The one where we're not on tv.

Nice fridge, but you can keep the rest of the crap...now show me something with a pool!

So last week I was approached to be on tv. Sadly not for my wit and depth of knowledge on the subject 'boys in tights', but for my other specialism: checking out houses. Specifically it was for us to appear on an American programme similar to 'Location, location, location', but with an expat twist. Part travel show, part aspirational house hunt. Totally up my street, in more ways than one.

In my quest to try something different this year, I was of the opinion that this would be loads of fun. I really enjoyed being shown round apartments when we first came here, and this struck me as even more fun as we didn't even have the pressure of actually having to find one to live in quite urgently.

The plan was they would film the show in reverse. They'd film us in our current apartment all settled and still no pictures hardly on the walls cause the walls are too big. And we'd be all cheery and happy because we'd be pretending that we'd just moved in and we wouldn't yet have discovered that the shower ran cold all the time and the dishwasher was leaving the dishes dirtier after washing them, and we wouldn't have experienced that awful winter where our 'heritage' windows practically fell apart and were draughty as hell and we wouldn't have known that our landlord was so rubbish with English that he thinks 'heritage' and 'total crap' mean the same thing.

Then the film company would have all our furniture removed and they'd film us viewing the apartment empty, and then they'd put everything back again, and then we'd go on to view another two apartments and all the little aspirational bits and bobs in-between: me aspirationally dumping the kids off in the creche in the KaDeWe and then nipping upstairs, buying a new book, racing up to the top floor bar to drink beer and read half my book before the creche calls me to remind me I have kids. Stevie being filmed in IKEA aspirationally being accused of shop-lifting, and then discovering that his aspirational girlfriend has cancelled his card thinking wrongly that her purse had been stolen. And of course all those little bits showing us enjoying the Berlin landmarks, where the digital editors would have to photoshop out the wet, stream-like marks on the Brandenburg Gate and Fernsehturm, Gedachtniskirche, and Check Point Charlie where Hamish would have taken aspirational pee-pees. Ah...living the dream!

But then 'the killjoy', previously known as Stevie, said that it was too much hassle, and couldn't see what was fun about having the house turned upside down and taking time off work to film for 3 days, and having to fly back to Scotland for a day with the kids, and...etc....etc.....just because I wanted to be on tv.

But I didn't want to be on tv, never have. That was the beauty of this! Nobody I knew would see it, so not only could I make a fool of myself, but I also wouldn't need to go on a sudden, extreme crash diet! It would just be good fun. But Stevie was dead against it, so that was the end of that. And uch well, I suppose there was no Phil and Kirstie...