“REAL” PEOPLE

Before we start I need to admit straight off the bat that I have never watched “The Apprentice”, so when a number of faces that I didn’t recognise popped up on the cover of my shiny new Radio Times this week, I realised that I was a probably a little bit out of touch, but then, that’s nothing new. Being out of touch with what the rest of the world “reckons” seems to be becoming a bit of a trademark position for me to be in lately. Oops! Slipping off topic there slightly. So, where were we? Oh yes, “The Apprentice”. What I have seen over the years are thirty second trailers for the programme and the amount of gittishness on display just in those fragments persuaded me that such a show really was not for me.

This did make me wonder though. Is it necessary to be a total git to be a successful businessperson? Is that the most vital first “bullet point” to add to these modern-style “How great am I?” CVs? More relevantly, are the “contestants” for that particular quiz show format (because that’s what it is, when you boil it down to basics… Ah! If only…) picked because they are gittish, or do they just pretend to be gittish for the cameras, or are they actually pleasant for 95% of the time, but the film editors just choose the moments of unpleasantness to make it all a bit more “televisual” and “entertaining”…? I do wonder about the possibility of that in particular, but then I remember “Big Brother” (which, in fairness, I also didn’t watch much…) and being told of the almost permanent levels of gittishness being displayed on that show. To be able to be almost permanently gittish for eight to thirteen weeks, constantly and non-stop, tends to just prove one thing: You are a git.

But then I considered something else. How many of us, if our own lives were subjected to such intense scrutiny wouldn’t come across as being gittish ourselves? I know that if TV cameras were fitted in my house and my car, there would probably be enough gittishness displayed to be edited down and fill at least half an hour a week, and I’m someone who barely has any regular interaction with anyone.

“Git on the Go” is my current favourite potential title, by the way.

Naturally, and rather sadly, when it comes to “The Apprentice”, I have also seen various clips from the show disguising themselves as “news” on other TV shows. Oh, and parodies, of course. I mustn’t forget the parodies. These are the things that tell me that certain things are now in the wider public perception. I may not watch “The Apprentice”, but I certainly know that it’s out there.

I shouldn’t really. I should just try and ignore it. Otherwise it only encourages them…

Coincidentally I recently watched the movie “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” for the first time recently, and whilst it is a beautifully crafted work, it does tell a very bizarre tale, based upon the memoirs or, if you prefer, ravings (or otherwise) of the game show pioneer Chuck Barris. Part of the tale it tells, and the part most relevant to what I am discussing here, is the rise of “The Gong Show” on USTV back in the 1970s. If you are unfamiliar with it, “ordinary” Americans would attempt, however poorly, to entertain within the limits of their own talents until the judging panel could bear it no longer and struck a gong to banish them from their sight.

In the end, this tells us two things. One, you can never underestimate what so-called “ordinary” people are prepared to do just to get on TV at all, and two, people making complete fools of themselves in public is, apparently, hugely popular. “The Gong Show” did rather open the floodgates for a whole raft of different shows, from “You’ve been Framed” to “The X Factor” where members of the general public, in an effort to show the wider world that they exist at all, are prepared to make utter fools of themselves in order for a remote chance of “fame”, however fleeting that “fame” might be and however lacking in any actual discernable skills they may be.

I suppose that “The Gong Show” is exactly the same as “Britain’s Got Talent” only with the gong replacing those passing judgement from on high (or behind a desk, if you prefer). To be honest, I’ve never watched one edition of “Britain’s Got Talent” or “The X Factor” or any of those shows, but lots of others do. I suppose that the show does help some people follow their dreams, and some of them with actual genuinely undiscovered talent do seem to actually manage to achieve them because of it, but sadly, so many of those who think that they are great and could have been considered to be so if only they had got the breaks, seldom are. It does astonish me how popular these shows actually are with viewers, too, because I personally have never been particularly fond of watching “real” or “ordinary” people on TV. I’m not even particularly fond of “vox pops” on the news. All of us “reckoning” we know better about everything becomes pretty tiresome fairly quickly, especially as in the majority of cases, we patently don’t. You only need to read a few pages of this waffle to know how little I know about anything, and I like to think that I’m pretty well informed. Well, about some things at least, although “people” do still rather bewilder me.

Nowadays certain “news” programmes will fill huge chunks of their airtime trying to encourage the general public to email, text, tweet, comment on FizzBok or phone in with what they “reckon” about just about any topic at all, and very rarely does it provide the viewing public with any new or unbiased insight into anything very much. Mostly it ends up being just a load of people with very specific personal agendas assuming that the world should either make them a dictator (“I’d soon sort a few things out…”), be more like them (“Why doesn’t everyone agree with me about this issue?”), or even give a toss. After all, this is what we have blogging for...

Of course there’s nothing “ordinary” about any of us. It is actually pretty extraordinary that any of us are here at all, so maybe what I really mean is that I don’t like watching non-celebrities on television. Although that’s not strictly true either, because I find most “celebrities” to be pretty gittish, too. I tend towards the seemingly unfashionable theory that I like my entertainment to be performed by professionals who actually know what they’re doing, and my experts to have a certain amount of expertise. In certain matters anyway. Sadly, the only “experts” we do seem to admire, respect and pay any real attention to nowadays seem to be those folk behind the desk replacing the gong.

Some days, I think I prefer the gong.