There were times last night when watching the Belgian version of the show that I felt the whole thing might be an elaborate trick on me. That all the people involved (including the audience) were actors and that there was a hidden camera on me monitoring my reaction to what was going on.
The sheer expense of such an enterprise would mean the victim would never really suspect he was being tricked. A TV show based on such convoluted and impossibly expensive stunts would be very entertaining. You could include the pizza restaurant scam from last weekend.
Shit, I've nearly got enough for a proposal here. This could be the new reality TV hit (I don't understand why reality TV is so popular. Surely if you want reality you don't watch TV, you go out. Or at least open a window. Are we really the idiots that the TV companies take us for? Occasionally I think we are.)
I was talking to Jeremy about this today on the way home. I remembered an idea that me and Stewart (I think) had once discussed about buying every single seat at a performance of a comedian we didn't think was very good, and then filling those seats with people who had been instructed to sit perfectly still and not laugh at anything in the whole show. Imagine how unnerving that would be for the performer. Then at a given signal the audience would, as one, rise to their feet, put their arms out and step very slowly towards the stage.
That's the kind of thing that would make a funny TV stunt. Not getting kids to swear or ask people stupid questions (only an idiot wouldn't attempt to go along with something for the sake of the child). You could do a show that was really freaky, that would seriously mess with people's minds and probably result in a few mental break-downs.
Now that would be entertainment. That would be worth avoiding reality to watch.
We also got talking about Jerry Springer the Opera. I am going to see the West End official opening night performance on Monday and am really looking forward to it. I told Jeremy he should try to see it if he could, though mentioned that it was a bit expensive for people like us. He didn't understand what I meant and I explained that the tickets were £50 for people of our age, but were £25 if you were 25 or under.
He came up with an excellent scheme for West End Theatre and one that I think should be implimented immediately. Every ticket sold in the West End should cost the customer an amount in pounds equal to their own age. Thus I would pay £36 a ticket, an 80 year old man (who would have had more years to work and save) should pay £80 and all teenagers would get in for less that twenty pounds.
It would at least encourage a younger audience to get out of the front of their TV sets looking at people doing the kinds of things that the viewers would be doing if they weren't watching TV (though maybe there could be a reality TV show which just showed you other people watching TV. So you could watch them and see what kind of things they did as they were watching. Whilst they at the same time were watching you. It's another winner. If I don't get an email from Channel 4 in the next 24 hours I am going to be very surprised).
The draw back that I immediately saw is that this age/price system would mean that babies of under 12 months would be able to get in for free. And probably what would happen is that parents would abuse this fact to just dump their noisy off spring in the theatre whilst they themselves would go out on the town. An audience of nothing but babies would be very difficult to play to (see my entry of March 9th in which I make a similar point, I now realise). It wouldn't be much fun for the performers, who would be earning 0p a day, thanks to Jeremy's hare-brained scheme.
Though on the other hand, it would make a brilliant trick to play on a performer. If he were to come on stage at a sold out theatre to be confronted by an audience full of babies, strapped into baby car seats.
The showbiz dictum is that the show must go on.
I pray that one of you will choose a comedian, find a couple of hundred babies, buy up all his seats and try this out.
As long as it's not me.
Although as long as you're buying tickets at the regular price I wouldn't mind that much.
Especially if you were to do it in Carlisle.
