Thread 19 - TalkLair: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 18)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

In the TalkLair, the fairy lights are festooned on the mantlepiece, the tree is twinkling with baubles, the mince pies are in the oven, the MN legendary chicken is ready to feed the hordes. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

I'm ashamed to report that this afternoon I've been keeping warm indoors and watching the latest series of The Traitors, having never seen it before. I'm only half way through, so no spoilers, please, but really, what a load of shite! Most of the contestants (especially the men, several of whom are indistinguishable) seem pathologically dull and dim-witted. Perhaps this is low cunning, but I'm not convinced. I've had a break to cook and eat a rather good dinner, and have already forgotten who was the last to leave.

I fear I am not attuned to the Zeitgeist.

We watched the celebrity version (partly base curiosity, partly work purposes for MrBint), and it's generally not a format designed to flatter participants' intelligence. There's a bit of opportunity in some challenges, but the guess-the-traitor parts really show up their own overestimates of their ability. It can only be guessing because there's nothing to go on, but they come up with the most convoluted guff as justification and seem to genuinely believe it's cunning analysis.

Caught a bit of the non-celeb Irish version last night and the challenge in that did require a bit of actual brain power - they had to know a decent amount of Gaelic and translate it to Ogham. Not gripping enough to tune in deliberately though.

I like the Traitors. Catching a traitor is fundamentally guesswork and it’s basically a weird popularity contest but I enjoy it anyway.

Not for me. It can join Big Brother, Love Island, and all the other (insert suitable term here) shit I never bothered with. And have never for a second regretted! 😃

It's been quite chilly here today, as a consequence of which we've only been out briefly (in search of chocolate) and I am now about 5 minutes.into Episode 8. All the men remain pretty much indistinguishable and all the women are now annoying me. If I were the producer, I'd have a surprise episode in which everyone was murdered by Claudia and episodes 9-12 were replaced by a watching-paint-dry contest. But I shall soldier on, just so I can say I gave it a chance.

I loved Big Brother back in the day (though I didn’t miss it when it left C4 and never watched it again). And it was what brought me to GU/FU. Never watched Love Island and I came to the Traitors late but binged watched it once I started.

I remember the BB threads of yore in the other place

I watched 2 or 3 episodes of the first series of BB and then left the country for 13 years. I am not saying the two events were necessarily connected, but ....

I remember avidly watching the first couple of series of BB, wasn't it the dawn of reality TV? Then there were all the so-called talent shows, also addictive watching.

And then at some point not long after the explosion in the reality TV genre, I realised that behind the can't-look-away obsessive viewing, I was feeling really uncomfortable with the whole thing and that these programmes just seemed to be creative and cruel ways of exploiting vulnerable people who clearly had massive issues. I even gave up on Bake Off after the first few series, when it became clear that it was no longer about baking and cooking skills but about deliberately manufactured peril and drama.

ChezKuc we're the outliers in our uni friend group though, the group WhatsApp is always full of excited discussion of whichever reality TV thing is nearing its climax. Traitors, this week.

One of the early reality/fly on the wall things was good. Tourist Trap. It never seems to get mentioned, so I assume it didn't get great viewing figures, but I thought it was a fascinating set up. And unlike most, they were very clear that it was 'a set up' - that was the whole point.

The participants were told it was a documentary about the soft launch of a new hotel (might have been in Turkey) and they were there as the first guests. They had I think 5 different groups - English, American, German, Japanese and one other nationality (French?). Each national group was there alone, with 2 stooges embedded as fellow tourists, and the production team set up various 'unexpected happenings' to see how the different groups reacted to: people pushing into the buffet queue, the day trip boat breaking down, a group walk that went past a local looking for a lost ring, and the country having a sudden revolution and all the hotel staff disappearing.

It went very much as you might expect, but was fascinating viewing - for the reactions of the stooges as well as the guinea pigs. For example the queue jumping test was a fail because neither the British nor Japanese stooges were able to do it.

Well, each to their own.

The son of a friend who suffered from really bad OCD was on a programme about treatment for it. He was encouraged by the production team to agree to do stuff he wasn’t actually comfortable to do, including a hug from his parents for a feel good ending. But he wasn’t actually any better. I don’t know if the programme made things worse but I was startled at how they exploited him given he had a very serious mental illness. I already felt uncomfortable about how Jade Goody was treated on Big Brother so I never watch any of that sort of thing now.

The only brush with the media I've had was in 2007 when I was on a R4 gardening quiz. It was recorded at the Museum of Gardening in London and I had a great time but am massively glad that I came second. We all had to have a specialist area to be questioned on, which is fair enough, but the winner then had to prepare for a new specialist area which seems ridiculous. I think there were five rounds in all so each winner would have had to swat up constantly. Winning just puts people under a huge amount of pressure and the media clearly revel in that and nothing seems to have changed.

Ha! I was a fellow second-comer, many, many years ago on Fifteen To One!

What would have happened if you'd won?

I can't even remember, it was so long ago. No cash prizes or anything like that.

All I got was a very high-quality black and white photo portrait of me with William G. Which went astray years ago.

I didn't get anything either but took some photos and had one with the compere Anna Ford.

It was great fun. I was very well prepared but my nervous excitement was strong and I clowned about, which is not me at all as I'm usually quite reserved. My brother was in the audience and said later that he 'feared your buzzer would remain silent' but I started pushing it before the quiz started. And I knew almost all the answers which just made me laugh even more.

I remember Big Brother. I came back from a 10 week stint at sea and saw billboards, with bold, block capitals: BIG BROTHER. That was all, I assumed it was some political stunt, until I mentioned it to a mate, who raved about it.

I went round to watch it (I didn't have a telly for years) and almost lost the will to live.

I've been an extra on Byker Grove (twice) and Spender, where you can see half of me in a mirror, shadow boxing, for half a second. Well worth £165 in 1993, along with a gourmet buffet. I stuffed my pockets with smoked salmon.

Heh! I was in the front row when Sings of Praise came to our church* and smiled at the camera. My mum told me off.
*for a brief period we went to church. The penny dropped recently that it was parents getting us into the church school which we went to for 2 years, discovered it was teaching like in Victorian days (rows of benches, very strict horrid teachers, only 3 classes between 5 & 11) and went back to the primary school.
I popped in to mention this thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5481731-first-date-ick-am-i-being-a-princess?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share
I would expect princesses to be able to use words correctly: it’s entertaining in a number of ways.

I had a couple of walking through the background TV appearances when they filmed documentaries/news items on my school. And appeared - legs only - in a piece on the revival of ballroom dancing when Strictly Ballroom came out.

This is probably a rage-bait posting (the OP dumped and ran) but is astoundingly unanimous for MN.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5482031-dd-banned-from-nyc-trip?

Not only unanimous but sensible and right!

I saw that. Classic case of "First post nails it". Didn't read much further. I didn't even check if it was a dump.and run, as I usually do, cos i didn't read enough of it. FAFO in action.

It does amaze me though, that so many threads that are a dump and run; does no-one check? It doesn't seen to deter ten pages of opinions.

the three thread one with the barber and the affair with ROSE (including the dripfeed of evidence of affair on shared ipad whatsapp) was binned off by the mods for Ts&Cs. Seemed a bit fishy to me tbh so there we go.