All rise for the TV

What's up with TV audiences nowadays? They're standing up. I noticed Top Gear started the trend a few years ago with getting rid of chairs and making their audience stand up.

Now, I've seen that It Pays to Watch, makes its audience stand up.

Instead of filming in locations with seating for the audience eg big televsion studios it allows the programme makers to film in a wider variety of locations. Top Gear is supposedly filmed at an airfield and it looks like the audience are in a hanger. What's IPTW's excuse?

Is this just a way off saving money on big studios and filming in smaller locations with just a couple dozen people standing around?

Why not go further and cut out the audience?

I liked the good old days when there was massive audience in a big studio. I've been to recordings at the BBC's Wood Lane studio as well as the Elstree studio where I saw Who Wants to be a Millonaire and the LWT Tower's studios on the South Bank.

Four whores

Film Four have decided to reclaim Channel 5's discarded crown of thorns by decreeing that tomorrow night (8 August) is Prostitute Night, with an Anglo-American double-bill. The UK's Personal Services at 2325 is followed by the US's Call Me: the Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss at 0130.

It's a unique opportunity to compare and contrast attitudes on both sides of the pond to the oldest profession and the brothel madams running the shows to carry out a review of cultural, media and sociological attitudes.

Not to gawp at a bevy of beauties doing dirty deeds.

The Apprentice: Wood's Woe

In week 5 of The Apprentice, last week's liar, Nathalie Wood, came a cropper and got her just deserts. This week's task was to pick and sell as many photographs from 2 photographers.

Justice was done and she also deserved to be fired for being a weak project manager and a week defender in the boardroom. She chose to keep her new best friend, Katie Hopkins, out of harm's way and was forced instead, to bring in Lohit Kalburgi with the weak excuse that he had produced some labels that their photographer did not like. This is somewhat ironic as she was criticised for her wrong labels last week.

Justice was finally done, albeit a week late.

Also this week, alleged "energy sapper", Adam Hosker, got the most valuable sale and was on the phone to bringing in art fans to the team's private viewing. Although he can be negative in an un-constructive way, i think he is right more often than he is wrong and I feel empathy to his way of thinking.

The Apprentice: Physicist Panned

In week 4 of The Apprentice, Sophie Kain, the physicist was fired. She admitted she wasn't keen on selling sugary sweets for a few pounds when they only cost a few pence to make. Alan Sugar implied that this was par for the course in business. I wonder if he was referring to his products. Yet when Gerald Ratner claimed his company's products were "crap", he lost £500M as well as his job, fortune & company.

I thought her dismissal was an unfair decision as Nathalie Wood had messed up the labels, claiming the sweets were "Organic Orange", when they had a bucketful of E-numbers in them. This blatant mis-representation would have deceived the public and held up the sales of the team.

Then, Nathalie lied about what went on but Alan Sugar smelt her porkie pie in the boardroom. Yet, surprisingly, for screwing up & then lying about it, he didn't immediately dispense with her services. Justice remains to be done.