The Stage

Reality bites?

Published Friday 3 December 2004 at 10:50 by John Byrne

Shows such as I’m a Celebrity… and Shock Treatment are beginning to realise that trained performers guarantee success. As John Byrne argues, the use of real talent is the only way to rescue lifestyle and reality TV

Having had the recently ousted Sheila Ferguson as a best friend for the best part of a decade, I have to admit that not even I would have expected the answer to When Will I See You Again? would be “In a tin bath with Joe Pasquale in the middle of the Australian Jungle”. However the appearance of both of these established artists in the cast of the latest I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! marks an interesting turnaround from what has gone before.

But that turnaround isn’t so much in their careers whatever the cheap-shot merchants in the papers may say. Pasquale’s act may involve “songs that get on your nerves” but years of excellent live reviews prove that, squeaky voice and all, he is someone the public wants to see more of. As for Sheila, far less biased commentators than me - and Janet Street Porter - confirm that the voice is better than ever, as does a just released solo album that is as far away from a novelty cash in or even a cabaret retread as the jungle is from her Windsor back garden. Faced with tin bath, boredom and 16 million viewers, they both dived in like the troupers they are and provided a genuinely warm and funny moment in an increasingly sadistic show.

Professional entertainers as a whole have been undergoing their own ‘bushtucker trial’ in the television jungle as reality TV stars and the ‘famous for being famous’ are increasingly snapping up their bread and butter work.

However as lifestyle and reality TV becomes increasingly more like dead horse and manipulation TV, producers seem to be realising that being entertaining and watchable is not as easy as it looks. For every ratings-busting I’m a Celebrity…, there has been a whole crop of Back to Realitys and Shattereds which have demonstrated that when it comes to real-life TV, the viewers would rather switch off and get on with their own lives.

This penny having finally dropped, producers are increasingly leaning on the skills and charisma of trained performers to make reality TV work when the formats no longer do. From the performer’s point of view this represents both an opportunity and an occasion for careful consideration. The original Pop Stars and Pop Idol formats were slightly modernised (i.e. nastier) versions of traditional talent shows, with an age range that excluded all but relative newcomers. The rapid disappearance of most ‘winners’ after one or two singles simply demonstrates that massive exposure combined with limited experience is less a recipe not for a big break but for heartbreak. Few would argue that this type of talent was the key factor in the X Factor selection process, yet experienced performers like Rowetta have managed to fight their way through the ritual humiliation process and make good use of their stage time.

A secondary and even more welcome opportunity for professionals has been the judging and training roles on these shows. The Cowell/Osbourne/Walsh triple act probably was not in need of much extra publicity, but it was good to see seasoned performers like David and Carrie Grant (Fame Academy), Honey Kalaria (Bollywood Star) and the various professional advisers on Musicality getting a chance to demonstrate and share the experience they have learned from coming up the old-fashioned ‘hard work’ way.

Sky One’s Shock Treatment is somewhere halfway between reality and fantasy - volunteers undergo authentic-looking (but bogus) experiments to test their ‘fear levels’, overseen by the eminent psychologist Dr Templeton. They only learn at the end that ‘Dr T’ is in fact character actor John Woolvett. “Playing Templeton was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate to casting directors just how believable I could make a character. By the end of the show, even crew members were asking me for psychological advice,” observed Woolvett.

Over on Celebrity Fear Factor, Judi Shekoni, best known as gangster’s moll Precious in EastEnders, took on the snakes, great heights and escapes from submerged vehicles to “test my personal limits, and face my own fears’”. The strength-building exercise seems to have paid off: LA-based Brit Shekoni is currently back in London playing the lead in major film Private Moment.

Not every reality experience is a good one (ask poor Natalie Appelton). An actress acquaintance of mine once participated in a show on internet dating to help “raise her TV profile”. As single mother, she mused while preparing for a date about how she “had put my career on hold to raise my kid and now it’s my turn… but I love my daughter and it was all worth it”. The real reality TV stars - the film editors - chopped the interview after the phrase “now it’s my turn”. Neither daughter or mother were best pleased with the profile that went to air.

Most would argue that if you choose a reality show as a career move you deserve what you get, so it makes sense to work out exactly what you do want to get out before signing up. Ultimately whether it is on or off screen, realise that no matter how much preparation and planning you put in, no matter how much or how little control you have of the final product, no show ever goes completely the way you expect.

But equally bear in mind that, so long as you are still breathing at the end of it, nor does any one gig - however successful or disastrous - make or break a career. Styles of entertainment, like types of entertainer, go in and come out of fashion. But the performing life is a marathon not a sprint - and that’s not just a cliche. It’s reality.

• John Byrne is a writer, broadcaster and showbusiness coach.