To be hurt and annoyed at being dropped by the BBC?

[Ladyof2025]

BBC contacted me asking me to speak on camera about an aspect of local history I happen to know a bit about. I agreed and spent the next few days brushing up on the facts and then writing and rewriting a script and reading it out loud again and again until I knew it by heart and could speak confidently to camera as though I'd never said it before.

I do not have a pretty face, and am in my 60s and rather podgy, but I went to the trouble of going through my wardrobe for the perfect outfit that flattered my podginess, and had my hair cut specially and put on some make up, so I could be the best possible version of me that I could.

The production team visited, took me to the site and filmed me speaking. I did it smoothly and confidently and was glad that I had put in all the rehearsal so I came across as knowledgeable, professional and confident of my material. They said my performance was perfect, thanked me profusely and left.

After about a week they rang me to say that due to time and space issues the section of the programme that featured my input had been dropped. I felt absolutely gutted, not because I want to see myself on TV but because I had used up a lot of my valuable free time for several days preparing and rehearsing for it (for no fee I should add).

A few months later the programme I was dropped from came on TV and to my utter astonishment an attractive, slim young lady appeared, at the same site I was filmed at, and she spoke the exact words I had written and rehearsed! I nearly fell off my chair - the absolute bloody cheek of dropping ME but stealing the script that I had written. Thinking about it, I realised that they wanted my expert input, but not my saggy face or ample figure.

AIBU to be hurt and angry?

I suspect the problem was that someone speaking lines they've learnt doesn't come over as passionate.

I don't think it's as much passion - but rehearsed. Often these programmes want off the cuff, they are not looking for slick and polished, they want it like a conversation with someone you'd met in the street.

Talking to camera is a real skill and I totally get why someone would want to practice and learn the spiel off pat, but that often doesn't come across well.

At the end of the day, we don't know. Either way, it's total bullshit to take OP's research and run the content without her without so much as a please or thank you.

I get that stuff like this is cut all the time. But to me what is unacceptable is to cut it then use the research without asking. It is unpunished research which OP was asked to share on the show. It is just decent to ask!

Absolutely! It is also bad manners, and potentially intellectual property theft.

Hi @Ladyof2025 was it public service BBC or BBC Studios?

@Ladyof2025 what a very annoying and disappointing thing to happen. And even worse to then post on mn for a bit of support and end up with endless people wittering on disbelieving you, discrediting you and generally in so many ways no doubt making you feel worse.
MN really is an awful place sometimes.

I totally think you should complain to the contact you had at the BBC and to whoever else at the BBC who will listen. Appalling behaviour by them. They stole your research, your script and then didnt even vaguely credit you for it. 😥

@Ladyof2025 reading how articulate and brilliant all your replies are, genuinely don’t think the BBC deserved you x

This is intense 😆😆😆 but for all we know the topic could be something else entirely with just a reference to this house. For example, there was an episode of Hoarders (mansions version, forgotten what it's called!) where someone lived in a building with an interesting history - they mentioned the history of the house on the show.

I take your point but, specifically, Hoarders is not a BBC show and, more generally, I've FFd through a shit load of shows!

I'm still not sure why the OP can't link to the show in question if she's so aggrieved!

I guess I just meant a house could be mentioned in something quite left field. But you may now have watched all of iPlayer 😆

I've asked the OP at least twice what her motivation for doing the piece to camera was to begin with, and that's been glossed right over too.

I'm also not getting all the comments alluding to an MN pile-on; this entire thread is stuffed with support for her. This whole situation is something that has to be chalked-up to being part of life's rich tapestry, and a mental note that once bitten, twice shy.

Maybe I see things differently, on the basis that success in my life has never been easy for me, and what success I've had has been exceptionally low key. I'm nothing like some people have made out that I am. As well as this, I never expect anything to be brilliant on the first go, which is why in any new experience I had to dip my toe in the water first, as opposed to jumping straight it.

Although I got called out for allegedly making my first post on this thread all about me (and I wasn't doing so), I stand by what I wrote, which was that I knew in time that some low-key but paid opportunities to appear on TV would likely come my way, and therefore I took the chance to do some free appearances first so as to know what to expect for the paid work - indeed the first piece I ever did (which took several hours and a lot of travelling costs) very nearly did go out without me in it, but I didn't care as I had my own agenda in needing the experience of taking part. Many hours of filming was edited into a total of about 60 seconds of footage, spread over three 55-minute episodes of a four-part documentary.

I learnt so much from this experience, not least how the format of an entire series can change from inception to filming through to edit & release; what began as a documentary covering the whole of a national infrastructure was eventually focused entirely on one aspect of it in just one county, presumably as the production company found more than enough material to use when they began looking for it at the location it ended up being centered around.

If the OP has the chance to do future TV work, then this experience of hers (along with the constructive feedback on here from people who've been on both sides of the camera, so to speak) will make her much more prepared for that next opportunity.

I just want to say how sorry I am for you and what happened. I hope you contact the producer and tell them how upset you are.

The POINT of my OP was MY FEELINGS at the way I have been treated. The details don't matter. It doesn't matter if it was a blue van or a red car or an ice-cream van - the point was to make it clear that the same vehicle was in the same place when the other lady was filmed.

Had I wanted to "out" myself and expose which program it was I would have done so in my first post.

It's absolutely shocking that you are conducting a witch-hunt in an attempt to publicly dox me for the "crime" of being miffed at being dropped.

When you have my name do you intend to post it on here? Would you like the same done to you?

Disgusting.

Thank you for your kind words.

And, I would add, continuing to disbelieve me even after half a dozen posters have revealed that similar happened to them. Are we ALL lying?

NO! I have not "rowed back". I clarified that not every single word was exactly the same but the list of names of people that my own personal private and unpublished research discovered were associated with the house, information which, as I have already explained upthread, they CANNOT have got from anyone else or anywhere else, was recited by the replacement "talking head" in exactly the same order as I had presented it!

It's really horrible how, on MN, some people only join a thread to attack the OP and pick at everything she says, trying to "catch her out", "prove" she is a liar or just say something nasty for the hell of it. I have seen this happen a hundred times on other threads and it makes me wonder why anyone ever bothers posting on here at all.

Agree

That poster that has looked through so many things on iPlayer is just taking it way too far anyway

You’re not wrong, it’s always been a bit like this but recently it’s to the point that I can’t imagine wanting to start my own thread these days. Apart from to alert the night watch of obscene CSA photos that is 🤦‍♀️ Otherwise I wouldn’t bother.

Purely curious, but you would have to have found the list of relevant names somewhere from a checkable source. If you were able to find them, is it that outside the realms of possibility that someone else could also find them the same way you did?

Seeing as they asked her originally for her specific expertise and the replacement is coming out with the same information, it’s just as likely it comes from her?

Thing is, there's two options when posting on a public forum for advice/opinions...

You either, A) Post all the information and answer all the questions that come back, or B) Accept that if you've left a bunch of gaps that people will do what comes naturally and attempt to fill them in.

Nobody should share info they don't feel comfortable with sharing, but you can't have it both ways.

omg do you people never give up?

I did not "find a list of relevant names". Why can't you trust me that I KNOW they cannot possibly have found those names, and most especially not in the precise order that they were recited.

It's like you are trying to force me to name the names, name the location, and dox myself, so that people can go back through my previous posts and laugh at me, knowing exactly who I am and where I live. You are anon, why can't I be?

I just asked a question, but rant away. I don't give a hoot what the names are. I just asked if it's possible that you might not be the only person on the planet capable of finding the relevant information out. Not in the precise order obviously, but you didn't just mysteriously 'know' from nowhere. You obviously found out yourself.

Clearly some people have never heard of local archives with collections that aren't digitised.

No way the BBC will have sent a researcher to the local archives.

You have my sympathy @Ladyof2025. Did you end up contacting the producer/your contact? I'd invoice for research services...