TV Experiences

A week ago or so I reviewed the 1 Percent Club, and only earlier today I was reading a post about it on the Contestant Hub on Facebook. Several of the replies from people who have actually participated in editions of the show made the point that they thought that the filming was a less than enjoyable experience. It set me thinking about my own recording experiences over the years. I’m sure that I’ve written about this before, but these are my shows to date: -

Come and Have A Go If You Think You’re Smart Enough – one show – 2004

Eggheads – one show – 2005

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire – one show – 2006

Mastermind – one show – 2006

Mastermind – three shows – 2007

Brain of Britain (radio 4) – three shows – 2009

Are You An Egghead – three show - 2009

Only Connect – four shows – 2010

Mastermind Champion of Champions – 2010 – one show

Fifteen to One – one show – 2014

I also appeared on the Antiques Roadshow in 2014 as well. My appearance of that was then ridiculed on Gogglebox later the same week it was shown. That’s TV, folks.

Considering the stories I’ve heard from other people about the way that they’ve been treated on various shows, I count myself lucky that I didn’t have any real complaints about the way that I was treated on all my shows. I remember several friends and acquaintances who appeared on Battle of the Brains in 2009 describing being left standing around in cold corridors for ages, and very inadequate meals for example.

Well, I never really had an experience like that. I was spoilt, if anything, with my first show, “Come and Have A Go. . . “ This was a Saturday Night Lottery show and the Beeb were putting a fair amount of money into the show. We were put up for two nights in a very nice hotel just around the corner from the Royal Albert Hall, and when we got to Television Centre in White City we were given a lovely tour of it, including entry to the Blue Peter Garden. Mind you, it also introduced me to a key principle of recording a TV quiz show – once you’re out, you’re in the way.

Millionaire was another show where I felt very well taken care of. Not a live show like “Come and Have A Go . . . “ but a prime time show, where only one show was made in a day. To be fair everyone was taken into the bar afterwards and bought a drink by Chris Tarrant as well.

Those were probably the biggest budget shows I was ever on, but I have to say that even the TV quizzes where up to 4 shows a day were being made didn’t treat me badly at all. When I appeared on Eggheads we were the first show of the day to be filmed, and even though they must have been on a fairly tight time budget the Eggheads themselves, and Dermot Murnaghan all took time to shake hands, and have a bit of a chat with us.

I only have happy memories of Mastermind, and that includes the 2006 series. I thoroughly enjoyed Only Connect in 2010, although I didn’t request hotel accommodation for the show, bearing in mind it was all shot in Cardiff, about half an hour down the road from home. Champion of Champions was a wonderful experience, - I wouldn’t say that we were treated noticeably any differently from the way that we were treated on regular Mastermind, but I thoroughly enjoyed meeting other champs on the day, and they also sent me a framed photograph as a memento of the show. Nice.

They promised to send us a photograph as a memento when I appeared on Fifteen to One as well, but I never got one. Other than that, though, I cannot complain about the way we were treated on the show. There was a lot of waiting around, because I wasn’t actually on until the last show to be filmed that day. And that is a point worth taking some note of – when you’re a contestant on a TV quiz or game show, there is a lot of waiting around. You usually have to be there hours before you’re due on set, and only so much time can be taken up with briefings from a production assistant or researcher, wardrobe and makeup. If you’ve never taken part in a show like this before, my device would be to take your kindle with you.

If I’m honest, the only negative experience I had, which occurred on “Are You An Egghead?” wasn’t actually anything that happened on the show or in Television Centre. As I recall, the show was filmed right at the end of the month, and it was a month when I was particularly strapped for cash. Allowing for petrol to and from London, I really didn’t have any more at all to spare. The hotel in which we were staying was the Holiday Inn Express in Park Royal. When I got there for the first time I was told that the room had been booked and not paid for. Could I settle the bill now? No, in a word, I could not have, even if I wanted to. In the end, only when I threatened to ring the BBC and tell them the guy on reception was refusing to give me my room, and so I would be off home, did he relent. I spoke at some length to one of the team on the show, and they assured me that for my next appearance, a few days later, this would not happen again. To be fair, it didn’t happen in quite the same way. When I arrived for my next two shows, the receptionist said that, yes, the room had been paid for and could I still pay a £30 deposit, please? In a word, no. He backed down in the end, much as he had the first time.

If you haven’t already worked it out for yourself, I have to tell you that I’m a dedicated cheapskate. There’s a few reasons, all of which are too tedious for me to bore you with right now. But being expected to pay for something which I’d explicitly been told was being taken care of by the production company was just not on in my view.

Which actually reminds me about one of the problems with the 1 percent club. According to what I’ve been told, no travel expenses were offered. With 100 contestants to deal with I kind of understand the stinginess, but nonetheless I wouldn’t apply to the show myself considering this. By all means feel free to disagree, but I do think that you have a right as a contender to travel expenses, to overnight accommodation in a hotel if necessary, and if filming continued for most of the say, a bite to eat is always appreciated. To be honest, I didn’t like it that in many cases you had to provide receipts for train tickets or petrol in order to claim back your travel expenses, and these would be paid in the fullness of time, rather than on the day of the show. Especially considering that in most cases you were going to be walking away with nothing, and you certainly won’t going to receive anything just for appearing on the show.

I did say in most cases, because, as I recall, I did receive a one off payment for appearing in Brain of Britain in 2009/10. I found this radio experience to be a thoroughly enjoyable one, and very different from TV. We only needed to be in Broadcasting House about an hour before the show was due to be recorded. About 20 minutes or so before kick off a member of the team came down to the lobby to fetch us up to the radio theatre. Two shows were recorded in the same evening. You had a little practice, met Russell Davies, and then, off we go. It was really refreshing after all the faffing about which has to go into making a TV show. The whole thing was so much more relaxed and less fraught.

So, bearing in mind the mostly very positive nature of my TV and radio quiz experiences, would I do it again? Yes, I would. I have put in a number of applications since my last TV quiz appearance on Fifteen to One in 2014. Two of them resulted in auditions – one for Nick Hancock’s Breakaway, and one for a show you might recall called 500 Questions. You don’t get paid travel expenses for auditions, and you don’t expect to, but I rather like auditions, being something of a show off myself. So who knows?