Be Excellent To Each Other

Fuck me, that was vicious last night.

I've not seen any of them before, but I'm quite enjoying it, if only because they are all morons.

It makes me too angry to watch. Their mindset is so completely alien to me.

Alan Sugar is a hateful cunt.

That is all.

Often, it makes me thing of the Steve Coogan character making tiger noises in the mirror. Which makes me giggle like a llon. It is, by and large, toecurlingly excellent at times though.

You are so dead when Chinny logs on...

Outside.

Seriously though, it's all in the editing. Take a look at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uktwoY3lk7g

To see how it really works.

I can't access MooTube from work, but are you suggesting that they edit Sugar to make him appear hateful, rather than him naturally being a capitalist, ghastly, stubbly, paedo-alike twatface?

I always think that Sugar is too easy on the hateful fuckwits who parade in front of him. Personally I would just chuck 'em all into a tank of pirahnas.

I expect you've seen what he linked to; it's Charlie Brookers screen wipe. You do watch that, don't you?

....No? Definately not voting for you then.

I only get BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4.

MR SAD NO TV FACE

Yes, because as Charlie Brooker proves, you are going to corpse at somepoint and there's no way you can record sequences that long without needing retakes. It's an entirely fake situation, in a TV studio. You quite often see Margaret or Nick almost biting their tongues to prevent themselves corpsing as well.

Sugar also frequently complains how the editing makes him look like he has no sense of humour and having spoken to people who have worked directly for him, yes he's hard but he has a very sharp sense of humour.

It's also a gameshow. He'll have a meeting with the producers beforehand so he's briefed on what happened and they'll agree an outcome. I often feel certain people are kept on to keep the later stages of the show interesting. Last night being a case in point. That frightful redhead sales woman should have been booted but she's been kept on in the hope of more fireworks later in the series.

Corpsing?

I really didn't like that smug geezer who was in the middle of the cab- "I can't stand whiners" or something, en route to sip some frappacinos with his chums while the others were washing linen.

Watch that edition of Screenwipe I linked to when you get home. All will become clear.

I get that they get certain people on for entertainment factor, but ultimately he's got to employ one of these ghastly fuckers. Presumably that is worked out in advance?

I do, of course, apologise for not knowing anything about what is clearly the cultural zenith of today's Britain.

Laughing when you're trying to film stuff. Ricky Gervais has made it an artform.

"Corpsing is a theatrical slang term used to describe when an actor breaks character during a scene by laughing......"

They are all in character with stern faces, but you often see Sir Alan say something or do something at a serious point that causes one of the others to almost laugh but to stifle it.

It's all in the edit. I often bring stuff back here, look at it and say to myself "bloody hell, I've shot a load of old shit" but when it's all edited it will look totally different.

Is there some law against luvvies just calling it "laughing", then?

No. Sir Alan only decides a few days before the final show is aired. He usually nails it down to 2, they work with him for 6 months and then he decides.

Two endings are recorded, and the correct ending is bolted on a few days before the transmission of the final episode. This is so Sir Alan can actually see how the two people perform in the real world.

It's just one of those actor terms, and in this situation they are all "acting".

So it's a fake, then?

No. They don't hide the fact they do that. It was all over the papers and in the interviews and it's widely known. But the ending would be shit if they worked this in so they do the two endings.

Both of the winners end up working for Sir Alan, it's just one of them gets a longer contract. After all, he has to suss out if these people are muppets or not for himself.

Surely the best ending would be for him to have the most irritating one that he clearly hates working for him?

I found that bit, in particular, to be eye fucking watering funny.

Is it true that the wannabe people actually only live together in that house for a week or so? And not for months, as it seems?

It's not months, but I think it is about 4-6 weeks.

I think they get a day off between tasks. So a task may take 3 days to record from start to end, they get a day off then they do the next one.

Because when it happens, you tend to be laughing your tits off for about five minutes. Really, absolutely, in hysterics. And then when you try and do it again for the next take, all the other person has to do is breathe in and you are off again.

See every clip show in existence. And when it happens to you, it *hurts*.

I agree that corpsing is absolutely nothing like laughing. It can last for up to 15 minutes, and it completely wrecks what you are trying to do. It is physcially exhausting, strikes you with complete mental fatigue and can leave you quite upset once you have calmed down.

I only had it on stage once, at a matinee performance. I had never really seen anyone corpse before - a few mild giggles onstage - but it completely overtook me and glued me to the spot, no-one knew what was going on, least of all me. Then the audience started laughing, which upset me, but I still couldn't stop laughing, and it really really hurt.

When I finally got off stage I cried a lot.

I have had it happen since, with camera work, but that's not as bad as you know in the back of your mind that you can go back and do it again.

Some recent corpsing and some visual corpsing

I was looking for the 'dunking a bit of beef' corpsing by Phillip and Fern, Steev - is that what you were searching for?

I've found it - it's quite a fantastic example, though it only lasts about 30 seconds, it's great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD1vJ-qa ... re=related It's 7 minutes in. Phillip & Fern are the corpsemasters.

Gosh no, I was led there from the Radio 4 link that I already knew about.

Schofield and Britton are always corpsing, see also the excellent Paul O' Grady in just about every show.

Are you mad, man?


The Paul O'Grady Show is.... beyond evil.

It is ACES!

Has anyone else noticed that the format of the show now gives way more time to the post-task boardroom stuff? Seriously, they finish the task barely half an hour in, and the rest of it is mumbling about who's to blame for losing.

Yes. It started to happen last year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/ is your friend. Make an official complaint otherwise they don't listen. The site also makes every effort to make sure you don't complain by offering multiple choices.

Not enough people complain about stuff they don't like on TV, so spend 2 minutes to have a moan.

I've been watching the US celebrity Apprentice these past weeks. It's awesome. For a start it's strange to be watching The Apprentice where 80% of those involved actually seem quite likeable (even fucking Piers Morgen seems nice in a panto-villian sort of way).

The US Apprentice started off as po-faced as ours, and it slowly got sillier and sillier until it was absolute garbage, then last year it seemed to suddenly realise how stupid it was and started playing off it. It's produced some of the funniest moments on TV this year for me. I mean, they did a parody of the Sopranos ending at one point.

I caught a few episodes of the American one last year and, no offence to Sralan, the extravagance of the winners' treats was something to behold.

I quite like the Apprentice though the tasks are clearly unfair but that's part of it. I also like that it isn't viewer controlled. I also heartily agree with Mimi that the Paul O'Grady show is horrid.

Now now, I fail to see what's bad about the prize of an Emailer phone and a GX4000.

Exactly! Who wouldn't choose that over playing Tennis with Anna Kournikova!

Depends on if the GX4000 included Pang and Switchblade.

The Apprentice is awesome. It makes me shout at the tv.

To be fair, according to the secret camera I put in your TV, you shout at most things.

Worryingly this is true. It would be even better if the people on the tv could hear the cutting comments I make about them.

Helene. Pronounced Hell-ain.



It just Helen, isn't it. Plain boring evil spiteful boggly eyed Helen. The extra 'e' doesn't make you sound anymore 'special' than your already are. i.e. Not very. There's one just like you in every office across the UK. Cow.

I missed tonights episode which is annoying.

To iPlayer, Chinny!

You've missed nowt, Chinners. Unless you're a big Sugar fan.

Oh.

\
We love you too, Chinners!

It's rather ironic that I'm about the only person in the country that still hasn't tried this yet.