One of the great things about living in London is that so much of popular entertainment is made here, especially television. If you’re interested in how television is made then it’s easy to get free tickets to recordings fairly frequently. If you don’t care at all about what you see you could go to a different recording nearly every week, and even if you’re more selective you can still manage one every couple of months. You’d be amazed how many chat shows and game shows there are across all the channels we have now.
So it is that I get fairly frequent emails alerting me to new shows in production that are looking for audience members or participants. Most of them look pretty uninteresting, but I glance at them all so I don’t miss the occasional gem. Of course there also those special few that make me go, “WTF?”
A couple of days ago I got an email asking, “Has Traditional Medicine Let You Down?” It read as follows:
Hello there!
We thought that you might be interested to know that we are currently looking for people to become involved in a brand new series.
HAS TRADITIONAL MEDICINE LET YOU DOWN? A GROUND BREAKING NEW HEALTH SERIES WANTS YOU?
Outline Productions are making a ground breaking new series for a major broadcasting channel, and we want you to be part of it.
Are you one of the many in the UK who have Verrucas, Athletes Foot or Warts?
Has traditional, over the counter medicine not worked for you?
Or are you a male who would be interested in trying out an alternative, natural aphrodisiac to boost your sexual libido and performance?
If this sounds like you or someone you know please get in touch ASAP via our website
This email has it all: a Ron Burgundy-style misplaced question mark (“A new health series wants you?”); an overall tone reminiscent of Homer Simpson’s classic, “Hello sir! You look like a man who needs help satisfying his wife”; a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey approach to capitalisation. And of course the fact that they’re apparently genuinely making a television programme about curing warts with alternative medicine. What are they going to suggest, homeopathic doses of toad?
It hurts my brain to think that some people might read this and think, yes, TV is clearly the way forward with addressing this annoying verruca problem that modern medicine has somehow failed to rid me of.