Confederacy of a Dunce - Actress in Entertainment Program Shocker!

Thursday, August 11, 2005

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Actress in Entertainment Program Shocker!

It's all over the news today (or at least all over the "news"): there is some concern that one of the final four contestants on the UK's sixth season of Big Brother¹ is not really a genuine, ordinary member of the public! As everyone's favorite best-selling newspaper in the UK put it,

Big Brother bosses Endemol have some urgent questions to answer over contestant Makosi Musambasi.

Makosi is revealed to be an actress who won her place on the show with the help of a slick, professional audition video.

That firm is said to have invoiced Endemol for £600. But Endemol deny payment and say they did not know Makosi was with an agency.

Reality TV is supposed to be about ORDINARY people impressing the producers at auditions to win their chance of fame....

(wonky line breaks and emphasis courtesy of the original article, which by the way appeared as the main front page article). So let me get this straight. One of the contestants on this television entertainment program is revealed to be an actor?! In the strange world of reality television, that seems as real as you can possibly get, after all, other housemates from this season have included (from the official Big Brother site) an "entertainment entrepreneur", model and runner-up as Miss Northern Ireland (1999), "Promotions Girl", "Most Handsome Man in Italy" (1996). A plain old wannabe actress is plenty "real" in this context. Anyway, when did "they" decide that reality television was supposed to be about the ORDINARY? As far as I know, most ORDINARY people are not quite so desperate for fame (or at least the low-grade fame that some contestants manage to achieve) Or maybe I'm just jealous that they didn't want ME to be in ANY OF their shows. But perhaps that's because I am not ORDINARY but only SUB-ORDINARY.

¹Big Brother is still hugely popular in the UK: evictions are still decided (mostly) by public vote, daily programs are quite highly rated, and extensive coverage appears even in the most legitimate of news sources (Times, Guardian).

EDITED: Quick denial by everyone involved (SOURCE): "Nothing untoward has gone on and Makosi went through the same audition process as anyone else," a spokesperson for Endemol insisted.

A rep for Envenio admitted that Makosi was on their books after signing up through the company's website but denied that the invoice related to her.

"As far as we know, Makosi is not an actress," Envenio chief executive Paul Booth told the BBC. "She signed up for our new faces section, which is for members of the public who aspire to be involved in the business. She put her details on our website. We emailed Makosi details of the Big Brother auditions, just like we emailed a lot of our members... it is no different to a company walking down the street looking for people....

A statement from Channel 4 read: "Makosi went through the same audition process as every other housemate and was not fast-tracked in any way."

Not that I'm keeping track or anything.

teevee

Thursday, August 11, 2005 10:57:04 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)