UnReal

Why does anyone in their right mind want to go on a reality TV show?

I once had an employee who was doing very well in her job and was great fun to have around. Aside from that she put her romance languages degree to good use and taught me Italian after work. Actually that is overstating the case. She gave me lessons. What I learned you could paint on the head of a pin with a wide brush. However, Ally wanted to work in television. Advertising wasn't ringing her bell.

So, naturally enough, she applied to appear on the second of the big reality TV shows to hit New Zealand's screens. The first was the seminal Pop Stars which vomited the execrable True Bliss on the screen and spawned Pop Stars UK and, by means of the long and winding road the phenomenon that is American Idol (and all of its international karaoke cousins). Ally was to appear on the first series of Treasure Island. As befits a television star she changed her second name from Foskett to Fox. And so it was that she left us to cavort about in a bikini on some godforsaken Fijian island looking for clues to Cap'n Pugwash puzzles in the hunt for the eponymous buried treasure. Oddly enough Ms Fox ne Foskett played opposite Pieta Keating - who later joined the company as a producer (and who now works at MTV in London). Neither of these clever women won the prize. And I am not sure that anything other than minor, fleeting celebrity was the by-product.

Charlie Brooker, as ever, sums reality TV rather well in this clip: why you don't ever want to appear in a reality show.

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