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A house is not a home
Of course, if the X Factor was on the BBC, there'd be angry stories in the Daily Mail over the not-entirely-surprising revelation that the "houses" the X Factor judges take their flesh-coloured programme-mulch to aren't really their houses. ITV insists it's not really fibbing:
A spokeswoman for the show said: "The contestants are invited to a house. We call them the judges' houses, not the judges' homes.
"Sharon had only just moved in to her new home and hadn't even unpacked so we couldn't have filmed it there.
"We have never said they are the judges' real homes and it has been this way for the past four years."
"Sharon had only just moved in to her new home and hadn't even unpacked so we couldn't have filmed it there.
"We have never said they are the judges' real homes and it has been this way for the past four years."
The semantic difference between "house" and "home" is surely wafer-thin - and, if the idea isn't to make people assume that Sharon and Louis and Kylie's sister have invited the squawking public into their homes, why call them "judge's houses" rather than, say, "the bands' house" or "the solo women's base"? It's such a silly lie - and, of course, if you're going to believe that Shayne Ward has some sort of star quality, you're clearly going to believe anything. We could understand if ITV said "it's a made-up TV show", but trying to argue that a smudging of terminology wasn't designed to conceal the truth is almost as pathetic as falling for the claim in the first place.
7 comments:
Meanwhile at the other end of the scale, the Mail have been busy getting outraged at another BBC 'deception'. They're shocked that the Strictly Come Dancing Sunday-night results show is pre-recorded on Saturday night.
The voting lines close at 9pm on Saturday, the show naturally makes this completely clear. The results show is then recorded, then broadcast the following night. However, because Brucie refers to the previous show as 'last night' (which, when you watch it on Sunday, it is), this is apparently large-scale fraud. Never mind that TV shows have been doing this since year dot, that Countdown and Deal or No Deal are recorded sweatshop-style in batches of 400 in an afternoon, with the hosts chirping "Welcome to Monday's game!" on a Friday, and that some poor sod runner has to go out and find Noel a poppy to wear in the middle of July because they're filming shows for November. All of a sudden it's evil viewer deception. If the BBC do it.
Prodding at my crystal ball, I see that the BBC will be holding the Sunday results show live next series. The Mail will then run an editorial slamming this shameful waste of licence fee, flying the celebrities in twice when they could quite easily film the results show after the main programme on a Saturday.
Shockingly, I can also reveal that the Daily Mail REGULARLY writes stories on a Monday which are not released to readers until a Tuesday - DESPITE the flagrant use of inaccurate terms such as "said a spokesman yesterday" and "will tell the commons today".
Less shockingly, I can also reveal that everyone in a senior editorial position there is an arsehole.
And, indeed, they sell the Mail On Sunday on a Saturday night.
Simon and Andrew,
I really enjoy your writing style. I am so happy to have discovered both of you.
I write a blog http://www.thexfactor.com please check it out.
Fuck me, next up they'll be telling us that they don't use musicians' real homes in MTV Cribs!
Shayne Ward Got No Talent????????????????????????
Ur 1 crazy person wiv no brain
Please, a special welcome to XRRF comments for Simon Frith there.
The thing you'll notice here is Walsh said this on Graham Norton's show (BBC) and they left a spectacularly inconsequential even by the standards of a chat show meeting of Graham Norton and Louis Walsh exchange in. Was someone in editing trying to make an issue of it, or trying to show that TV fakery is really nothing just to see what happened?
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