Sunday 18 September 2011

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...

6 comments:

  1. How funny! I moderated a comment from that show out and could never have tidied up my life enough to be on it. My brother (in the US) was also offered a reality show (spouse swap) and we were offered one (on burglar proofing) in NY. We all thought about whether it would be fun and then decided the hassle and the visibility were things we had no interest in. Makes me wonder who actually does these things.

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  2. Ohhh...I love those shows! It would've been fun to see you on one! It does seem like a hassle, though, especially since you aren't actually looking! It all makes sense to me now..sometimes on the program you think, why would they pick THAT one when the other is available?! maybe it's because the best place wasn't available when they were really looking.

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  3. I'm not feeling the same enthusiasm about burglar proofing, but yup, I do love house hunting.

    And Jan, that's a good point. I never thought about how I'd feel if I saw an apartment I really loved more than this one. You'd maybe see some on-screen tears. Ha, ha! Maybe it's all for the best.

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  4. Oh that IS a really good point. Oh it's totally ruined it for me. Damn. (Which reminds me, before I went on holiday I was so busy trying to avoid writing my essay that I watched an episode of Changing Rooms on YouTube. It was even worse than I remembered. In a good way.) p.s. I got approached as well, but not to ask me to do it but to write a blogpost about it to advertise the opportunity to other people. I suppose some of us are meant to be in front of the camera, and some eternally behind *sigh* ps can you and Orla and Hamish not just secretly do it without Stevie knowing? You'd be BRILLIANT.

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  5. He might guess when he asks the kids in the evening "And what did you do today?" and they say "We went to Scotland and Mummy said 'Now show me one with a rooftop infinity pool!'"

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