Britain's Talent

My interaction with talent-themed TV shows could to date only be described as fleeting. The last time the presumptuously named Britain’s Got Talent was aired I was out of the country, but it’s a fairly safe bet that I wouldn’t have been avidly tuning in. There’s something about slightly desperate, disillusioned, largely talent-less ordinary folk putting themselves up for a good bit of patronising that does nothing for me.

I think there’s also a certain part of me that simply doesn’t believe it. People don’t really want to go on these programmes, do they? People don’t voluntarily put themselves up for this crap, do they? Well, it seems they do, as I discovered at The Lowry the other day, faced as I was with this scene:

People had water supplies, packed lunches and warm clothing in preparation, presumably, for the long wait before they were allowed in to meet those haloed pillars of humanity – the judges! Ah yes, those famed judges. If there’s one thing that confuses me more about these things than the fact that people enter at all, it’s the seeming obliviousness, and enthusiasm, with which these ‘judges’ egos are massaged.

I suppose I shouldn’t completely dismiss the pursuit of dreams, which this exercise is supposed to be about, but...well, I can’t help it. I just felt like going up to everyone in the queue and asking them what they really thought would happen. The fact that they might get on TV would, probably, depressingly, be the stock answer.