If you’re in the business of making television but you’ve only been provided with a paltry budget, it’s probably difficult working out how to allocate that cash. There’s still a recession going on, so corners must be cut – so we find ourselves with TV shows featuring members of the public in their own homes, reducing the need for expensive studio sets.
This began long before the credit got crunched with programmes like Channel 4’s long-running and unexpectedly massive Come Dine With Me. Virgin tried to pick up the baton and ran with Restaurant In Our Living Room which was also a minor success, if success can be measured by Harry Hill ripping your show to shreds on the TV Burp. Now we see ourselves confronted with Auction Party – a new show on ITV. Looking like Bargain Hunt in your Mum’s front parlour, it’ll apparently run like this:
Participants will be given £500 to go out and, with the help of our antiques expert, gather a collection of items to then sell at their auction. Family, friends and neighbours will be invited to view the lots for sale while sipping on champagne and nibbling on canapés. With a professional auctioneer present to help them through, the auction pieces will be displayed around the participant’s home before going under the hammer. At the end of the day, the cash is counted and (hopefully) profits are revealed!
Too exciting.
So what’s next for the home-based, budget TV?
- Ray Mears wandering around your garden, showing you how to cook daisies on an improvised campfire?
- A new series of The F Word in which Gordon Ramsay bullies you as you try to prepare cheese on toast?
- Your local pub quiz, televised and put out as a gameshow?
*end of football comment*
27 Comments
‘Who Wants To Be The Owner Of That Magazine Rack In The Corner’ presented by Booby Davro’s Chris Tarrant from Boxing Day’s terrific All Star Impressions Show.
Oooh it’s a winter wonderland outside, except instead of wonder, misery…
I gonna pretend that I spelt ‘Bobby’ as ‘Booby’ on purpose as some kind of cutting satire. No one mention it.
My idea for an at-home shit show is The Full English. Members of the public are given £20 to buy the ingredients for a full English, and then have to cook it for other members of the public in their own homes. Points are awarded or deducted for such things as:
Beans on the plate (a minus, as beans have no earthly place on a full English).
Egg runniness.
Sausage quality (a full English is either made or condemned on the quality of its sausages).
Tea temperature (anything under hotter than Mercury is a minus).
Canned tomato (instant disqualification).
Through the Keyhole
Each week two families swap houses and have just half an hour to get as much of the contents of the other families house through the keyhole. From pencils to dinner tables, with the right tools you can fit anything through a keyhole. The team who has managed to get most of their opponent’s possessions through a keyhole wins something… I dunno, a speed boat or something…
I’d watch that Napoleon! But I’d introduce a challenge element as well, like having to get the ingredients home from the shops via a krypton factor style assault course and having Mr Blooby in the kitchen while you’re trying to cook…
…by which, of course, I mean ‘Blobby’.
Like you, Steve, I have affected an inability to spell for comic effect…
Seems a bit fussy, Mr. Green. I’ll wager you’re the sort to add all kinds of exotic unecessaries to your full English, such as beans, hash browns and – God forbid – chips.
Jesus, chips? Who has chips with a full english?
Ok, maybe the Mr Blobby thing is a bit much, but I can’t think of a single program that wouldn’t benefit from an assault course…
“Did you see Question Time last night?”
“Yer, I thought Gordon Brown had some pretty interesting things to say…”
“I guess.. he was shit on the assault course though…”
Beans have every right to be there, I say. As long as you heed Alan Partridge’s advice and use the sausage as a breakwater between them and the egg.
I favour a more tapas approach to the fry-up with hash browns allowed, black pudding in, and if you’re feeling particluarly fruity, scrambled AND fried eggs.
No chips, though.
uh oh… I can sense Napoleon’s rage building, Steve
Beans soil a Full English. If you must have them, put them in a bowl on the side and spoon them into the mix as required.
Yes?
Just overcook them so that there’s minimum sauce. Maximum beans.
Your bean will begin to disintegrate, you fool!
True, but they reconstitute to form a clump, like one massive bean. Just like Robert Patrick does.
Beans on a full English, indeed! The clues in the title, Mr. Charnock, you cloth-eyed buffoon. It’s a full English, ain’t it? There’s no room in there for a Yankee imposter. What else do you want to sully the full English with? Beef boigers?
Granted, the baked bean is a American dish, but the beans we have here in cans differ wholly from those found in the States. If you were use to American beans you would be in contravention of the 1982 Full English Breakfast Act, but use tinned beans produced in this country, it’s fine – they’re different.
You wanna get into a bean fight with me? Get your snow shoes on, we’re going outside…
I once had full English served up to me with spaghetti hoops. Spaghetti Hoops! Sufficed to say I threw it at the wall and set the establishment on fire.
Hoops indeed…
Pfff! They make Stella Artois in Reading, Charnock, you shit slapper. It don’t make it British, does it?
Beans in a full English marks you out, quite frankly, as a TRAITOR TO THE CROWN.
Branston Beans are the superior brand.
Screw Heinz!
Mornigs!
NPA!
My local cafe used to sell a full english with chips. I wouldn’t say the chips are filler but are a distraction.
Anyway some sort of mix of Live TV’s Topless Dart, Bullseye, Blind Date and Tooti Fruiti (late night German satelite TV anyone? – was it on SAT1?). Its based in your local pub and tours around Britain. People play in pairs like Bullseye. There would be your dollybird girl friend and chavMonkey dart playing gorilla boyfriend. If the boyfriend lost in the darts bit his girlfriend had to strip. Then later on winning dart players could cop off with another girl of their choosing. There may be some fighting or lesbian element as well. ITV2 or BBC3 would kill for this format.
Since we’re being pedantic…
… As a Reading resident (in ROYAL Berkshire – love the Queen), Stella’s not made here. We make the internet. And biscuits.
Good lord, never would have thought a full English would have been the source of such passion. Probably wouldn’t help to mention that the last time I had such a meal it not only had black pudding in there, but a slice of haggis as well. Multicultural.
I was in Reading on saturday. A mecca for pikie beggars. Good guitar shop though
The one on Oxford Road that Pete Doherty can often been seen in with his abnormally large hands?
The one in Market Place. Some nice Canadian ones.
Guitars not beggars…