shown in moving distortions that reveal programme-specific graphics underneath (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Be completely misrepresented in a certain Sunday piece of trash writing tabloid jerk newspaper (bitter? Not at all).
• Answer the door to a stranger who turns out to be a neighbour.
• Listen in increasing astonishment as the neighbour asks if it’s true we are ex-directory and were in The Certain Sunday Piece of Trash Writing Tabloid Jerk Newspaper because if so it’s not a wind-up and the people at Channel Four’s The Big Breakfast went to the trouble of tracking down her number to ask her to ask me will I please phone this number at The Big Breakfast if I want to be on telly?
• Immediately phone The Big Breakfast because I want to be on telly.
• Hear a total stranger (not a neighbour) offer me and my family a week in London, on the telly, all expenses paid; day trips out and famous people thrown in.
• Say yes.
• Complete the application forms that arrive in next day’s post.  With difficulty, because my nails are chewed down to the knuckles in the fear that it really is a wind-up.
• Wait.
• Wait.
• Swear one or two hundred of my closest friends to secret because I’ll burst if I don’t tell someone.
• Wait.
• Go 93 hours without sleep.
• Wait.
• Answer the phone to hear Scott say, Hello, this is Scott from The Big Breakfast.  We’ve decided not to use your family next week.
• Be cool and laid back about being rejected and humiliated, not act like some pathetic gangrel, begging for a chance to be famous for five times fifteen minutes: Okay, fine.
• Baffled silence.
• Let Scott confuse me: So is Thursday night all right for us to come and film?
• Be sorry: I’m sorry?
• Let Scott confuse me some more: We’d like to come and film you all at home on Thursday, or possibly Friday.
• Be less sorry: Sorry?  Did you say you DO want to use us next week?
• Fall in love with Scott: Yes, that’s right.  I thought you didn’t react much.  Are you excited?
• Be cool and laid back about being selected; I am British, after all: Oh, yes.  It should be nice.
• Put down the phone.
• Wish I’d remembered to say ta-ra to Scott first.  Oh well, he has my number; and my neighbour’s.
• Run around the room in an orgasmic frenzy chanting, I’m going to be telly!  I’m going to be on telly!
• Finally get Andy Warhol.
• Spend from now until Friday morning cleaning the house; and then cleaning it again.  I may be green and mean but I’m not dirty.  Not when I’m expecting film crews, anyway.
• Ignore the Hub when he tells me I’m overdoing it – it is perhaps just a teeny-weeny bit slightly maybe possible that they will want to film the far corner behind the wine rack on the top kitchen cupboard, so it’s good to be prepared.
• Glow like a clean house with excitement.
• Answer the door to the film crew…

Look out for part four tomorrow, in which I tease out the details some more, in the hope of stretching this story to a full week’s worth of blog posts.

As a sweetener, the Hub has promised to try to upload some of the video from our week on The Big Breakfast.

And remind me to explain the tea bags, which I realise I haven’t yet done.

Related articles

• Telly, Part Two (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)
• I Was Accidentally On Telly (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)

Joke 717

Booth for Lady Psychiatrists, Vesuvio’s, San Francisco (Photo credit: Mark Coggins)

A group of psychiatrists were attending a convention. Four of them got together after to chat about the convention. One said to the other three, “People are always coming to us with their guilt and fears, but we have no one that we can go to when we have problems.”

Then one said, “Since we are all professionals, why don’t we take some time right now to hear each other out?”

The other three agreed.

The first then confessed, “I have an uncontrollable desire to kill my patients.”

The second psychiatrist said, “I love expensive things and so I find ways to cheat my patients out of their money whenever I can so I can buy the things I want.”

The third followed with, “I’m involved with selling drugs and often get my patients to sell them for me.”

The fourth psychiatrist then confessed, “I know I’m not supposed to, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t keep a secret…”