The Man Not in Black

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.

Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

The late, great Johny Cash sung these words in his song the Man in Black. Little did he know the dark shade would become deriguer for the media tosser. Black shirt, black mac book,black iphone, black car, black spectacles, black north face jacket - Henry Ford would certainly approve.

Which brings me on to my first day back at work this year. Christmas time is a time for relaxing and spending time with family. Get out of the city, breathe in the fresh country air, crack open a bottle of Merlot and put your feet up and watch Noels Christmas Presents. The last thing you do over Christmas is think about work or check your work email. Surely!?

Well apparently you do. Everyone else had. Because when I turned up to work today every fucker was dressed in black. Had someone died? No they had all read this little beauty.

Sent: 25th Dec 07
To: Staff list

Attention all staff, the first day back at the office we will be having a photo shoot for the website upgrade. The new website will feature extra staff profiles as well as some jolly stylish photos of the building, it's going to be pretty special. It's going to make Jealousy's website look rubbish compared to ours! To show XXXXXXX as the progressive cutting edge facilities house that we all know it is, we are requesting all staff to wear black for the photoshoot.

Apparently the cool new thing to do for your facilities website is have photos of all staff members looking like contestants in the Apprentice, complete with a fresh Top Gear grade, dressed in black and with a look of 'I'm positively cooler than everyone else in the world'. This was in the email I should have read, sent over Christmas. But I wasn't dressed in Black. Unbeknown to me and from not have reading this urgent mailout, I was dressed in my fresh Christmas day outfit of Carhartt. Feeling like Delboy and Rodney in the Batman and Robin episode of 'Only Fools and Horses', I meekly asked the recieptionist if some echolon of the Television industry had died and everyone was wearing black out of respect. But my hell was only beginning.

Do you remember those beautiful days at Primary School? Life was fun, playing around making sandcastles and looking forward to running around the sports hall in your freshly pressed gym kit and plimsoles. Then the horror when you realise you've left your kit at home, and the teacher reaches into the cupboard to get you the dreaded 'spare kit'. You become the laughing stock of the class for the day, everyone says you smell of wee. Its horrible.

They had spare kit at work. A Cowellesque Comme Des Garcons combo of black shirt and trousers that an editor had hanging round spare in a suite. They did look rather nice apart from being three sizes too big and smelling of the piss and sweat of a 48 hour long edit. And if this wasn't punishment enough, I had to stand at the front. My life is over.

Always check your email. I wish Johny Cash had sung a fucking song about that!

A Runners Christmas Carol

I might go on a bit about some of the things you have to do as a runner. My hatred for shit TV and the idiots who make it, but I do actually love television. I think it can do great things. Contrary to popular belief I don’t hate everyone, just the idiots. Sometimes special things do happen in this job, and one such event happened recently.

It was the last day before Christmas holiday and I had to work through the night as an edit was desperately trying to get their cut down for TX in the New Year. The director was someone whose work I actually quite respected, so for once I was happy to stay late (not initially knowing they would be pulling a all-nighter). They were editing an observational documentary for Channel Four about a centre for old age drug addicts (its called Bus Pass Baseheads), and the footage was amazingly poignant, and not a celebrity in sight. The voice over will probably end up being done by Russell Brand, but this looked like a real documentary, the sort of thing I dream of working on one day. The director seemed like a really nice chap who was very passionate about his work. He told me he just wanted to get the cut finished and get home to his family for Christmas. He showed me a picture of his two young children (one four the other seven) all big hair and smiles - they looked sweet. He said he had managed to reserve them Nintendo Wii’s and Iphones for Christmas presents but was worried they would be gone by the time he made it to the shop.

It was about four in the morning when I took them in a cappuccino, and he asked if I would like to stay and watch them work. I felt really touched as he had obviously noticed I was interested in the film. It was great, the director and editor even played me a scene of an old lady smoking a crack pipe and asked if I thought it was too strong to go in the cut. I felt part of the industry at last. I felt more then just a glorified waiter. I sat in as they worked through the night. When they finished, the editor and director thanked me for my help - giving me a friendly pat on the back and saying my views were a great help when they hit a brick wall in terms of content. The director reached into his wallet and passed me a crisp twenty-pound note. I refused, but he insisted, saying “we couldn’t have done tonight without you - go on have a few drinks on me”.

So its 8:00 AM and I walk out of the office into a frosty Dickensian street scene. Soho looked quite beautiful, the frost crunched under my feet and a sunrise glimmered in the sky. I heard Fairytale of New York playing in my head. It felt special - it felt like Christmas. I was looking forward to catching the train home and out of London, and having time with my family. I felt like I loved working in TV, it was something special. There really were good people in this industry and I felt that at last, just maybe I could make it.

Then my mobile rang. It was the managing director. Had he phoned me to thank me for working through the night? No. He wants me to go to Harrod’s and pick up presents for his family. The massive cunt.

The Xmas Party

It was our Christmas party last night, and a air of merriment swept through the building. I'd packed my finest smart casual media stylings that I borrowed from my considerably more affluent, hi-flying housemate (Ramones t-shirt, pinstripe jacket, g-star jeans and a pair of rare Japanese trainers), and was looking forward to receiving a night on the company as thanks for my hard work over the past year. Plus I had my sites set on the new runner, who had acquired the nickname Stella girl, the only person in the whole building who looked at me with the slightest bit of respect. I had to strike before she realised how unimportant I am.

The day went by fast and I almost forgot I was a runner, laughing and joking with everyone as though as I was considered more important for the first time ever - it felt great. This is why I got into this industry. I was so happy. I imagined waking up the next morning with a mouth drier than a convent, my head pounding like a dirty bomb had been let off next to my frontal lobe, then being instantly cured after rolling over to see Stella girl naked and condom packets littered across the floor from the nights action.

Then the fuckers shit on me.

After running around London all week at the beck and call of the facilities manager you'd think I'd be cut some slack. But the problem with working in this industry is that the people at the bottom always have to suffer. No 'You've worked hard for this company all year, I'll stay and cover for the edit in the Attenborough suite while they work on the executives urgent changes'. It's, 'Someones decided to stay late, we've got a party to get to and you'll have to stay and wait for them to finish - someone has to man the fort and I'm afraid that someone is you'.

And if this wasn't punishment enough, some fuckwit Assistant Producer, who barely knows how to take the lens off a camera (let alone use the white balance) turns up at the door with 16 hours of digitising which 'urgently has to be done for the morning'. Four hours worth was just the camera left running in the bag, strangely the 'self shooting' AP hadn't mastered the art of cinematography with a one day training course and was still having trouble with the difference between OFF and ON buttons on his camera. Muthafucker.

So while they're all off drinking bottles of Dokter Czech and eating canopes (miniature posh versions of commoners food no doubt - think bite size cornish pasties but filled with foie gras), I'm sat on my own watching copiously tedious rushes tapes of 'The Danan Busters', the sypnosis of which I quote: 'Paul Danan leads a intrepid crew of c-list celebrities in a re-enactment of the heroic bomb skipping feats of 617 Squadron in World War II'. With only a mince pie and a bottle of Budvar for company.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

Friend or Fogle

I should hate Ben Fogle and everything he stands for, but I can’t. His face looks like a child’s drawing on a fish finger. Now don’t get me wrong, come the revolution he will have to be put up against the wall and shot like every other upper class twit in the country, but this event will bring me no pleasure. You see Fogle seems to bring with him an equal amount of joy to balance his irritation factor. He seems so unremittingly jovial, so Bertie Wooster does Action Man, I just can’t help kind of liking him. You get the idea he could come home from work and walk in on his other half in flagrante with his lifelong best friend and still have a smile on his face muttering “ho hum ill leave you to it for bit then.” He just seems a nice incredibly posh chap who has fallen into his role as the grannies lust focus on daytime TV.

I have a theory that Fogle was actually developed by top-secret government scientists just in case the whole of the royal family and aristocracy were ever wiped out in some freak disaster. With the development of Fogle at least the country would have the epitome of an upper class English chap to fall back on and show the world it was business as usual with a stiff upper lip. Fogle escaped the evil government science bunker where he was created and went on the run like the monkey boy in the tv series Chimera, ending up on a remote Scottish island only to find a full BBC crew there making the early reality TV experiment Castaway.

Castaway was made back in the days when the BBC were still faintly embarrassed at doing anything too commercial, instead of the way they now desperately try to be everyone’s best friend like a lonely child handing out chocolate bars at school to be loved. Castaway was a social experiment instead of a game show to showcase z-list celebrities embarrassing themselves to claw back a little bit more tabloid fame. The social experiment in question was to see if a diverse range of people could live together on a remote Scottish island for a year without killing each other. In the ‘cast’ Fogle shone through by not acting a wanker, being a nice bloke and for femail and homosexual viewers the only thing approaching eye candy on the windswept isle. Like every other TV format since the dawn of time the series made a comeback this year. Failing to rope in a host of BBC friendly celebrity castaways it also made the mistake of using Danny Wallace, a presenter who should only be allowed to make programmes about conspiracies for Sky TV, the series flopped,if only it had had the Fogle factor. After Castaway version 1 Fogle started presenting for various BBC daytime series and slowly but surely made his way into housewives fantasy knickers.

He’s become the go to guy for anything safe and outdoorsy and probably with a low enough budget not to stretch to prime time talent. Often he’s found presenting the kind of TV that’s pumped into retirement homes up and down the country so care nurses don’t have to dish out sedatives. On Ben’s website he gives out some useful advice for anyone stupid enough to want a career in TV. ‘I fell into it serendipitously. My best suggestion is to approach a production company looking for runners and work your way up from there.” So basically if you cant make it the reality route or are dead posh and can be fast tracked at your Uncle Monty’s production company you better learn how to boil a kettle. How true Fogle, how true.

All beers are created equal

Now don’t get me wrong - I’m not a complete philistine, I have a decent enough idea of what wine to drink with what dish. I’m not an expert, but certainly know my claret from a beaujolais. Saying this I can’t say I have such a refined palette that I turn my noise up at anything that isn’t to be found in Fortnum’s food hall. Many in the TV industry think they’re some sort of food and drink connoisseur, mistaking having worked on some shit piece cookery programme with having spent a stint in Escoffier’s kitchen. Being a runner you often have to cater for this week’s food fad from the self proclaimed gourmets of the industry to trump the team in the next edit suite.

This arsey attitude to what passes their lips also extends to their alcohol preferences. We had a new runner start last week, and come Friday night she was sent out to stock the suites with lager. Now unbeknown to her was that some beers are more equal than others and as it was on offer at the local off license, she came back with a 24 pack of Stella Artois thinking she’d receive praise for her forward thinking and money saving attitude. How the fuck was she to know that it’s a cardinal sin in the world of media to drink lager from a can (especially wife-beater). Plus the fact that the pretentious palettes of the egos within the facility will only drink beer imported from Thailand this week!

Come summer these cunts also like to crack open the corona, which has to have a slice of lime in the top please (or they refuse to drink it). Little do they know that in hot as fuck Mexico the lime is used to keep the flies out of your beer and sterilise the bottle, not as a fucking accessory to make them look cool. The poor girl was reduced to tears being publicly derided for her choice of beverage, and the general feeling that she was a tasteless prole. Thank god she didn’t get sent out to buy wine having confided with me that she was “a bit of a cava girl’. Imagine the faces of the clients if presented with a bottle of Asti Spumanta at the self congratulating backslapping ego massage of a completed online, complete with a Sicilian lemon grade.

So before you start work in the media, make sure your up to date on what’s hot on the streets Soho this week or you will suffer the same fate as our poor Stella girl.

Runner Aid

“I really wanted to go to Fabric the other weekend but had spent all my money and it was only a week after payday! I’m getting minimum wage but my flat costs me £700 a month. I keep having to ask my parents for some cash to get me by”
- anonymous TV Runner

Runner Aid is launching their Christmas appeal and we would like as many people as possible to get involved. This Christmas we want to fulfil the dreams of some of the nations least appreciated and underpaid workers, those that carry out the vital job of being TV runners. Many only receive minimum wage for their hard work while some are not paid at all.

With your help we're aiming to reach a target similar to that of a production budget for the today show on Radio 4. Some production runners have to work in the cold wind, rain and snow without the benefit of North Face clothing. Some Edit runners often have to prepare the most expensive brands of tea and coffee for their edit house clients, yet at home are drinking Tesco value tea bags. One runner we heard about could not even afford to buy a round of drinks when they went out with their mates. These poor impoverished runners are putting their health and finances at risk for a career in the media.

Together we can help them. If you can see it in your heart to donate just one pound a month to this fund we can help make a runners life more bearable. With £200 a month we will be able to help keep a Soho runner in the cutting edge fashion expected of them, while a one off donation of £150 will put a North Face jacket on a camera assistant or help to send a production company runner on holiday to Tuscany. Bit by bit we can help these runners have a similar life to their better paid colleagues and one day when they run their own production companies or facilities houses they might not talk down to their lowly staff and pay them peanuts. Every pound donated will help raise a smile from someone who spends their days taking shit from other people. Please give what you can.

Fear and loathing in the kitchen

When you turn up for your first day of a Media Studies degree, full of youthful ambition and dreams of being the British Scorsese, you no doubt get a talk about your possible future in the media. You hear how competitive it is, and all about needing to be multi-skilled. How being confident shooting, editing and getting release forms signed while standing upside down in a street in Baghdad is a good skill set to acquire. Another highly useful skill that you will defiantly need when saying goodbye to academia and entering the real cut and thrust of the media marketplace, is how to make a cup of tea. Milk and two fucking sugars.

After years of studying and honing my technique, I know how to 'give good tea'. It is truly amazing how many people don’t, such as the work experience girl we had in recently who had never made a cup in her life. Having a butler to take care of such duties for her why should she. I’m surprised Jeeves didn’t come to work with her so whatever meaningless task was assigned she could simply pass on to the ‘help’ while she flicks her hair over into a big bouffant and twiddles the tassels on her desert storm scarf. I actually remember some god awful programme on the tv a few years back starring Paul Burrell (one of the major beneficiaries of undeserved fame from reality television, along with celebrity cheat Charles Ingram) teaching thick Australian 'princesses' how to make a cup of tea. Never put the milk in first, or you'll find yourself locked up in the tower of London by the order of her majesty, with your skull pecked by ravens (apparently only 'common' people do this).

Making a lot of tea, you do start to wonder how people can get so anal about the beverage. A friend who works at the offices of a commercials production company says that in their kitchen next to the kettle, with no irony, is a pantone chart showing the exact shade that each powermonger in the company likes their tea. A pantone chart! Now most people don’t like it too weak or strong (light terracotta myself) but a fucking pantone chart for the love of god, do these people maybe take themselves a bit too seriously? Next to one of the darker shades is written BUILDERS, the pretentious tossers term for the working class cuppa. Well a bricky would never drink a a ginseng and essence of cucumber would they! Or demand Molten Brown in the toilets to moisturise their delicate hands after taking a dump! My friend says BUILDERS is rarely ordered and if so always on a confidential basis - the ‘creative’ wanting to keep their working class tea drinking habit secret from other members of staff (and not be labelled 'that pikey in the smoke suite').

Its good advice for the powerful to be polite to their runner, because just as we have all heard stories of someone being obnoxious to restaurant staff and having their food spat on in the kitchen, just the same happens in facilities houses. One lump or two indeed. A runner acquaintance of mine, a rather filthy character who I would not let near any food or drink I was going to consume (think of the kid with the dust cloud that follows him around in Charlie Brown), often boasts of how he has taken to storing tea bags up his arse crack which he pulls out for the more obnoxious members of staff and visiting commissioners. I’m sure the boiling water takes care of the scabies and stuff but still it can’t be very healthy. So a word of warning, watch how demeaning you are next time you order your drinks from some young lackey, or you might get a cup of arse tea that will certainly be a distinct shade of brown. Match that to your fucking Pantone chart.

Eat Shit or Die

When I wasn't running halfway across the city to walk some cheeky fuckers dog, I met a old Uni acquaintance for a coffee (I wouldn't consider him a friend, but you got to stay in with these people in case they become a commissioner or something one day). He's not a runner, but a 'production assistant'; or should I say was.....

"I've been working for a so called documentary production company that churned out shit reality television like the world was going to end this Sunday. My first job was to create sales brochures for these 'ground breaking' shows (which was basically 'Supersize Me' in as many guises as they could think of), and churned out these worthless pieces of self fellating toss into the early hours of the morning to try and impress my new employers.

A week later I was done, brochures complete with perspex covers and the company logo daubed everywhere like a swastika, sat neatly on the tiny desk that was my 'workspace'. It was so fucking small that mien fucking fuhrer of a producer called it 'the shinebox'; and never tired of quoting that line from Goodfellas - the fucking cream pie.

Donning my north face to climb the everest of the staircase that led to the ivory tower known as the production office to deliver these beauties, I was met with a steely glare that was fixed on a empty space on the desk like Supermans eyes when he burns shit. I dropped my pile of brochures in front of him before being given the traditional 'leave' wave of the hand.

Two weeks went by before I begin to wonder why not one person had thanked me for my hard work. Finally, I got a call from my producer saying the MD wanted to see me. Finally! Some recognition for my talents. But all the cunt wanted me to do was clean his fucking office! And at 9pm at night as well!

It was only when I came back that evening that I spotted my brochures spread out on the coffee table and being on my own it would have been rude not to nose around the bastards personal stuff. With horror I realised that they all had different covers on them – fucking booshank ones made in 5 minutes in microshit word with my fucking producer’s name written across the bottom – the snake had claimed credit for all of my hard work!

I confronted him about this the next day and was simply told “Do not fucking complain to me that you can’t do your job properly! I take credit for the work, that’s the way its always been. You should know that!”

A week later I was sacked by email. So He-Man moral time, "Be prepared to either eat shit or die in this industry". Either that or have a trustfund to start your own production business, like those affluent bastards probably did in the first place".

The Loneliness’ of the Long Distance Runner

Not only does it pay a pittance, make my blood boil and give me low self-esteem, but I find this job has ruined my love life. As a single man about town I thought getting into the TV industry - in whatever lowly position - would give me some real clout with the ladies. The killer punch came last (which hopefully will come again tonight ina good way for Rocky Hatton against Mayweather). So I’m quaffing a ridiculously expensive bottled bear in a Shoreditch hell hole and talking to a stick thin coked up blonde hanging on my every word, and she asks me “what do you do?” I could fix her with my twinkling eyes, raise one eyebrow and reply with all the time in the world “oh I just work in television”. Job done, surely it has to be better than saying I’m a DJ (Or I'm DJIN IN LDN THIS FRIDAY). But what actually comes out when talking to girls is “ I’m just a runner” before adding “ just a sad lonely runner really” - at which point the stick thin cokehead blonde normally looks as though she suddenly has a dog shit moustache and quickly moves in the direction of any other male in building.

In an industry more inbred than the Royal Family I have about as much chance of pulling as a member of the Taliban at a New York fire fighters conference. TV people often stick together hoping in the future to mate and give birth to a channel controller or at least a commissioner. Being at the bottom of the pile gives me no chance what so ever. The chances of me shagging my way up the career ladder are minimal. Apart from the time a menopausal divorcee director pinched my arse while I was bent over wiring up a deck in a edit suite. I can imagine I would be halfway through taking heR to heaven and back when she would tap me on the shoulder and ask me for a fucking latte.

Its pretty shit really. All I want to do is meet one of those nice trendy girls from the American Apparel adverts. I’d even wear skinny jeans and a neon t-shirt for any of those girls. Suddenly I would be infinitely cooler than all the other tryhards I come into contact with on a daily basis. That Lovefoxx girl from CSS would be the ultimate. I would then be very cool indeed (CSS are infinantly cool - and they're South American). After making my umpteenth lemon and ginger tea of the day, instead of losing the will to live I could just think “its ok I’m going out with Lovefoxx tonight to have monkfish and noodles at that Vietnamese place on Old Street,……… so fuck you.”

Nu-Cunts On The Block

I’m too young to remember old rave but this nu-rave stuff is bollocks. My research shows that rave didn’t happen that long ago anyway - I think it was somewhere way back in the midst of time - shit wait wasn't it was around the early nineties? So its not really old or anything is it. Not like skiffle. Or big band. As there is now nu-rave, does that mean we will now get nu-brit pop, nu-trip hop, nu-reggae? I don’t really see the point. Rave culture in the early nineties happened when the ecstasy culture was at its peak and it was never about fashion, just about the music and the quality drugs that could be scored, getting sweaty and having a good time was all that mattered back then. Now every club you go to is full of coked up assholes or dribbling k-heads. Where once people cracked open a warehouse and had it large, now its 30 quid a ticket in a car park smelling of piss.

The reason I mention I nu-rave is that many of my contemporaries seem to go on about this scene as though Jesus Christ himself has donned a 80’s Nike shell suit, some glow sticks and a neon bum bag, moved to Shoreditch and is playing keyboard for Shit Disco. Every other cunt I talk to is either suddenly a DJ playing ragga mixed with the accapella from Paul McCartneys Frog Song, or has started a band with a fisher price keyboard and an simon says electronic game. It’s all bollocks in my opinion.

In a long list of shit kids peddling this crap the worst offenders must be The Coconut Twins. They play something called ghetto tech, a name that sounds so futuristic to me, I don’t think I'll know what it means until some time around the year 2020. My eyes actually ache from looking at their neon glow and I have to ask where the fuck did it all go wrong? These two might be very nice girls for all I know but the shit they're coming out with must make their parents blush. Their myspace is so like a dispatch from right on the cutting edge of now, it's like staring into the end of the world. Apparently their DJING IN LDN THIS FRIDAY. Being DJ's as well as fashion designers, and ex-editors of nu-rave bible super super. So they have all of societies most useful occupations covered in one. The Coconut Twits dress themselves amidst a style that wouldn't go amiss in Spike Lee's 'Do The Right Thing'. Probably hoping that dressing like the hood will give them some sort of credibility that every other aspect of their existence lacks. To bring 90s American ghetto fashion into the equation, booty dancing, neon shit-patterned clothes and cheap gold surely takes a stylistic genius or far too many drugs. They say things like “Check the dates mang!” and generally go around acting like DJING in Shoreditch and “around the world” is a excuse for looking like the biggest tossers this side of a BBC commissioners Christmas party. At least we can rest easy in the knowlege that by next week, they'll probably be out of fashion.

The Ghost In Uniform

Walk past some of the major facilities houses around Soho and you see their runners wearing uniform; obviously not a police or fireman kind of affair - I mean a bloody uniform like they're waiters or something. This is an official uniform, as opposed to the unofficial runners uniform of American Apparel, garish early 90s neon shit, or whatever is the 'fierce' style that the denizen's of Shoreditch are deeming cool for this millisecond.

The runner’s t-shirts often have something hilarious on them like ‘run of the mill’ or ‘only a runner’. Basically this is so some other young jeans, trainers and t-shirt wearing scruffy trend addict (who actually happens to be a grand a minute promo director) doesn’t get asked by anyone to make them a cup of tea. This actually happened once - a knight of the realm British film director demanded a coffee from a young chap only for him to offer the excuse he was in the middle of cutting the latest advert for a famous alcoholic beverage. So uniforms make everything much simpler and regimented, that’s why the Nazis loved them.

Wear the uniform! You are shit and will be told what to do by everyone else for 90 hours a week. You are worthless! You are a runner! So its sort of like the clothing equivalent of the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket coming round to give you a nice little pep talk.

The North Face of The Moon

Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Fredrico Fellini, John Luc Goddard and Michael Winner - the director can be an artist responsible more than anyone else in filmmaking for the artistic creation of a film. Auteur theory has taught us to respect these artists and their creations, their beautiful lovingly crafted masterpieces of celluloid, and then there is the TV director. For every Adam Curtis, Molly Dineen or Nick Broomfield there are sadly countless cunts who make worthless reality TV but think their Stanley fucking Kubrick. Sadly I have to deal with directors all to often as they sit slouched in a leather chair in a edit suite on their MacBook (which has to be in black I may add), watching a editor try to save their mess of a television programme while they just sit there shitting it over the impending viewing with their exec. They will be sipping at a cup of cold coffee (they're just too busy to drink it while its hot) and dissapearing every 5 minutes to talk to someone on their Iphone and smoke a Marlborough light. Yet amongst all this mayhem they still find time to get me to wait on them hand and foot and wipe their arse with my own fair hands.

Dressed head to foot in north face and nhs style glasses( if North Face ever want to move into eyewear there is a killing to be made in the media sector) the modern tv director is always ready for action. But why travelling from their home to work they need to wear a jacket designed for trekking through Outer Mongolia I will never know. Or maybe their flash city apartment is located half way up the fucking eiger.

Up Dawsons Creek Without a Paddle

The story of the missing canoeist no doubt had production underlings frantically phoning round this afternoon to get that exclusive access for a fast turn around Channel five or Sky docomentary that will be made in a week and is about as informative as a chocolate wrapper.

The guy in question aparently has been missing for five years, and has no memory of said ordeal. If this doesn't make for the best interview, the lack of action will no doubt be made up for by some fabulous shaky cam re-enactment footage featuring a runner in a canoe.

Selective memory loss is a terrible thing and sadly something that effects the TV industry particularly badly, especially production managers and the like who often need someone to blame for the daily production fuck up rather than themselves. The standard question asked when said daily fuck up happens, such as an visa less crew stranded in some African hell hole border crossing, with only a teddy bear called Mohamed to keep them company, is “why wasn’t I told about this sooner” to which the response should often be ‘you were but just chose not to listen as you were too busy whitering on about fresh and fucking wild and spending Christmas in Chamonix”. Always save your emails to back your ass up, always!

Grimshaw

BBC Radio 1 appears to have a unique talent for uncovering annoying presenters. First we have Jo Wiley, who while thinking shes gods gift to man also likes to lay claim to discovering every artist on the planet. I noticed her drop this trick in while having the displeasure to watch the BBCs new attempt at being down with the kids, Sound (BBC2 Saturday at 17.15). While discussing the artist Robyn ,Wiley laid claim to 'having always liked her' and some other cantankerous lies to make herself her look good - I think when she was born her asshole and her mouth got mixed up and all the shit comes out the wrong end.

So Sound is the programme that is here to fill the saturday night void of Top of The Pops 2. But top of the pops was dated yeah, kids nowadays are like so cool. Well, Sound tries hard to be cool. So so hard. Its edited at such a frenetic pace that watching it makes you feel like someones taken your eyeballs out and put them in a washing machine full of spanners. It fucking hurts. So you've got the cool camera work, so you need some cool presenters yeah. Step forth Grimshaw, cool personified and proud victim of east londons tsunami of fashion.

So whats Grimshaws look? Lumberjack crossed with a shitter version of Morrisey's haircut from his time in the Smiths. Very dissapointing I'm sure you'll agree but no doubt all the little brats in Universitys across the country will start immitating him. Also being northern, he will no doubt end up being the 'new' Vernon Kay, now that hes settled into middle age entertaining the Pikeys on ITV1 of a Saturday night and saying how 'stonking' everything is all the time. I bet all the execs across the country are dripping at the prospect of this man and who can be the first to tie him up on a golden handjob. Prepare yourself for complete saturation; I point to the trends we've already been through - Kay Hole, Dermot O'Leary, that Bristolian Yeti, Russell Brand, Jimmy Carr, Tony fucking Slattery............................................................

So if you get the chance to switch off sound please do, and save us from a terminator style apocolaypse of a future.

Commissioner Boredom

Also tonight, been out for a few drinks down a trendy new bar which has been made to look exactly like the old mans pub it used too be but without the drunken cockney regulars. The captains jackets and no doubt Winehouse and Doherty will soon be a fixture here, and I just wanted to let everyone know that I was a pioneer before old crackhive whitened the shelves in the ladies. I was having a conversation with a friend who works as a runner at the offices of a production company, when this story arrived in the conversation. I really have to give her credit for the use of the phrase 'cuntwash'.

"The commissioner. The walking living god of the TV industry. The person who can make or break a production company. People go on as though these tossers are saving lives, instead of just dolling out slabs of their production budget to their old Oxford chums.

When a commissioner deems your company worthy of a personal visit, all the stops are pulled out. The best organic produce will have been collected. Choco Leibniz spread out, the freshly squeezed pomegranate juice prepared. All waiting for the arrival of the black clad, NHS glasses wearing commissioning cuntwash. If you fuck one of these cunts over, your well and truly screwed; no commissions from their channel until their sacked - and they will be - that’s the only nice thing about those commissioner cunts. Their all sacked at some point. I mean you only have to spunk a few hundred grand away on worthless cutting edges that sit on the shelf for years before your surely kicked out the door.

When they very rarely visit the office, as a runner as you might catch some of the meeting as your bringing the food, pouring the coffee or fellating where applicable around the meeting table. You will hear your boss, the exec who normally strides around the office like he is the fucking son of god, suddenly turn into Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross - the washed up old salesman desperately trying to close the deal. As you hear him twitter on about the 'Landmark series that will reinvent the way reality television is interpreted' you look over at the commissioner in all his smug glory. Stroking his chin and drinking black coffee (some have soya milk I may add), looking like a Roman Emperor about to raise or lower his thumb at the end of a blood thirsty gladiatorial clash. With all this power I cant help thinking it must be really easy for them to get laid, but they probably spend most of their spare time wanking off over their own reflection in a full length mirror instead."

How true this is. These fuckers are largely responsible for the state of television today and should take note of when TV was great, when ideas didn't involve repackaging all the inept programmes they've already had into new, even more boring wrappers. Arrange me a marriage? I'll arrange you a cab. And no we won't fucking put it on the bill you cheeky cunt.

Grade Runner

Overheard the following bleat today from editor to director while installing a routine piece of kit that said team were too important to do themselves........

"It’s time to put something back into this industry and spread my genius around a bit. I never thought I would say this but I’m getting a bit tired of the big city, there was a time when I couldn’t live without 70 hour coke fuelled edit sessions followed by a three day bender around Soho, waking up with my cock in some sixteen year olds work experience girls mouth and then onto the next project. But now I’m thinking of settling down a bit and getting out of London as my partner has our first child on the way. Maybe after selling up our Stoke Newington town house we can buy a run down farm in Somerset like Hugh's. Tab’s can make organic chutney, I might even take up grouse shooting like my uncle used to. Or perhaps we could move to Cornwall, they love city people down there as we have so much more money than them. I could go surfing every morning before hitting the edit suite.

(pauses while takes sip of purdeys)

I feel a reel sense of duty as even though you can get a Starbucks most places these days the provinces are really lagging behind on decent post-production. Every one knows you cant get a decent grade outside of W1. So all I have to do is move to somewhere outside of London and my skills will blow these bumpkins minds. Set up shop in one of these provincial towns where they just make wildlife programs or daytime TV and my big city skills will clean up. Even better somewhere rural so remote that you cant even find it on sat nav. I'll get tabs to work her Grand Designs magic on a old barn and start a rural facilities house called The Barn or the Farmyard, something like that. Because I’ll be the only one offering a serious London grade outside of Soho all the semi retired execs living out in the sticks will beat a path to my door!"

Serial Killers

Some people are so self important. They walk through the door and expect you to wait on them hand and foot, like they are the next messiah. Series producers fit this category. Now most of them are actually nice, but when the shit starts hitting the fan then you really start to see their true colours and the inner cunt comes out to play.

Now there are few categories you can fit these people in. The ones that are extremely posh and are a fully paid up member of the oxford alumni. They also use old terminology and probably wonder why the camera is not handcranked anymore. Then theres the ones that even though it isn't necessary, always like to work 16 hour days 7 days a week and probably sleep in a coffin. To round off this rogues gallery, the fucking miserable ones who have a air of 'I'm pissed off with everyone' to ensure you do anything they request at breakneck speed so as not to invoke the rage virus they've contracted from a zombie rat monkey while filming a tribe on a remote South American island, which probably explains why they've got a face like they've just licked a cats ass.

These people don't seem to understand the concept of time, which is quite strange considering that its been around since the dawn of eternity. The immortal words 'I need a playout' will venomously hiss from their lips, and then they will proceed to call every five minutes asking where it is, conveniently forgetting the fact that their programs a hour long and refusing to understand that it has to be done in real time (how people without any grasp of technology manage to get employed in a industry where its essential in every single stage of production angers and baffles me in equal measure).

Then lunchtime rolls around. Far too busy shopping on the internet and using the facilities telephone to call Botswana even though their own mobile is sat on the desk, they of course have a very specific diet that needs a combination of ingredients available on each far corner of the known world. I know I'll get you a roast dodo, with a salad hand picked from the garden of eden and washed in the tears of Jesus, and you'll take two bites of this glorious feast that takes me half the afternoon to source for your delicate stomach (of course also complaining that its cold and forgetting that would be fucking obvious considering what I've been through to get it for you), before tossing it in the bin (and I also have to note that you will wait until I come to your room once and then ask me for a napkin, and then when I bring you a fucking napkin you suddenly remember you want a spoon, and then when I bring you that you want a perrier like I'm employed solely to wipe your fucking ass all day).

These people really do test my patience, especially as you have to kiss their ass constantly upon fear that they could strike your career down so you never work again (and they also think their position gives them the right to perve over staff members which makes me want to be violently sick into their Fairtrade Latte). I can't wait till the Summer when they're all off planning there next stupendous series of shit in Provence. Until next time......

The Rise of the Chefs

A few years back in the dawn of reality television, while big brother was just a twinkling in endemol's eye and Wife Swap was making a name for RDF television, so began the nightmare we live in today. The first fashion to begin was DIY shows. DIY SOS, Changing Rooms, that crap one on ITV where they decorated a house in a hour (if you can't remember it its as shit as it sounds) and the more hi-brow Grand Designs for the Telegraph readers of the world. Slowly these petered out, Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen left our screens and Nick Knowles has hiked his undeserved fame onto the pointless National Lottery crap on a Saturday night (Why can't we just have the numbers, ALL WE NEED IS THE NUMBERS!!). Poor old Anna Ryder-Richardson has had to resort to resurrecting her falling star on the annual twat-fest I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! My heart bleeds for her. It really, really does.

What they should have done is become Chefs! Chefs and food in general are in fashion. The rise of the Chefs is plain for all to see. Now Oliver I can handle. Ramsay to an extent. Masterchef passible. But then they dropped saturday morning kids shows to have a chef off on ITV and BBC1. Overkill begins. But I could handle it. Until now. Just take a look at the schedule today: BBC1 09.15 Whats Really in our food? BBC2 1630 Food Poker, 2000 Oz and James Big Wine Adventure, 2030 Uncharasmatic food robot Heston Blumenthal slow cooking a curry for five years, Cooking The Books at 1830 on Channel Five (with some talking piece of wood from Hollybollocks presenting) and to round off this feast of television Old Leatherface gets his potty mouth out at 2100 on Channel 4 to whip some kitchen into shape in his inimitable style. With my calculations thats 5 hours of TX time across the terrestrial channels dedicated to the same fucking show in different wrapping.

Food poker - FOOD FUCKING POKER! This is quite possibly the straw that broke the camels back. Up pops that bloke who gets in the disguises on Rogue Traders to deal the cards to the best chefs in the country, I shit you not they've replaced the standard playing cards we've been used too since time began in favour of cards with a different ingredient. The chefs are dealt a hand and then have to come up with a dish from this. Where have we heard this before I wander?? Just look at the time slot and get your green peppers and red tomatoes out.

Do people actually enjoy making this toss? Is this the creative outlet they desire? If I want to cook I'll stick to books, where I have a choice about how many recipes I ram into my head every day. So when this runs its course whats next? God help us all.

The Fall of Television

Hello, and let me introduce myself. I am a runner for a major post-production company and I'm hear to give the dirt, first hand on the making of television. A behind the scenes look at the overpaid nhs style glasses wearing posh fuckwits, who are greedily chomping away at the innards of the once great establishment of British television like a pack of underfed hyenas, and washing it all down with an 'organic' cola from fresh and wild. I will also try and add my impartial views to what is good and bad about the weeks broadcasts - and sticking it into my most hated medium, so called 'reality' tv. We used to produce quality television, that reflected social movements and offered us an insight into real people with real tragic and interesting stories.

Now I'm stuck with 'Can fat kids hunt' (BBC3 Monday, 10.30pm)? What are they hunting for, a pound down the back of the sofa so they can buy another round of donuts? Why do we have to fabricate documentary's when there are plenty of interesting people in the world? This and many other challenging debates will appear right here, so as they say in the industry stay tuned.