Welcome to The Exclusives
Ice cream scoop!
Mixing career with entertainment probably works if you want a career in entertainment. Well, obviously it does if you want to be
an actor, TV presenter or musician, but since when did those reporting on the entertainment become the entertainment?
Welcome to The Exclusives. It’s The Apprentice but with a job in magazine journalism at the end of it as the golden prize, and no-one gets kicked off at the end of the episode. And everyone’s rather nice. And there’s a poppy soundtrack synonymous with ITV2. In fact, it’s more like The Real World than The Apprentice.
To be fair, it’s not their fault that all six of the candidates are rather photogenic, and none of them come from the same background. Hayleigh is pushy and bolshy but she gets the job done. Well, she does know her way around the glamorous world of photoshoots herself being a glamour model. Did we mention she’s a glamour model? She’s a glamour model, you know. And has just finished her degree in English Language and Literature. Just tack that on at the end, but really she’s a glamour model.
“Perhaps it’s learning a work ethic, but it doesn’t seem like rocket science…”
All six of them have a broad label in a similar style, although access is given to further information as the process develops. You know, just in case you want to flesh them out to be real people. Ellie is a bubbly barmaid – and a journalism graduate. Christopher has overcome his roots in care – and is also a university graduate. Actually, those two sort of go together, but you get the general idea of broad strokes and finer details of information. I suppose it’s something like writing a headline about a person, then a standfirst (that sub heading bit introducing the article), and then the main body of the actual story. I was always taught that when you write a news story you should put the most important facts at the top, as people tend to not have such an attention span that allows for them all to still be paying attention by the time you sign off. The name of president’s dog? That goes at the end. The name of the president? That goes at the start. Simple really.
And that’s the rub here a bit. It’s not all that complicated a job to do, just to get. Most of these hopefuls are pretty young, bright and all are really photogenic. Perhaps it’s learning a work ethic, but it doesn’t seem like rocket science that the person who nips down the shops and gets the ‘celebs’ sweets in the middle of a photoshoot is going to get further than the one who spends half of it not knowing who the ‘celebs’ are without doing much about it. You’d think a little research and preparation into the genre of magazines they were kicking off with might have been in order.
I could be being harsh. This week was more! magazine and next week is a more rocky title, which underdog Stu is relishing. But it is still supposed to be work. There’s no use making faces because you’re bored of transcribing some else’s interview with a Z-lister. First off, even movie stars have to learn lines. Second of all – it’s a traineeship! Who do you think does these jobs?!
It’s strangely compelling, if with a bit of an anticlimax as no-one gets fired at the end of the first episode. Give ‘em the boot! It’s also slightly odd to see people competing so hard to get a job with elements that are not that dissimilar to the one you’re doing (that’d be me). Ho hum. In these times everybody wants a job, even if it doesn’t come with a million pound pay check. Just a pay check can be good enough. And, of course, a camera crew.
The Exclusives, ITV2, Thursday 17 May
