Sunday 29 April 2007

Oh fuck. What to do about Castaway

Received a message on my new corporate Blackberry late this afternoon. FiFi wants me to attend an emergency thinktank meeting at the Charlotte Street hotel on Wednesday to discuss how we ("we"?? I'm on gardening leave for another 4 weeks and this really isn't my problem yet) deal with the cock up that is the new Castaway. Not sure how I should play this. Obviously, FiFi wants to pick my brains and test me partly because I've had to handle reality formats before. But this Castaway mess wasn't conceived on my watch at all, and quite frankly I really don't want to be associated with it. So here lies my problem: do I come in with an air of distance, throw in a few considered but deliberately vague suggestions and let the existing lackies deal with it whilst digging their own graves even deeper, or decide to grasp FiFi's mantle, stamp my size 9 Birkenstock feet all over it and salvage the enormous fuck up that the lame/out of touch production company execs have ladled the Channel with? It's a real tough call.

I really haven't devised my first 2 week strategy yet - which projects to talk about, which to ignore, and what kind of tone to take. Perhaps I need to talk to Craig for the first time in two years. At least he'll know about the political mess I'm about to be forced into dealing with. Craig will know exactly how I should play FiFi; me thinks he'll suggest an air of aloofness but delivered with a very knowing air about me. As if I would ever have been foolish enough to think that the format could work anyway, and now they are fucking lucky to have me lend an air of savvy to the confused thinking on it. That's what I hope, at least. Perhaps a quick call to Bryan at Endemol might be useful to make too. He's got me out of the shit enough times, and he owes me a favour or two.

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