Herein lies a concept for a reality show I inflicted on a number of my fellow LPC students at a bar in London on December 11, 2008.
Hey! I've an idea for a reality TV programme. It's really ace and I think people are dull enough to watch it, which is surely the only reason why Big Brother is in its 11th series, but that's beside the point. It's called Shag Me, I'm Famous and it relies on the premise that there's so many minor celebrities about nowadays that nobody can possibly keep track of all of them. I mean, I flip open thelondonpaper for something to read on the train of an evening and the "gossip" pages routinely feature people I've never heard of - Agyness Deyn, anyone? Alexa Chung, anyone? Mark Ronson, anyone? And as such people will do ANYTHING to possibly be linked to a potentially famous person.
It works like this. We get ourselves a pair of semi-known models, one male, one female. Or possibly she'd be a model, of the Page Three variety, though not one that's been in lad mags or in the tabloids too much or people might recognise her. And he'd be a minor footballer, perhaps. One from a team that people don't support, possibly a transferee from continental Europe. Either way they should be good looking in the "advert for undercrackers" sense. You get the idea. Blonde (or bleached), photoshopped, could well appear on a billboard in the shower pose with designer labels in the corner. Well, we get this pair and put a number of adverts in Lonely Hearts columns, that run something like this: "MODEL, SOON TO BE FAMOUS, SINGLE, (FE)MALE, 20SOMETHING, WLTM ATTRACTIVE MAN/WOMAN FOR FUN AND FROLICS. NO TIME WASTERS PLEASE. RESPOND ON BOX 2222 WITH PHOTO." Then we wait for people to respond and take it from there.
When we've got a suitable response, we have the model arrange an assignation with his/her date in enough advance that we can secrete secret cameras round their date places, and also round the model's flat in strategic places. During the date and so forth the model in question attempts to lure the unsuspecting mark into bed by dropping hints about their soon to be fame, but crucially, THEY DO NOT SHAG ON THE FIRST DATE. Instead, the plant goes and finds other marks contemporaneously with the first and drops vague hints that the mark has competition. Eventually, the plant will pick one of them for the key third date in which there will be coffee and extras. When, finally, the mark gets to knocking boots with this allegedly famous person, we film them at it for a bit, then, just as he/she's getting to the jester's shoes, have a film crew burst out the wardrobe blowing those things you blow in at parties, and stick a great honking camera in his/her face before interviewing him aggressively and crudely, possibly pausing to mock their performance, if you catch my drift. Whereas the "losing" contestants are ambush-interviewed upon being given the "let's just be friends" talk. Milking their shock and awe to the max, of course.
There may be the possibility that the mark doesn't want to bed our plant. In which case we have another film crew waiting in a strategically placed van at the exit of the plant's pad ready to leap out and interview him or her on why he/she declined to go to bed with them, and subjecting them to much mockery.
Edit.
Broadcast.
????
PROFIT!
We could also have variants where we send the plant to an allegedly upscale club and get him/her to try and pick up or be picked up by fellow clubbers. The Oh Face ambush remains the same though.
As you can see the programme relies on the willingness of people to shag others because of fame and wealth, or at least perceived fame and wealth, and then beating them to the making it public punch. I for one know many, many blokes who would fall for the setup in this programme. And I also, alas, know enough women who would happily do same if they thought the bloke we had in mind was famous or at least semi-famous.
Yes, Shag Me, I'm Famous is nasty, exploitative, cynical and seamy. But I defy you to name a reality show that isn't. And what's more, nasty, exploitative, cynical, and seamy programmes sell. And something like this has ample room for spin offs. We can not only sell DVDs of the serieses, but uncut X-rated ones in which we don't censor them getting down to it for broadcast, a commentary show like Big Brother's Big Mouth in which some no-account "comedian" takes the piss out the marks mercilessly... we could even have a talent show spin off in which we search for the next man/woman/both to be a plant on the main programme (with phone voting, of course!), we could have a spin off version aimed at the LGBT market... we could even have a celebrity edition in which the plant is a genuinely famous person and attempts to score with celebrities (and given the sort of celebrities that hang around allegedly upscale nightclubs, we'd be onto something there!).
As regards presenting it... well, that'd be me, of course.
The only problem I can foresee is that we'd have to have a massive turnover of plants in order to prevent potential marks cottoning on to the fact that he/she is being set up... and that OFCOM might take exception to the existence of the programme in the first place. But surely that's only free publicity anyhow...