More dispatches from the front line of development....

More from the pages of our development guru's ideas book. Apart from one that I've made up, answers on a postcard and the first correct answer wins a 'milk and two fucking sugars!' T Shirt.

Pete Doherty In Afghanistan

Pete’s been a bad boy splashed over the pages of the tabloids with his battle against heroin. In this groundbreaking documentary he will explore the origins of the drug he knows so well, tracing it back to the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Here he will meet British troops fighting the Taliban, members of local law enforcement, drug lords and the farmers who grow the simple crop that has ended up in his arm so many times in the past. Controversial yes, emotive certainly, Bafta I should bloody think so! (If Doherty is still too stoned, Brand will do).

Amy Winehouse and Friends

Live from Camden’s infamous Hawley Arms public house Amy Winehouse chats with an audience and guests completely made up of people she has met while fucked off her tits. Each week a band or singer will perform a uniquely ironic cover version. First up 19 year old sensation Adele (she’s 19 by the way) with a version of Amy’s song Rehab. Jo Whiley will be on hand at all times in case an emergency dose of sycophancy is needed.

Come Dine with Vine

Jeremy Vine invites celebrities and listeners of his popular Radio 2 lunchtime moanfest, round to his home (actually a Nigella style studio). Jeremy and guests will put the world to rights over a light bite to eat.

Greenbelt

The Coast team move inland and expore the most affluent middle class areas of the UK. Bill Oddie joins the team to do a live bird watch from the end of a stockbrokers drive.

Jamies Milk Shake Up

After the successful chicken season, Jamie turns his hand to exposing the truth about dairy products and the treatment of Cows in the farming industry. Expect bleeding udders and shocking facts about the pasteurisation processes involved in the creation of smart price cheddar.

Noel's Arks 6 x 60 Sky One

Documentary following Noel Edmunds in his quest to refurbish decommissioned prison ships for low income families to live in. Think Noel could be just right to be the proles Kevin McCloud. (Kevin might just go for it himself and could pitch to C4)

Coca Popped

Alex James inadvertently destroys all the Coca plants in Columbia with a bacteria contained in a box of goat cheeses, innocently given to the President as a present during his recent trip to the country with Panorama.

Ben Fogel’s Wet Dreams

Adventure addict Ben is always looking for a new challenge, and having done the Atlantic with Cracknel what’s next? The pacific in a pedlo that’s what! But here’s the twist - no athlete companion this time round, but a member of the public chosen by Ben from a group of complete amateurs. Once chosen he will only have a week to get them fully prepared to join his attempt at aquatic glory.

Jeremy Beadle 1948-2008

Yesterday saw the death of 80s television legend Jeremy Beadle. In the modern age you rarely get a presenter with the enthusiasm and heart of Beadle. His production 'You've Been Framed', which is still running to this day, pioneered the user generated clip for entertainment, which must have inadvertently planted the seed for internet sensation You Tube.

The highpoint of his television career came in the late 80s, when with Barrymore and Cilla Black he pretty much ruled ITV Saturday evenings. In this period Saturday evening entertainment was unconcerned with adding to Simon Cowell’s bank balance; all you needed was a big studio audience and a comedy presenter who appealed to young and old. Where are presenters and shows like 'Beadles About' now? Ant and Dec are unfortunately the closest you'll get. Back in the eighties before the digital fragmentation of TV Beadle was getting viewing figures up to the 18 million mark.

Back in this hazy land of Beta SP, humour wasn’t found in the sharp but nasty put downs of some venomous pumped up cartoon of a man on desperate popstar wannabes, but instead in 'caught on camera' home video clips and candid camera set ups conceived by Beadle. He had the nation laughing. The simple slapstick humour was as funny as anything the silent great had conceived; the infectious laughter his programme created was hard to ignore however lowbrow the concept. Noels Crinkley Bottom didn't come close - and Beadle didn't have to rely on a man in a giant pink fat suit to get the laughs. Also heavily involved in Charity, he was awarded with a MBE in 2001 for these services.

My thoughts go out to his family, but Beadles spirit will surely live on. RIP.

The North Face of the BEEB

Nice to see the Jeremy Vine listener’s favourite newspaper and voice of middle England, The Daily Mail finding inspiration in my blog posts. Possibly after reading my post on the media types love affair with North Face jackets back in December, the Daily Mail has launched an investigation into why so much front of camera talent seem to be decked out in the brands gear. BBC reporters are often leaving the corporations branded jackets at home in favour of North Face protection. Why are BBC reporters all wearing The North Face anoraks? Probably because it keeps them warm and dry when it’s pissing down and freezing outside waiting to provide a often unnecessary bit of on the spot ‘live’ reporting for the tedium that is rolling news. Still no excuse to wear them in the edit suite though. Love the way the Mail calls them anoraks, will have to use that one at work, 'shall i hang up your anorak for you sir'. Milk and two fucking sugars! Turn up the wireless.

White City

I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here and say some people who work in television have first hand knowledge of cocaine. Usage levels might not be as endemic as say the fashion or music industries, but everyone knows a story of a researcher who has had to score for the ‘talent’ and the toilet cubicles of any media watering hole are always as busy as a Delhi train station. Personally I don’t touch the stuff. To paraphrase Robin Williams ‘Cocaine is God's way of saying you're making too much money’ and I’m skint!

So in TV you will find just the same tossers who spout off about the cause de jour, when all they care about is the ratings. Those who love to bang on about organic, eco etc. (all good causes), and those that would always read the caring sharing Guardian (a fine paper but the media rag of choice), are often just the types to leave any morals at home if someone offers a cheeky line in the toilets. After all, coke is the perfect drug to let inflated egos actually believe their own shit. Do you really need a celebrity famous for being the most irritating and least talented member of Blur to tell you that what your sticking up your snout is the result of a production system steeped in blood?

Well that’s what we got in Monday’s edition of Panorama: Cocaine - Alex James in Colombia (Mon 28 Jan, 8:30 pm). So finally a program makes the connection and for all the potential irritation Alex James came over rather well. He admits at the start of the programme that in the nineties he spunked a million quid on champagne and coke, I was half expecting a noughties remake of the Omnibus about the KLF watching a million pounds go up in smoke, instead James is in repentant mood. For Panorama he accepts a invitation from the Columbian government to visit the country and see the effects of the cocaine trade up close, well closer than his previous experiences on the end of it at least. Then we follow the Ross Kemp on Gangs format of meeting the law enforcement, then shady meetings with the ‘bad guys’ while the presenter quite rightly shits himself at the possible danger of getting shot.

Alex James in a Columbian Coca Field

Alex James to be fair did really seem to commit to the material, visibly moved by stories of bloodshed and was very much out of his comfort zone. Often fear showed on his face probably wishing he was back in the safe confines of the Groucho Club or on the farm we see him frolicking about on at the start of the programme.

Although not quite examining his past ‘chained to the mirror and the razor blade’, the programme works well for having a presenter whos been on the business end of a rolled up note. After hearing the evidence of the brutality undermining the cocaine biz the director asks James ‘your quite anti coke now aren’t you’ - he seemed genuinely moved by the experience in Columbia, reassuring the traditional BBC audience we were dealing with a repented sinner. So will it hit home? Next time after a dinner party when the lines come out someone might make a stand and say “what about the poor Columbian farmers and the gang bloodshed, do you know how it’s made? I really don’t think it’s organic. Didn't you see Panorama? God we've been talking about it more than the bloody chickens. Alex James wouldn't approve." Maybe they will - but how will all the echelons of the entertainment industry continue to have their cake and snort it? Well what they really need is someone to start marketing fairtrade cocaine. Or do what the governments of the world should have done years ago, legalise and control it and lose all the crime, death and heartache that goes with the illegal trade of drugs to Europe. Then maybe they'd sell it in Fresh and Wild.

The Dinner Party

Ok so I’m at this metaphorical dinner party (it has to be metaphorical as I would never actually go to a dinner party), and we are just finishing off the foie gras and swigging back the Palmina Alisos. Conversations linger over house prices and whether we might even vote Tory at the next election. But this isn't your average dinner party - the other guests are made up of television channels and they are a pretty awful lot.

Now ITV hasn’t been invited because she’s basically a bit common and couldn’t really cut it with the others round the table. BBC Two failed to receive his invite, apparently he’s rather boring and a bit stuck in his ways these days unless he’s talking about Newsnight or the program with the nasty entrepreneurs. Channel Four is hooting off as bloody usual, lecturing us all about bloody chickens and laughing at anyone less affluent than himself. From the way he keeps going off to the toilet I have my suspicions he might be a drug addict. He seems very cool, very worthy and very irritating. Five seems quite nice, but at the back of everyone’s minds we all remember a few years back when she didn’t know better and would get plastered and get her tits out at the end of every night, poor girl.

Sadly I’m next to the BEEB. BBC One seems to be in the midst of a mid life crisis and doesn’t have a interesting word to say about anything but is absolutely desperate to please everyone. He won’t stop banging on about his young nephew, Three, that he’s brought along to the party. All Three does is tut at anything said by anyone over twenty five and stairs nonchalantly out of the window, texting all the time. Thank god for the other member of the party. BBC Four. Intelligent, stylish but not too cool, and doesn’t talk to me like I’m a fucking child. I can even forgive him for putting Spiceworld on the other day. Step forward the only channel worth consistently watching on British Television.

In George A. Romero’s seminal zombie classic 'Dawn of the Dead', some of the survivors talk about a island where others have gathered to escape the zombie hordes. BBC Four is the televisual equivalent of this island. Unlike other channels that are obsessed with youth, with celebrity and with reality shows that portray nothing absolutely akin to reality, BBC Four still clings to some sort of Reithian ideals. It still tries to produce intelligent television that does not pander to stupidity so I can only presume its time must be numbered. Tune in while you can, and hail the last Bastian of this once great broadcast industry.

Despair

I'd like to wake up on a Monday morning and feel optimistic for the week ahead. That this week would be cunt free, and I'd maybe get to sit in on an edit of a programme for a few hours that actually contained some thought provoking content. No. I arrive at work and pick up the latest addition of Broadcast (weekly industry magazine) and my week is greeted with these cataclysmic piles of shit:

Commissions in this weeks broadcast (18th Jan):

Reality series 'Murder Most Famous' is the latest twist on the celebrity talent show - six famous faces (yet to be confirmed) will be assigned murder detection challenges including dog tracking, resisting a violent attack and an autospy. They will then have to use what they learn to inspire their own crime fiction novel.

So let me get this right - they're going to get some celebritites to write a best fucking seller? Can't they just put them in a mansion and get them to kill each other then the winner can write about that? At least that way we'd have at least five less fucking celebrities to worry about. This is 'eye gouge' television - so bad that you'd rather gouge your eyes out then put them through the pain of watching another badly lit, soft focused cheap digital video nightmare.

'Doctor in The House' BBC3: will perform 'live' autopsies' on hedonistic youngsters and confront them with what they are doing to themsleves. (The autopsy is of course virtual though I wouldn't be suprised in this day and age if they did actually chop someone open live on television).

BBC3 is fast becoming the biggest producer of shit television the world has ever seen. Not content with destroying my soul with seven series of 2 Cunts of Lager and a Packet of Twats, they have frankly cornered the market in shittly named, shit reality documentarys. In fact to use the term documentary is an insult to the format which has produced some of the greatest programmes I can remember. Shock tactics are so fucking passe! Kids take drugs! Get over it!

'Glamour Girls' BBC3: Aims to lift the lid on the modelling world to discover just how glamorous it is.

*Yawn*

Supersize v Superskinny Ch4: A fat and a thin woman change diets. Suprisingly the thin woman puts weight on and the fat woman loses weight. Now theres a fucking suprise.

I never want to see this.

So as you can probably guess this month I'll mainly be downloading television from America to avoid sitting through one nano second of this tripe. Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles has been recieving rave reviews in the states (even if the lead has been criticised by feminists for not being muscely enough!?) so I will be sitting back and watching the first two episodes. I suggest you join me.

FACT OF THE WEEK.

Ben Fogles career high is 'presenting crufts'.

No Fate But What We Make

Went for a rare pint after work yesterday evening at the pub next door to the office. Being a media watering hole you have to keep your complaining about wankers from work (and the industry at large) to a low level while sipping your five pound bottle of beer. It's normally not too difficult because most people’s voices will be largely inaudible due to at least one strutting cock of a media show-off hooting off at a volume similar to a landing 747 about his latest project. Step forward this evenings perpetrator, a development producer not content with letting everyone in earshot know how he was getting paid a obscene amount by a large indie because commissioners simply view him as 'a friend..... and the fact my ideas just kick ass'. Do they just....

Well what a shame he managed to leave his ideas book behind when he left the pub. I'll send it on to him of course, just when I can find an address for 'twat of the world'. But for now I bring to you the inane ideas he had jotted down in this notebook. Sadly these are all to likely to end up on our corrupted TV screens instead of anything that's useful to life on earth. Plus the cunt will probably be a commissioner one day.

Whats on the slate....

Cooking with Cannibals

There are few taboos left in society but eating human flesh is certainly one of them. In this ground breaking but also light hearted series, a top (but affordable) TV chef (maybe Ainsley, his agents interested) travels into the depths of the Amazon rainforest to visit the few remaining tribes in the world with a taste for eating people.

The Horse through History (BBC 1, around the countryfile slot 6x30)

Ben Fogle takes the viewer on a gentle journey explaining man's relationship with the horse throughout history. From Troy to Ascot.

The Biggest Balls in the World (Bodyshock C4 or Extrodinary People Five)

Madiq Alhemed has the largest scrotum on record in the world weighing over 15lb's which has left him incapacitated. We will follow his journey to the world's top speacialist hospital in Saudi Arabia where he will undergo a groundbreaking operation to minimise his scrotum.

The 1980’s House

Can you imagine living without the Internet, your mobile phone or X Factor? Well once people did and it was called the 1980’s . The 1980’s House will challenge a 21st Century family to live like they might have 25 years ago. To add to the authenticity during the series the family's mother will go on strike and the father lose his job.

Steve McFadden's Street Gangs (30 x 60) Bravo

In this highly original and daring series, TV hardman Steve McFadden (Phil Mitchell in Eastenders) visits Los Angeles to spend half an hour with members of the Crips and the Bloods street gangs.
If he survives this encounter, he will go on to meet members of other notorious crews around the world. Following the exact same format each week, conducting an interview with a gang member at a secret location and coming to little in the way of a interesting conclusion about his experience. Steve will be given full military training so he will be able to lock and load a firearm on camera at any opportunity. Full access has been granted to all of the most dangerous gangs in the world.

Three Men On A Boat: Heart Of Darkness

Griff Rhys-Jones, Rory McGrath and Dara O'Brien follow on from their successful BBC 2 series by traveling down the Nung River from Vietnam to Cambodia retracing the journey featured in the film Apocalypse Now.

Blue Peter

Documentary following Peter Andre making a pornographic film (would Jordan agree to Peter doing this? could we get her involved?).

Ring Of Fire 10x60 (ITV1)

A crack team of celebrity daredevils join a world famous motorcycle stuntman (Evel Knieval has unfortunately passed away so we'll have to go with someone else), and undergo 6 weeks of rigourous training before attempting to jump their metal steed through the deadly 'ring of fire'. Fran Cosgrove interested, as is Jack Ryder (great name for it!) and Tara Palmer Tomkinson. Ewan and Charlie budget allowing. Jonny Cash for the theme music. Presented by Jack Osbourne.

Dancing With Dogs (15 x 60 plus 14 x 30 results shows, BBC1)

Following on from the success of Strictly Come Dancing and The One and Only, 14 Celebrities and their dogs join Graham Norton and his Labradoodle Bailey in a weekly knockout format to find the Dancing With Dogs Champion. Members of the Top Lodge Trio are confirmed to offer our celebrities expert guidance in the art of Dog Dancing, and top canine freestyler Richard Curtis (not the Notting Hill chap) as judge alongside seasoned celebrity dog dancer Esther Ranson. Sharon Osbourne is extremely interested in contesting if she can get her pets through quarantine.

Thats your lot for now. Keep your eyes peeled for more titbits from the holy grail in coming weeks........... milk and two fucking sugars!

Maybe it went something like this….

INT. OFFICES OF FEARNLEY PRODUCTIONS: DAYTIME

A development meeting is in full throw. Creative's sit around in a semi circle brainstorming ideas, as their chief a top TV foodie/down shifter paces up and down.

FEARNLEY

“Right team I need a campaign and it needs to be a bloody good one”

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 1

“A campaign? … I thought you turned down Tesco boss”

FEARNLEY

“I'm not doing bloody adverts, I don’t want to be known as a cut price Oliver”

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 2

“What do you mean a campaign then boss”

FEARNLY

“You know like the bloody school dinners… bang on about turkey twizzlers, give chav kids rocket and balsamic and suddenly your a national hero. He gets to have tea with the prime minister and Channel Four will commission him doing whatever he wants for years to come.”

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 1

“I think your pretty safe with Channel Four boss, your the channels number two food guy ”

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 2
(cough)

“Gordon”

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 1

“Well, a solid third boss”

FEARNLY

“look guys I know just as well as anyone at Horseferry Road that the public are not going to want to watch me spatchcock badgers forever. We only got three hours out of my last series. I need something big, something landmark, a real campaigning series, something that will galvanize the nation”

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 2

“You could sort out aeroplane food boss, that’s well shit”

FEARNLY

“Come on guys we need the chav factor here, poor people go on aeroplanes maybe only once or twice a year, sometimes never. We need something bigger, something that will make people like us feel smug about people like them. I watched one of the school dinners programs and it made me think, thank god I send my children to school with a packed lunch.”

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 1

“How about chicken’s boss, everyone likes chicken don’t they. Rich and poor we all eat chicken, but the stuff Iceland sells to the working class is probably genetically modified in Romania ”


DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 2

“Yeah and its like well cruel the way their treated”

FEARNLY

“Briliant”

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER 1

“Do you think you could cry on camera over the chickens being killed boss?”

FEARNLY

“For a 5x60 I’ll do a lot more than bloody cry”