Pleasant lunch with Jenny at Soho House (her treat), ruined only at the end when she pitched me (or rather ‘sounded me out on a few things she’s currently interested in’) a clutch of slit-yer-wrists documentary ideas. For some bizarre reason she thinks I’m in the market for sob-umentary and freak docs. Why? It must be the channel’s old reputation – something I make a mental note to tackle in my first week. Does she think I’ve lost my sense of fun overnight simply by migrating to the Corporation? Stick with your features format luv I wanted to say but nodded politely nevertheless. Just to give you a sample of what I had to sit through:
Bum Rape - A hidden epidemic blah blah blah men talking for the first time ho-hum in this one off doc (ie. Impossible to place in the schedule)
The Girl Who Shags Herself – Hermaphrodite codswallop based on access to some poor orphan Jenny's lackies have dug up in Belarus (Another copycat shock doc you can find on all my rivals)
Cancer Live – In which I’m supposed to give over 7 hours of my schedule for a live brain operation to remove a tumour the size of a grande skinny latte from some poor professor’s head. Ya-da-ya-da-ya-da. Now I’m not going to deny that I went through a Do Everything Live phase but herein lies the dilemma of high ranking TV Execs like myself - we come up with one cracking idea and then spend the next two years dodging rent-a-clone formats of the exact same idea (This is way too complicated for Jenny to pull off anyway)
Womb Raiders – Women who kidnap foetuses based on one case in Brazil blah blah blah compelling sync testimony etc. gruesome recons ra-ra-ra (Done last year)
On the way out I bumped into Hector, flustered as ever, arriving with a gorgeous young blonde. We exchanged a look and he winked as he threw her coat to the cloakroom attendant and followed her arse wiggle up the stairs. Now, why hasn’t Hector asked me out to lunch yet? What power game could he be playing? This pre-occupied me for most of the taxi journey home.
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